Vince dot com

Another week gone by, another post of Nicaraguan fun.

• In spanish class, I translated 'ganar' (to win) in the conditional tense, and when I said it out loud, I immediately started laughing and awkwardly tried to explain why to my teacher. I'm not giving it away here, you'll have to conjugate it for yourself.

• I woke up again to the squealing of a pig. Right across my bedroom wall, the neighbors slaughter a pig every Wednesday at 4:00 am. It is neither quiet nor quick. I finally learned how they do it; (PETA supports would be advised not to continue) when it is sleeping, they hit it in the head with the back of an axe, and repeat until it is dead. I'm not ordering pork from the neighbors, lest their business improves and they have to start slaughtering twice a week at 4:00 am.

• The local kids that play outside my house learned a few english words (not from me...) So on occasion, when there is enough of them that their confidence is high, they yell out a "F*** you man!" They don't mean to be offensive, they just think it's funny. I asked where they learned it, and the name they gave me was surprising, I won't say which American it was.

• A "Chicken Bus" is a yellow school bus used for transportation between cities, and is the cheapest and least comfortable mode of transportation through the country. Most of the buses are sold by school districts in the U.S. and make their way through Mexico to Nicaragua, and some of them still have identifiable english markings - either the name of a school, or english signs taped up on the inside of the bus. They are called chicken buses because people pack on like... chickens. About when you think the bus is full of people, they will let ten more on; and to your surprise they all fit. Once those ten are in you're ready to go, but five more jump on last minute, some still hanging out the back door trying to shove their way in while the bus is moving. But then the bus stops moving, because a old lady and her five year old want on. "No way in hell" you think, but they make it, along with their 3 foot basket full of mangoes.
  

• We went on an installation trip to repair a solar/wind system by the pacific coast. The house was owned by a Californian who first came here to surf, but then decided to stay here and start an eco-friendly real estate business. It was pretty interesting, he had a solar hot water system, wind turbine, solar panels, and was completely cut off from the electricity grid cell phone network. He somehow still had internet though... We also killed a whole family of scorpions.
  

• American shirts, or shirts with english writing, are common here. I've seen several of them with mistakes or typos; I believe lots of companies, when they make an oopsie, just dump the defective product down here. Here are some examples:
  

• White letters on black: "I'm busy, your an idiot, come back later" watch those contractions... (also possible that this typo was intentional)

• "Patriots 19-0" I didn't see this one personally, I was told about it. Apparently a presumptuous T-shirt company decided to jump the gun on the super bowl shirts, and after the Patriots' upset decided to dump them to Central America.

There's your Nicaragua for the week, buen provecho. Two weeks and two TWIs left!

Siempre Tranquilo,
Vicente