A Few Observations...

It's been a little bit of a slow week. After all of the birthday parties we had the last month, we're in a dry spell. The excitement of the grill has also worn off, and I've already consumed most of the contents of the care packages from yesterday in the last 24 hours (I miss processed food!). Finally, everyone in the house seems to be sick with something (I think I have a cold), so we haven't been too exciting lately. However, there were a few random observations today that I thought were worth sharing, so I figured I'd do a quick post.

Observation 1: Exceeding Vehicular Capacity

I've noticed for some time now that Nicaraguans have a tendency to cram a lot more people into/onto typical modes of transportation that seems like a good idea. If you recall, way back during my first week here, we fit 7 people into some sort of Geo Metro-esque cab and could barely make it over speed bumps. I have since seen many other similarly packed cabs, so apparently that's the norm here.

I've also done my fair share of riding in the middle 'seat' in the front of trucks, which really isn't a seat at all. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that everything is stick shift here, so you have to awkwardly keep your legs out of the way of the drivers so they can shift gears.

However, the example that gets me every time is the number of people they will cram onto bikes and motorcycles here. I'll give you a hint, it's more than one. I've definitely seen my fair share of triple riders, but today I saw something unbelievable. An entire family that lives on my street rode on the motorcycle to school. One kid in the front, then the Dad, then two more kids, and then the Mom. They were completely squished, and I couldn't believe my eyes.

Observation 2: Depressing News

In the States, a lot of people (including myself) complain that the news is either too fluffy, too depressing, too slanted, or some combination of the three. While I don't have a great read on the Nicaraguan news media yet, I did realize, while watching a few stories at lunch today, that it seems to be a lot more depressing/graphic than ours. They had a couple different reports of people being hit by buses (eek!) or getting in car accidents, and the shots that they used to cover them were of the bodies. I was shocked! The people were, thankfully, covered with some cloth or tarp, but they spent several minutes at a time filming them, and you could even see their feet hanging out and blood on the pavement. I'm glad they do a better job respecting victims' privacy back home...and probably will face away from the TV at lunch from now on!

Sorry to end on a bit of a downer there. More fun posts to come though - tomorrow I am spending another day at the school near my house. I will even get to eat lunch there, which seems fitting since I've been working on the meal program for so long. I also have some travel plans for the weekend which I'm excited about...so stay tuned.