The last time I wrote, I was about to start Spanish Lessons in Esteli. I wound up going with a new school, so I was the only student. It wasn't even so much a school, as much as it was an enterprising restaurant owner, a teacher, and her neighbors who housed and fed me. It was wonderful.

I started lessons last Sunday - the nice thing about it being a new school is that the owner and teacher were willing to accommodate my desire to start classes on Sunday, since by Saturday, I had exhausted all of Esteli's sightseeing options. That afternoon I moved in with my host family - a lovely extended family consisting of strong women and adorable, bright ninos.

Most days, I would wake up at about 7 and eat some combination of tropical fruit and herbal tea for breakfast. I had class each morning from 8 to 12 in Don Walter's (Don as in ''esteemed elder,'' not Mob Boss) hilltop restaurant. After class, I would go ''home'' for lunch and spend the rest of the day either on some sort of excursion, or just hanging around with the large extended family in the compound where I was staying.

The family is headed by Gloria, a sixty-five-year-old woman with 8 grown children. Two of her daughters lived in the house (a sort of ''compound'' of rooms around a courtyard) with their children, and there were several other sons and daughters and cousins and aunts living on the same street. So obviously, it was a very family-oriented atmosphere, and they really made me feel like part of the family - albeit, a family member that paid for her room and meals and wasn't allowed to help around the house...

The day I moved in was the annual day of remembering those family members who have passed away, so I trooped off to the cemetery with the family and the rest of Esteli. We wound our way through the jam-packed cemetery, visiting at least 20 graves. My guide was Freydel, Gloria's 11-year-old granddaughter who is staying in Esteli with her family while her mother works in Costa Rica, an apparently very common set-up. There are jobs in Costa Rica, and very few in Nicaragua. Freydel held my hand the entire evening and taught me every Spanish word pertaining to death or cemeteries. Freydel's 14 year-old sister is also staying in Esteli, and the two are unbelievably close (maybe because they share a twin bed). No bickering or anything.

My host ''mother'' in Esteli was not Gloria Sr, but her daughter Zoyla, who lives in the compound with her two extremely lovable children, Carmen (2 years old) and Jose (4). It's odd to call her my host mother because she is actually only 4 years older than me. Even though our lives are about as different as they can be, and there was a wide linguistic gulf, I had a lot of fun hanging out with Zoyla in the evenings.

Because my school was so new, there wasn't really an established program of activities like there is at most language schools in Central America. I was worried that I wouldn't learn much about Nicaraguan culture or history, but that turned out to be a foolish concern. My week's stay in Esteli was punctuated by bits of life, death and war: all the biggies.

My second day there, my Spanish teacher, Marlene, brought me to a service remembering her father, who had died a year before. This is a common custom in Nicaragua. It was a very interesting service (or at least, what I could pick up), led by a priest from the Liberation Theology school of Catholic practice.

At the service, I met Marlene's very pregnant daughter, who is due to give birth any day. And my last day in Esteli was spent with Jose, watching their cat give birth to five gatitos.

And as for war, Esteli has long been a bastion of Sandinista support and a hot spot for both the revolution and the following contra (counter-revolutionary) war. The city is full of momentos of that time: murals and museums, and people who lost brothers or sisters in these wars. Every person I met had been deeply touched by these political convulsions. The director of my school's family had been wealthy landowners before their land was confiscated by the Sandinista. My teacher lost two brothers who fought for the revolution, and herself spent two years working on a successful rural literacy campaign (to this day, Nicaragua - the second-poorest country in this hemisphere - has a literacy rate comparable to that of most industrialized nations). And the family I stayed with had numerous cousins and brothers who had fought with either the Sandinistas or the Contras.

All in all, it was a fun and extraordinarily educational week. I was really, really sad to leave the family, but I left with my journal full of addresses.

Now I'm in Leon, a very vibrant colonial university town. I'll spend a few days here before heading to southern Nicaragua.

When I get to Granada later this week, I'm going to develop my film and hopefully then I'll be able to post some pictures.

If you're interested in studying Spanish in Nicaragua, I would definitely recommend this school. It's at the Centro Cultural Jovenes, a restaurant two blocks west of the northwestern corner of the Parque Central. I paid $135 for 20 hours of one-on-one classes, with six days' homestay and meals.