You know you’re living in Nicaragua when…

Apologies for the long gap between blog posts!  Heavy workload & poor internet connection are unconducive to blogging! To make up for it – this is an amusing stream-of-consciousness (i.e. un-organised) selection of things which have occurred to me or happened to me since living here – I’ve ended on a positive note, in case it was too damning, and I promise to make the ‘highlights’ list in another blog post! 

1. It becomes normal for someone to give their address as: “from the building that used to belong to the TV company, go two blocks towards the lake, then half a block south and it’s 25 ‘varas’ down on the left” (a ‘vara’ being a unit measuring 84 cm… obviously…) 
2. You are left strangely unsatisfied by any breakfast that doesn’t include rice (and probably beans)  
3. When it becomes normal to mix metric, imperial and Nicaraguan measurements in one document or budget! – hectares, inches, pounds, kilos, quintal, the famous ‘vara’…   
4. When you no longer trust the answers you get to questions – as for some unknown cultural reason people invent answers rather than simply saying “I don’t know” (resulting for instance in walking several kilometres to the north, when you wanted to be heading south…)   
5. When your Spanish changes so unrecognisably that you start calling everyone ‘usted’ apart from close friends who you call ‘vos’ (vos sos nica), it’s normal to be called Doña Raquel, anything cool is ‘tuani’ and you finish conversations saying ‘va pues’.   
6. When you suggest the kids at school could eat more fruit, so they buy pineapples –  but then cut them up and boil them with sugar, put the jam inside pastry, and deep fry this, before coating it with sugar – and giving it to the kids for their morning snack – nutritious! 
7. When a cup of coffee contains a minimal quantity of coffee, a large amount of water and about 6 teaspoons of sugar – mmmmm
8.  When it becomes a special treat to get to stay in a hostel which has real internet, 24 hours of electricity per day, hot running water and offers meals with meat and vegetables. If there is a laundry service – double the excitement!  
9. When driving you think nothing of overtaking on blind curves, swerving violently to avoid giant potholes, beeping at everyone else on the road, emergency breaking to evade cows and the headlights / fuel gauge / electric windows / radio don’t work.
10. When a 2 hour journey to travel 60km seems acceptable, or even quite fast
11. When you throw the toilet paper into the bin automatically, and feel guilty if you flush it!
12. When washing is a toss up between showering in a trickle of ice cold water… or just waiting til the weekend in a hostel! 
13. When it’s only mildly surprisingly that 3 of the boys at school have children…   And extremely surprising that none of the girls do!  
14. When a kid comes up and says ‘teacher – show me how to use the computer!’ and you say, ‘OK, do you know how to read?’, kid: ‘no’, me: ‘well that would be an important first step…’ (not one at our school I hasten to add!) 
15. Re point 15 – when it becomes normal to check with people if they can read and write, before asking them to do something like write you a list!
16. When you do a standard nightly under-the-bed check for scorpions, spiders and snakes, and occasionally find one!
17. When ‘tight and bright’ is not so much of a fancy dress theme for people, as an everyday dress code (plus wellies if you’re on the farm) 
18. When if the power stays on past 9pm you think ‘ooh, extra electricity tonight!’
19. When the choice of beer is Vitoria or Toña – and you never vary from your favourite!
20.  When you have a beautiful 10 minute walk to work in the morning through pristine cloud forest and you might just see a humming-bird or a sloth while you listen to the howler monkeys in the distance and smell the blossom of the coffee bushes