A Day in the Life

To put it simply things are different. Better yet, everything is different. Yet I have somehow seamlessly transitioned into this new life style. The first thing that is remarkably different is the concept of time. Essentially it doesn’t exist, and down here we have an expression for that…Nica Time. It’s the best thing in world and the worst thing in the world. On one hand, you never have to really worry about being late. There’s always something you can blame your tardiness on: the poor public transportation, the spontaneous thunderstorms, or of course the heat. But as a person who likes to operate based off of a tight time schedule, it could prove burdensome. I can only praise Nica time right now, but I have the feeling down the road it will come back to bite me in the ass.

Of course one of the most difficult things to deal with is the heart. It can be unbearable. I need to walk eight blocks or so to get from the house of my host family to my current language classes, and on the really bad days, I will have completely sweat through my shirt. Although, I do get some amusement out of it. I have found that I sweat profusely in some weird places, in particular my shins. I don’t know what it is, but besides my back being soaked through, I look down at my legs and see dark circles of sweat around my shins. Real peculiar. The heat makes it tough to really do anything, except slowly walk to and from class and consume as much water as possible. To beat the heat, I have had to make a couple of lifestyle changes.

The first one has been the time I wake up in the morning. If you want to exercise at all, you got to be out on the road before the sun has risen to high in the sky. And to do that you got to be up early. The sun is clearly visible by about 4:30 in the morning. (Consequently, it’s completely dark here by 6:30 pm. And it’s not a good idea to be doing much of anything once it gets to dark, as things get exponentially more dangerous)

So any day I plan on running, which is most days, I’m out of bed somewhere between 5:45 and 6:30, before it gets to hot. Of course when I run, I rep my fresh Road ID, just in case the worst happens. Check one out if you get a chance, they’re great. (Que pasa, OPR)  It sounds crazy to be up that early, but it’s a lot easier than it sounds for a couple of reasons. First, my door opens up to our backyard, as you can see in the below picture:

The walls do not completely connect to the ceiling, so the light streams over the top, which is reason #1 I wake up. Reason #2, and this is by far the more significant of the two, is the assortment of animals I have right in my back yard. If you look closely at a better picture of my backyard, you may be able to see the 3 dogs, multiple parrots, multiple roosters, and (by far the worst) the goat.

Once the sun comes up, the symphony begins. Good luck sleeping peacefully through all of that.

The second biggest change has been the difference in standard of living. To be perfectly hones, I would be very embarrassed to bring my host family back to my home in New Canaan. The standard is so much higher in the United States its like comparing different planets. First off, the house is completely open. Doors and windows are wide open at all times until bedtime, which is the norm around here. Screen technology hasn’t seemed to make it this far south yet, so we get tons of critters in the house: mosquitoes, geckos (that eat the mosquitos, and my favorite so far has been a murciellaga, or a bat. That was an exciting chore for my first night, capturing the bat in a trash can and flinging it outside. Certainly don’t experience that too much at home. An off shoot of that is that I sleep with a mosquito net at night, check it out along with my room:

It feels like I’m 7 or 8 years old again, making forts in my room and sleeping in them, so it’s totally cool. Don’t be too jealous. To top it off, the house, along with Nicaragua only has water at certain times. I’ve tried having it explained to me, but I still can’t make much sense of it. It just comes and goes, so we’re force to stockpile water when we do get it into large blue barrels. No running water means two things: 1) The toilets don’t flush, so we manually have to pour water in the toilets to send our leftovers down the drain, and 2) I’ve gotten used to the bucket shower. It’s not as bad as its hyped up to be, and I especially enjoy it on a hot day. It’s absolutely shocking to have such large amounts of water just dumped over your head. Personally, I haven’t minded it at all. It only proves a little bothersome after a long run in the morning.

What has been the most dramatic change for me, and don’t laugh, has been the dress code. Despite being in a third world country, I’m expected to dress business casual every day. Alright, go ahead and laugh. It seems like a strange policy because I already stick out like a sore thumb being one of the four white people in town. So wearing nice pants everyday, a tucked in button down shirt, and nice pair of shoes creates a glaring contrast between the locals and myself, as I walk down the street. But apparently Nica’s put a huge emphasis on the appearance of the teachers in the community, and I’m supposed to dress well to maintain respect. I know, I really got it tough, but I’ve never had any sort of dress code before, especially in heat like this. It’s either been a bathing suit at the beach, or whatever I felt like wearing at the office in San Francisco. But if that’s the worst thing I have to deal, with, I think I’ll be ok.

"By what conceivable right can anyone demand that a human being exist for anything but his own joy"  Gail Wynand