10 days with a pair of playful niños

This is what it sounds like:

"oye, oye, oye" (listen, listen, listen - or hear me)

"mira, mira, mira" (look, look, look)

"ven, ven, ven" (come, come, come)

"ten, ten, ten" (take, take, take)

Me (or other adults present):

"dame tu mano" (give me your hand)

"esperate" (wait - or 'you wait')

"come" (eat)

"Que estas haciendo??!!" (what are you doing?!)

etc.

I had a lot of fun playing with them. It wasn't always easy, as these two little cherubs were rather competitive and didn't always get on so well, and the 5yrold was quick to tears, but it was fun.

We played crazy animals on the 'brincoline' (trampoline), and hide and seek, and cop & robber type games and shooting games and memory games and goodness knows what else!

I got a lot of practice with the imperative tense :)

Querido Hugo

Another love-themed post, I'm afraid!

A few days ago I was hanging with a bunch of 14yrold girls. We took turns singing songs in our various languages, teaching eachother the spanish-english-Zapotec names for things, talking about Australia.

Then they got me to write a love letter for them in English. It was dictated in Spanish, or course, so I did my best to translate it as they went along. I wish I could remember it all, because it was a real gem, partly beautiful, partly just over-the-top-hilarious.

Of course once it was done they were all madly threatening eachother about writing the name of one of the other girls' crushes at the top. I don't know who ended up with it, but Hugo was one of the options.

Dear Hugo,

I write to you, in English for the first time, to tell you how much I love you. I adore you. I can't stop thinking about you. I can't forget you.
You are my moon. You shine like the stars. I exist only to think of you.
You were born for me, I was born for you. We were made to be together. You are for me, for all of my life..
When we are together, it will be for the whole of our lives.
I love you.
Sincerely,
___________

Amor a Primera Vista (love at first sight)

I love San Cristobal de Las Casas. It is the loveliest little colonial town ever, set up in the mountains of Chiapas state. It´s so colourful and full of life.

I want to tell you about this guy I met this morning...

I went into the church in the main plaza, and sat down at the back to enjoy the peace and quiet. Next second, this mild-looking, middle-aged guy with a folder and newspaper comes up and asks if I believe in God. I say yes. He said that someone (I didn´t understand who) told him that he had 7 evil spirits in him. Then he started telling me how he see things and feels things that other people don´t, that he can tell when people are going to die, and sometimes sees accidents before they happen. He got quite emotional, nearly bursting into tears.
He asked if I wanted to know what age I was going to live to. I said no. He told me anyway. He kept asking if I believed him..I was like ´maybe, I don´t know.´I tried to say that it seemed real for him, that he believed in himself, but I couldn´t quite work out how to say it.

Then he hands me this love song that he said he wrote, and showed me a folder full of certificates and stuff to do with music. He made me read his resume - I didn´t catch much of it.

Then he asks if I believe in love at first sight.

And I say to myself ´oh crap, here we go again...´
On he went.. I ended up saying that I had a boyfriend, I couldn´t tell him who I was or where I lived, and that I had to go. Times like these I wish I´d just looked blank and said ´no hablo español´or ´no entiendo´at the start!

Anyway, I turned my back on his ever more miserable and desperate face and off I went, still holding his resume which he wouldn´t take back. ´If your boyfriend ever leaves you...´

Funny. Didn´t expect that in a church.

Breezy Belize

Didn´t spend much time at all in Belize, but it was totally fascinating. Felt like afro-america crossed with latin crossed with coast crossed with western civilisation 40yrs ago...

They speak 3 languages: English, their own Creole, and Spanish. And there are people from all over - including Chinese who run millions of little supermarkets and restaurants, and Guatemalans from over the border, and apparently Arabs too.

Made me want to go to Africa.

Epic Bike Ride

I had such a fun week in Costa Rica. Met cool people, went rafting and hiking and all sorts of fun things.. but I am just going to tell one story:

The Epic Bike Ride.

