I´m in Nicaragua! Unbelievable.

Right now, I´m in Esteli, a small but bustling town in the mountains,
two hours north of Managua.

I arrived in Managua two days ago, after a looong day of traveling.
My flight from Boston left at 7 in the morning, so I had to be there at 5 - ugh. My first flight,
from Boston to San Salvador, was just awful. For some reason, every time we hit some clouds, it was like we were a tiny little 6-seater prop plane hitting a hurricane. Remember that scene in Almost Famous where the plane
almost crashes in a lightning storm? It was like that.

Then I had 7 hours in the San Salvador airport, which is just a
creepy place. It´s a very nice, modern international aiport - on the small side, but very clean and comfortable. However, it was completely empty. It was basically me, some business travelers, and the bored shopgirls.

I flew into Mangua at 8 and took a taxi to the Hospedaje Santos,
which had been recommended to me. What a strange place ' a bunch of $3 rooms arranged around a cavernous, ramshackle courtyard. It´s as if it were designed bysomeone on hallucinogenics.
But it has character, and at $3, who´s complaining?

I'm here in Esteli to study Spanish. I came because Esteli had a reputation for the best schools and leftist politics (it is the capital of one of the two departments that voted for the Sandanistas last election cycle). I'll be studying with one of te newer schools - hopefully it will work out. I really liked the owner - he initially turned me off by sneering at the Sandanistas, but won me back by going on an anti-Bush tirade. I'm easy to please, really.

Each entry henceforth will have feature the stupidest thing I said in Spanish that day. Today's winner: ''Donde es el machino con el dineiro?'' (My garbled attempt at asking if there was an ATM machine. By the way there was, but it was way outside town, and when I got there it was broken!

Hey, leave some comments, so I'll know I'm writing this for someone!