la chinita

I realized last night that I hadn’t really written anything on this blog-type thing. tumblr makes it so easy to post individual photos that that’s mostly what I did!

As you can see from my schedule, every day has been really busy here! It is as complete an immersive cultural experience as I have ever had, and possibly as much as I can handle. Each student in my group of 15 from Cornell is living on their own, with a Nicaraguan host family. Since we only have three weeks here, we are working on a project with local students and teachers, and taking classes in Spanish language, conversation, and Nicaraguan history and politics in the afternoon. I think that this combination really speeds up the assimilation / increased understanding between our very different cultures.

We’ve watched several films now about US intervention in Latin America, all the bad things our country has done, and lots of background on the situation in Latin America, and living with a host family really drives home the point. The most surprising is that I never knew about any of this stuff before I came on this trip. The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund.. all of it is new to me, even though these organizations are largely funded by the US. But enough on that for now.

I think the biggest cultural difference I’ve seen here is the focus on family, especially on the biggest holiday of the year, New Years (Eve). New years eve here is all about traditions — but not the watching a silver ball drop on t.v. while getting trashed kind. Most people spend the evening eating food with their (extended, if possible) families. They make scarecrows filled with the bad things of the previous year, and burn it at midnight. Also, fireworks are freely available here (for better or worse, I’m not sure), so people go into the streets at midnight to set/watch fireworks. After, everyone hugs&kisses each other, and wishes each other a “feliz ano nuevo”.

After family reunions the previous night, the young people of Ocotal all seemed to go to the discoteca (aka. the dance club) on the night of January 1st. The discoteca I went to, “Sky Dance”, was completely packed. Greg and I danced to some Merengue early in the night, and switched to reggaeton later (which Greg didn’t like that much :P). Then, much to our surprise, there were 3 male strippers/exotic dancers who cleared the dance floor and did their thing. Three women from the crowd had a sort of dance off with them — it was really kind of strange. For a culture that at first seems very conservative (no one really wears shorts out of the house, and I never see people wearing miniskirts), and is supposedly known for romance and drama (telenovelas!!), they have things that are pretty opposite, like male strippers in the popular dance club. On the TV dating show my little 11-year-old host niece/sister was watching (called 12 corozones), they had a short interjection of 3 girls pole-dancing, and one of the male contestants doing a strip tease.

But overall, I’m really enjoying my experience here. Everyone is extremely nice, and people welcome you into their homes and bid you come back anytime you want anything. As one of the other students on my trip said, “They might be poor, but they are rich in culture”.

For another perspective on our trip, see Greg’s site! :)