So we were in a little town called La Fortuna, just near Volcano Arenal - which is alive (CR is a scary place, it´s stuffed full of fire-breathing mountains!).
I and the 4 friends I was travelling with at the time were a bit tired of all the overpriced tours and so decided to explore Arenal our own way.
The problem with Arenal is that there isn´t really any transport around the place (apart from the aforementioned tours). After many extended debates of what to do, where to go and how to do it, we hired bikes, packed sandwiches, loaded up with several gallons of water, and took off for the rest of the day.
We´d asked the bike guys´advice, and he´d suggested going to a waterfall nearby. You had to pay to get in, though, and it wasn´t near the volcano. We asked how long it would take to ride around the outskirts of the mountain, to the lake.
"It´s a long way," he says, looking us up and down. "But you´re young and strong-looking" (I think he was mostly looking at the two 6-foot-something Swedes when he said this) "so I reckon you could manage it."
We set off.
Going up the first hill, I started to wonder if maybe this wasn´t going to be the pleasant day on the bike I´d visualised. Then there was another hill, and another, then a little down, then more up. And up. And up we went... we discovered all the quirks of our various bikes´gear systems (there were many). As the afternoon wore on, the hills seemed ever steeper. The pauses to admire the view grew longer. The waterbottles grew ever lighter. The sweat dripped ever quicker (yeah, still haven´t gotten the stains out of my shirt :P)..
Finally, all of a sudden, we had made it to the hot springs. These were not just any hot springs. These were not the builtup commercialised prettified super-expensified hot springs. No, for these, we had inside information. We ducked off the road right opposite the Tabacon Resort-thingy, under the bridge, and there it was. The loveliest little stream you ever saw, surrounded by forest, with little waterfalls, totally natural, and steaming hot!
We relaxed our aching muscles there for quite a while..
Then off again, circling round the volcano (which had its head in a cloud most of the time), to the lake. A couple of hours of solid biking, an hour or so of relaxing, and we had made it!!

We sipped coconuts from a stall there, took it all in, and discussed whether to venture the long road back. Would we make it by nightfall? We had no lights on our bikes, and there wasn´t any streetlights in the country..
We decided to give it our best shot.
We didn´t ride back, I think most of the time we flew. So much more downhill than we´d expected: Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

And we sailed into La Fortuna, triumphant, just as the light faded from the sky.

I think the roundtrip was about 30km. Such. A good day.

Sonriendo en San Jose

I didn´t expect San Jose to be pretty. It´s a capital city, it´s not meant to be particularly pretty or feel at all safe or seem at all relaxed.. but it was.
Some things that made me smile, wandering around after my arrival this afternoon:

The families and lovers out in the plazas, chilling out while the pigeons milled around - enjoying Jan 1st, I think.

A guy calling out to me from the other side of the street:
¨Hello!
I like your hair.
I like your smile.
I like your walk¨(then I think he ran out of english. It doesn´t usually amuse me much to be harrassed by guys, but I think being across the road helped, and it was sort of amusing.. I didn´t enjoy the very drunk, over-sized young guy who was in my face when I was trying to buy a snack from a street-side stall.)

A little shop. A large, white rabbit, sitting in the middle of the floor. Very large. Very white. Just sitting.

Two dogs playing in and around the animals & people of an outdoor nativity setting.

The little local pub/eating house where I and a german couple and a lady from Minnesota had dinner. The whole place was covered in pictures, flags, labels, lights, and a little Christmas tree. A couple of friendly locals too.

Feliz Año Nuevo everyone!

30 Horas en Buenos Aires

So I spent thirty hours in BA. It felt like a lot longer. I caught the public bus from the airport into town (2 hours, 2 pesos- about 50 cents) and back again the next day (why oh why couldn´t I get a connecting flight??!!)
But it was fun.

Some fun things:

Trying to communicate with Brasilians who barely spoke english or spanish (and I don´t speak portugese!). They were awesome though, I met them at the hostel and a swedish girl and I came out with them on Wed night. We looked for tango, but found no shows we could afford, so we drank some beer instead, in a sweet tree-encircled plaza in San Telmo with a whole pile of Buenos Aire-eans (otherwise known as Porteños) who were also enjoying the balmy evening. Ah, San Telmo, land of gorgeous smelly cobbled streets and semi-restored churches!
You should have seen us on the bus - there was a big mis-communication about where we wanted to be dropped off. I don´t exactly know how or why, but by the time we got off, the whole bus was laughing and waving us goodbye!

The next day I went to the main ´Catedral´and then came back for mass. There was a little old man sitting infront of me in a broad-shouldered soft black jacket. He kept nodding off, drooping lower and lower to the bag beside him, then jerking back, then lower and lower once more..

There were bits of paper everywhere. Scrap paper, torn into about A5 or A6 bits, and showered like confetti from the balconies - mostly on Wednesday, but some on New Year´s Eve as well.

And lastly, I did spend the end of New Year´s Eve in the air, but the bonuses were chatting with a friendly, portly old Argentinian who told me all about how arrogant Porteños are, among other things - and seeing the cities beneath us sparkle with fireworks. Nests of tiny golden eggs, with what seemed like giant sparklers going off all through them..