Well its been a while since my last blog entry. Last I wrote I was still recuperating from our volcano hike! Since then we have started our spanish language course and visted more of the country. Our spanish classes have been five hours a day... which is exhausting but necessary. Today we had our first actual class at the university, photography. Our teacher Margarita Montealegre was the first female professional photographer in Nicaragua. She covered everything from weddings, to the revolution, and important political events. She began our course by explaining her background and aksing us what we like about photography. We were all floored at the crazy, and usually scary things that she has witnessed and documented here. For instance - during the revolution, anyone suspected of opposing Samosa would disapear, be torutured and murdered, and eventually their body might turn up. Margarita would go the morgues downtown and photograph the countless unidentified bodies so that families could claim thier loved ones. I cannot wait to learn more from her, she is truly an inspirational teacher.

Tomorrow we will have our three courses in spanish... I'm a little nervous for this since people speak very quickly here and I'm still not entirely confident with my skills. I'm sure it will be ok though, I've gotten by pretty well so far!

This past weekend we were invited by Milton Guillermo, our host-brother to "La Finca". We were doing laundry Saturday and I think he probably felt bad that we didn't have much to do. Either way, he was so nice to invite us! La Finca means the plot of land. Our host family owns a huge coffee plantation. Its about twenty minutes outside of Managua, yet it feels like a whole other world. We pulled onto a long dirt road and finally turned off into an entrance way. Once inside the gates, we were stunned by the surroundings. There were ENORMOUS old trees whose trunks twisted hundreds of feet into the air, finally forming a canopy over us. Underneath all of these beautiful tropical trees were thousands of coffee plants. They are a dark green color and about 6 or 7 feet tall. Each one was lined up perfectly to complete the linear pattern that stretched across the acres of land. It wasn't until later that we realized we hadn't even seen the best of it yet! We drove another ten minutes through the fields until we arrived at a lookout point. We could see the majority of Managua, Lake Managua, the Volcano Momotombo, and other plantations surrounding us. There was another huge old tree in the center of this cleared lookout with a small picnic table underneath it. We sat there and watched the sunset, and I could not help but think it was one of the most beautiful places I have ever been in my life. While the sun was still setting we all took turns on the quad riding through the fields. Milton Guillermo's friend came along and met us at La Finca. His name is Wolfgang, and he is a huge half german, half nicaraguan 25yr old. Wolfgang, or Wolf as we quickly began to call him, spoke english very well. He offered to take Kristina first on the quad since she felt comfortable talking with him, and really can't understand Milton Guillermo (who speaks very little english). When they got back Guillermo and I took our turn. He explained all about the boundaries of the land, how the coffee is grown and harvested, and how long his family has owned the land. I was amazed. Also coffee trees aparently produce a very clean form of oxygen, so the air riding through the plantation was so refreshing and cool. Needless to say I had a blast. He let me drive for a little while, but I almost threw him off the back at one point... luckily he just laughed it off! We took turns riding throught the rest of the evening and sat at the picnic table under the stars having a few beers and a very funny spanglish conversation.

Sunday we were supposed to go to the laguna, but Wolf had somewhere to be and had to cancel. So instead, Guillermo offered to show us around Managua. He drove us to all the historical sites and explained a lot about each of them. I am slowly getting better at understanding him, and I was pretty proud of how well I did that day.

Later on we met up with Tanya, one of our intercambios for ice cream.