As Time Goes By

Thursday marks the end of my intensive Spanish course. If anything has helped with my abilities it has been just listening and talking in Spanish in class and outside as well. Monday is the first day of the semester and I can see the whole campus getting excited for it to come, slowly I see more and more people there, signing up for classes or going to an orientation. I'm not quite sure of my schedule but I should be getting it any time now. I'm taking The History of Nicaragua (which I've actually started learning about, very interesting), Tourism, Society and Religion, and Social Philosophy. I'm interested to see what classes will be like, I'm also a little scared considering they're all in Spanish and apparently they lecture a lot more here than back home. So I'm banking on my Spanish and also my friend-making-abilities to help me.
I should soon be able to put pictures up, I'm anxious to should you what it looks like here. I actually live in downtown Managua but it's very different than downtown New York, Boston or San Francisco. You're not in the middle of a cavern of tall buildings, the main strip I walk down to school is a little like El Camino. Definitely a main road that was recently reconstructed but very different than what you actually might think is a downtown. Just up the street are some bars and restruants I'm excited to explore with a Nicaraguan friend that was at Fairfield last semester.
This past weekend I went with some friends to a beach called San Juan del Sur. It was about a 3 hour drive which was cool because we were able to see more of Nicaragua outside of Managua. The actual road leading to the beach town was absolutely filled with potholes which made what should have been a 15 min. drive an hour. It was as if we were on a roller coaster, swerving back and forth across the road. I know what everyone's thinking, but its alright, my stomach didn't act up and no one here has been thrown up on...yet. Haha just kidding, that won't happen. When we did get to the beach, the three North Americans (including myself) tried to put our towels down on the beach like we would back home only to find that the strong wind made this task very difficult and also fruitless as once we got the towels down, they would immediately get covered in sand. Not only that but if you tried to lie down and tan, you would actually get sand blasted. Besides that, the waves were a good size, but no good for surfing, they broke way too close to the shore. There was a mean ripe tide though that not everyone was used to (after you've been pulled under a million times at Capitola you learn how to avoid being pummeled). I taught everyone how to dive under the waves when they were about to break on you, some learned some didn't. As custom for me when coming back on a long trip, I fell asleep for most of the ride , overall a very nice trip.
I think we're going to plan another to Lake Nicaragua where there's a volcano island that's apparently really pretty and a really big tourist attraction. This time though I think we'll spend the night on Saturday and have all day Sunday to enjoy the Islands. There are actually two islands and when the water goes down during the day (yes there are slight tides in the lake due to its immense size, the largest in Central America!) there's a natural walkway that you can walk across from one island to the other, just like Jesus! Hopefully that works out for us.
Well I'm off to class, enjoy your warm showers and vegetables, they might not always be around...