Leon, Nicaragua

Long time since I've blogged. Equally long time since I have traveled like this. As I started writing this, I realized that I am in a bright yellow hotel room, exactly the color of the hotel room that I used to stay at in La Esperanza. I can't decide if that makes me feel more at home or not. Here's how it's gone so far:

The good: 

- Ellie (my chief resident) got me in contact with one of her friends who still lives here. She was wonderful enough to get coffee with me, walk the city a little, summarize the last 100 years of Nicaraguan history for me, and let me play with her baby. So that was pretty great. 

- my taxi driver from the airport was perfectly on time and I successfully had a meaningful conversation with him in Spanish on the 2 hour drive from Managua to Leon.

- this city is so walk-able.

- I found the ATMs and bought a local phone. 

- viber works well, so I can have long conversations with far away people with that app. 

- my hotel room is perfect. 

- people seem nice. 

The mild to moderately inconvenient:

- american airlines gave me a pretty annoying 12 hour journey from Austin to Managua. Such jerks. But I guess it could have been better if I hadn't chosen a flight with two layovers. That was my fault. 

- My Spanish is variably good enough depending on the topic of conversation is. I went to the hospital today to meet people and get things set up. It's like starting wards in medical school - a whole new language - except in a language that I understand 85% of at baseline. When I started on the wards in medical school, I had to ask what things meant all the time, except people were speaking English. We just use a lot of short hand and jargon in medicine. Now it's Spanish and I can't decide if I people are saying weird hospital-isms or if my Spanish just isn't good enough. I repeat back everything people say six times just to make sure I understand. It's important things, like their expectations of me and where I'm supposed to be on Monday. 

- I've forgotten how to be a good traveler: do you take the passport and leave the copy or take the copy and leave the passport? I think the former. Can I flush the toilet paper? probably not…? No using the air conditioner during the day. 

- missing 4th of july at home/ the best fireworks ever by one day. 

Over all, Ellie's friend made me really excited about the city, and I'm pretty sure my Spanish is going to be awesome by the time I'm done here. This is going to be great.