Tango

This video was sent to us by M our Salsa instructor just before we started with our Tango classes, supposedly to inspire us and look forward to doing Tango. I suspect it was more like a 'don't say I didn't warn you video'.

I have now lost count of the number of classes we've had but I do know that I underestimated the dance. Tonight was a bit of a disappointment as we enter part 2 (I wouldn't even dare to call it 'level') of our classes where the combination steps just got harder. We kinda breezed through part 1, but only as opposed to how we are doing in part 2 (sigh).

I love M for maybe thinking that we might be able to do what the couple is doing in this video...even in the distant future - though I highly doubt as M is grounded and realistic. I have met the most wonderful and fun people in these classes that have made life easier in this town. Thank god we are dancing amongst friends and having fun while doing it, otherwise...what were we thinking?

I have strengthened my resolve to come away with something from this post apart from the language and by dog it will be this challenging dance even if I have to grow a couple more legs to do it.

Creepy Crawlies

A couple of new found friends we have met in our house here in Managua. I remember complaining to M & L in Bogota why friends don't seem to care to visit us here, as opposed to Kenya, Denmark and the Philippines. M told me pointblank...and I can still hear the shudder in her voice...that maybe I should stop posting these kind of photos. Hmmm, she may be onto something there - I rather like that reason than them just not wanting to see us.

I thought Kenya would be more challenging with regards to these crawlies but no, we have more here than we ever had there. Although I have seen some strange insects in Nairobi perched just outside our window none of them were insects my nightmares are made of.

Back in the Philippines, apart from the occasional rats and a parade of ants here and there, what really freaked me out were the cockroaches and bathroom spiders...I would shriek like a little girl each time I'd see one. After that, I'd feel the sensation of something crawling down my back the whole day. Scorpions, centipedes and snakes were story book creatures to me until Nicaragua.

We do try to annihilate them every now and then - we fumigate every quarter - but at the risk of annihilating ourselves, we cannot do it more often. So, man being adaptable, I learned to check my shoes before putting them on, pat my pillows and raise the duvet before laying down, not walk in the dark inside the house (scorpions hide from the light) and always wear slippers.

As for the snakes (unlike other houses, we've only encountered one), that's what we have the dogs for. They bark and play with it until someone comes to kill it. One of the better reasons to keep the garden immaculate. We still have the occasional bathroom spiders (with spindly looooong legs) but amazingly no cockroaches. Speaking of missing crawlies....I haven't seen our resident Iguana for awhile now, hmmm.

Now, I look at them and they don't evoke the same emotion in me anymore. They are conversation topics amongst us here...'what do you have in your house'...kind of questions where people proudly recite the creepiest of crawlies you can imagine.

I myself feel proud to think that I have toughen up.

We still want friends to come and visit and see this as part of the challenge and experience here in Central America....and experience it no doubt they will.

Havaiana brouhaha

This post is probably anti-climactic as the brouhaha might have died down by now but here it is anyway. I have come across some funny questions when I was home last summer...after all, it's not every day someone comes home from Nicaragua or Central America, of all places. To qualify, it took me and V 3 days of travel, crossing 2 continents where we had to get off the plane in 5 cities and required to re-check-in our luggage in 2 of them . Please don't ask me how much it cost us...it was obscene and I will not do it again.

A friend asked me if I have brought Havaianas with me ...uhhh, I don't think I am allowed to bring exotic fruits, vegetables nor plants with me...so, no. As that what it sounded to me, something exotic to eat. Havaianas I found out are some fashionable flip-flops from Brazil which was all the rage in the Philippines at that time. Given my proximity to Brazil - well, compared to them in the Philippines, they thought that it could be a fashion rage here as well.

I've never heard of it! Incredulous as it may have sounded to them (to those who believed it was a universal rage), I haven't even come across them...not even by accident. Not while I was in Costa Rica nor Panama nor recently in Colombia and definitely not here in Nicaragua.

When I was there, I, of course, checked this flip-flops out and to my chagrin a pair could cost anywhere between PHP 1,500 to 2,000 and given the present exchange rate would be no less than $30...for a pair of plastic/rubber flip-flops!

In my 6 weeks in Costa Rica prior to coming here to Nicaragua, I have already discovered Grendha and Ipanema both from Grendene of Farroupilha, Brazil. If you don't know what to buy here of good quality footwear, buy Brazilian, it's hard to go wrong with footwear made in Brazil.

I can get Grendha and Ipanema here in Nicaragua for between $10 - 15 but in Panama, I got a pair for $5 and another for $7. They are the most comfortable footwear I have ever had on and are sold all over Latin America. I have tried on Havaianas in the Philippines just to see what it had to offer and I must say I'd go for Grendha and Ipanema anytime.

Obviously, I did not buy even a single pair of Havaianas in the Philippines as I thought it was 'una locura' to spend that much money on flip-flops. If one can get something that makes you feel like walking on air for a third of the price....but then again I don't live half a world away from them, poreso, como no.

Aventura in Managua

Coming home from Tango class tonight, I caught an announcement on TV about this group's concert here in Managua. This we got to see. A fave in the family. V our son loves their music too and therefore, we must go, all of us. April 11 - just need to figure out how to get the tickets.

Aventura, kings of Bachata, as they call themselves, although based in the US (Bronx, New York) were originally from the Dominican Republic. I find their music romantic and 'suave'. We use some of them in our Salsa class and I find them really easy to dance to.

And life goes on....again

Fever in the brain. I vaguely remember reading a story by Edgar Allan Poe, not with this same title but along the lines of how fever eats you up inside a limb at a time until it gets to your brain. Macabre indeed. It's just one of those memories that suddenly visits you when you lie awake with your high fever as company. I read Edgar Allan Poe as a child...now that's macabre.

Maybe it's just me but being sick almost always brings back childhood memories. Happy memories. Warm memories. It wasn't fair for me to blame expat life for wanting back all things familiar. What I said about my grandmother was true, of course, but I could be in the Philippines at that moment when I wanted her most and still she won't be there.

She passed away 12 years ago. I'm glad I've missed her...as she deserves to be missed and remembered for all the things that she was. The epitome of what I hope to be for my family...a pillar of strength and much more. Life sometimes get in the way of remembering and if it takes a fever in the brain to do that, then I look forward to my next 'trangkaso'.