tanyita comes to visit!

well, it has been a little over a week since i last wrote and it was a whirlwind week that went by. the next day i found out my good friend tanya from college was going to come visit me. her dad used to work for american airlines, so she gets an obscenely good deal on travel anywhere in the world. so she actually listened when i told her she should come and see me. of course, flying standby can have its drawbacks, and sometimes you just get unlucky. tanya was supposed to arrive on wednesday night but she missed her flight from miami by literally a minute. so thursday on my lunchbreak i went to pick her up and bring her back to my office where she hung out until my swedish friends came to pick her up and babysit by taking her to get her nails done (they're good at that). we went out thursday night, always a joy to show people what nica is like because it is so different from anything they have seen, usually. its always interesting to gauge people's reaction to the things that have now become part of my everyday consciousness. and what a relief to have some intellectual stimulation from time to time. it happened when rebecca was here as well. i would be talking to these incredibly intelligent girls, some of my best friends, thinking, i have not had these kinds of conversations in such a looooong time. at one point, i was talking to tanya about something and helena's boyfriends just stared at us, eventually telling us, i can tell you aren't from here-- girls from here don't talk like that. and its true, they don't. its not like they are unintelligent or anything, i just don't get to the same conversations that ii do with the people i surrounded myself with back home. which is really why i love having my friends come see me. we can talk objectively, (well that is kind of subjective since my objectivity is totally different from the objectivity here.... maybe i just mean we can talk coming from a more similar background/point of view) about the way life works down here, about politics and economics and the injustices that, i don't take for granted, but that i have become increasingly accustomed to. its always interesting to watch people on the ride home from the airport, passing through some sketchy bits of managua before climbing the hill to the gorgeous house where i am living. some people don't know what to make of the little kids begging in the street; other people have seen it before so it doesn't really affect them.

in any event, i got a lot of good talking in with tanya, and i got updates on her life and recent travels. we talked about ortega, death, fear of flying, superstition, how much we miss mexican food, how crazy it is that is has almost been a year since we graduated, how happy we are when people come to see us (she up and moved to manhattan the day before i came here, so we have sort of been in the same boat), what it means to live a still subsidized life, on whatever level that might be, about getting around and learning about where you live for the first time and contemplating how long it will take you to get to know it, and how amazing it is when you do. there were moments when i was taking us around and i would just tell her, i can't believe i know where i'm going. i mean, obviously i do, i've been here a while, but i keep encountering people who are impressed with the fact that i drive here, or some other thing that is so easy and generally a given-- honestly how would i survive if i didn't drive here? i would literally go insane. i almost did. but it is kind of neat to think about it every now and then, how much has become just part of my routine and the way i do things. i like it.

now that tanya left i have had my time back. which is great since i get to do stuff (like this) or talk to people on the phone, or just hang out and read. i haven't been doing near enough of that. but i miss knowing that i had someone to take around, i really thrive on taking people around and showing them / my home off. tanya was a good person to have come too, because she is the type of person who will be very straight with me, not beat around the bush or anything, and she told me she thought it was really cool what i was doing, that i have a life down here, and that i'm kind of a real person despite the fact that i am still sort of dodging the real world. i'm starting to think maybe thats not what i'm doing, but i'm trying on another world for size or something. because in some respects its a lot more "real" here, if you take into account the extreme poverty and injustice of this country. but even that is basically just outside my car window for the most part-- i don't get much closer than that. which has made me start thinking that i should do some kind of volunteer work while i am here. i am going to talk to the swedish girls about maybe going to the orphanage they work at to see about going in a couple hours a week. i should, i really have no excuse.

more later...