The Day of Transit

Day 1 June 21st
It was a long day. I was on the first flight that left LAX at 7:40 so I decided to get to the airport super early so I could sleep at the airport. I figured I would get more sleep that way. It was pretty effective except for the fact that I was woken up at 5:30 by someone who thought I was going to miss my flight.
We had a long layover in Houston but the time was well spent getting to know the other students on the trip. I hung out with this guy Max, his sister Terra and this girl Kirsten. A guy named Josh wanted to eat crazy food so after we all had gone to Ruby’s he ordered up some fried alligator and a bunch of people tried it, though I missed the chance to get a bite.
When we got to Nicaragua the first impression was that it was hot. Which was a small surprise because we arrived at night and I was thinking it would be cooler.
The second realization that I came to was that there was a great chiasm dividing the economic prosperity of Nicaragua and the US. The airport was clean but looked very old by my standards. Also when we got out of the baggage claim area and were walking toward the bus there were children begging. Also while I was going to the restroom there were two women in that gave me the impression they were prostitutes.
We got on a very nice and modern bus and meet our tour guide Roberto. Roberto was very interesting. He had studied Engineering in Bulgaria and now was a tour guide part of the time and an Engineer part of the time. I got the impression that he made more money being a tour guide than he did as an engineer. Roberto explained how the evening would progress, with an hour long bus ride from Managua (were we landed) to Granada where we would be staying. He also explained that we would eat dinner and the choices would be limited and for breakfast the next day that the food choices would be limited but reassured us that going forward we would have a lot of choices that the first two meals where limited to help things go quicker. Roberto also explained that we should not give money to people begging that if we wanted to give them something we should only give them food.
I was impressed by the colonial architecture of Granada. Sometimes I get the impression the whole world is trying to look like the US it was nice to see buildings that were designed different. Our hotel had everything I imagined; the exterior had a colonial Spanish look then when you walked through the doors you entered an open plaza with a fountain and palm trees.
I found it interesting that our first meal in Nicaragua was a hamburger. I was a little disappointed especially since I had a hamburger for lunch at Ruby’s. Though I guess it the concept was to get us acclimated slowly to being in a new country. The hamburger patty was really small and it had a lot of vegetables (tomatoes, onions, pickles). We also tried a bunch of local beers. I decided Toña would be my beer of choice it was the least bitter.
Right away I discovered the importance of the phrase “Donde esta el bano?”. Also it was very exciting to be able to put my limited Spanish skills in to practice helping the students with no knowledge of Spanish. One of the guys didn’t even know that cerveza was the word for beer. It seemed like the first night the important Spanish phrases where “Cerveza, por favor” and “Cuanto questa?”