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Having taken a shuttle from Managua after my orthodontist appointment, I arrived in yet another old colonial town, Granada.
I decided on the advice of another traveller to check into Oasis hostel. At $9/night, I could certainly have found cheaper places, but I wanted to get well-rested over the weekend before starting Spanish school on Monday so decided to stay here as it was relaxed and quiet.
The following day I spent the morning strolling around the town, getting my bearings and taking in the well-preserved colonial architecture. I paid $1 to go up to the belltower of a churh and took in some great views of the town and Volcan Mombacho in the background. I then headed for the main square where I saw all sorts of arts and craft stalls.
Granada is a town situated on Lake Nicaragua, the largest freshwater lake in Central America and the third largest in Latin America. In the afternoon I booked onto a boat tour of the islands that were formed after a particularly violent eruption of Mombacho. The guide talked us through some of the owners of the islands and how much we'd have to save up to buy one (not much more than a s***ty one bed flat in London!). We saw all kinds of amazing birds, including an eagle. It looked small from a distance, perched on an outcrop of rock, but then it took flight and it was clear just how huge this bird was - it must have had a 6ft wingspan at least. We stopped at one island where the guide managed to entice one of the monkeys with fruit. Next we took a short stroll on another island to see and hear a howler monkey, unfortunately this stop was cut short as we were chased off the island by a particularly territorial bull. Finally, we stopped on an island inhabited by a Nicaraguan family. Here, a young boy, no more than about 11 climbed up a coconut tree with consumate easy and plucked fresh coconuts for us to drink out of.
I'd made a couple of friends on the trip, a British girl called Kelly, her French boyfriend Dorian and a trio of Dutch girls who were volunteering in Nica. That evening we all met at a sushi place which had a 2-1 offer. I had sixteen pieces of amazing sushi and six (pretty strong) cuba libres for just under $20. Amazing. We also bumped into a couple of American girls and a Dutch guy whom I had met in Leon, so the 9 of us went to a bar and onto a club afterwards for a great night to cap off a good day.
Sunday was all about recovery. With a somewhat sore head I organisdd myself and got ready for school the next day.
The week of Spanish was intense. Four and a half hours a day, pretty much non-stop was hard work. The teacher spoke no English, so everything he explained to me was in Spanish. I realise now the importance of immersion. Just one lesson in and I had almost completely stopped translating things in my head - I was understanding things as they were said in Spanish. I left the lesson tired but really happy.
The director of the school took me to meet my family. She explained that it was in fact an older couple who had grown up children in the US and one grown up child living up the road. There were also a couple of older German students staying at the house too. I was introduced to the mother, Fatima, who is a really lovely, rotund lady. Her husband Humberto is a lawyer, but unfortunately I saw him only once as he was working too hard. By far my favourite person in the house was their two-year old granddaughter, Alexa, who is ridiculously cute. She would visit every day while her parents were at work. We played hide and seek a few times and I'd try and wind her up by trying to steal the mango she ate every day. The homestay setup wasn't quite what I was expecting. I had pictured sitting at the table for meals, with mum, dad and kids 1-4, trying time-and-again (and probably failing) to have conversations in Spanish about a wide range of topics, but in reality there was a mealtime for the students and a mealtime for Fatima and Humberto. The German students just spoke in English so really the homestay wasn't any good in terms of practice (though the food was great!).
My spoken Spanish was coming along nicely. The sheer volume of conversation in the classes meant that I wasn't thinking much about conjugating verbs and could switch between tenses with ease (as long as I was using verbs I was relatively familiar with). This was another big step, as previously, I'd have to have paused between sentences, not only to conjugate the verbs, but to translate from English, which meant I inevitably sounded very special. Not anymore!
On night two after class, I went to the square to listen to some poems from around the world (there was an International Poetry Festival going on in Granada). I bumped into a few people I had met in Leon. We went for a quick drink and they told me of their plans to head to San Juan del Sur, where a music festival was going on. I had been debating whether to do another week of Spanish, but the lack of practice from the homestay had put me off so I decided to save that money for classes elsewhere and head to San Juan instead. After a week of studying hard, early nights and very little else, it was time to get back on the backpacker trail.....
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