The ants went marching one by one...

Ok, so they weren't any ants and they definitely weren't one by one but I still saw some amazing marching on Saturday. The tradition for Independence Day (yet another Nicaraguan holiday) is that all school children hit the streets for desfiles which translates to parades. This isn't Macy's on Thanksgiving Day but rather hundreds of children of all ages marching like soldiers down Nicaraguan highways. Because we teach a lot of the kids, we dragged ourselves out of bed, walked 45 minutes to the spot where they were to turn, and waited.

And waited.

Gabriel, one of our advanced English students, walked back to his house to get his guitar so he could "serenade" (his word, not ours) us during the down time. While he was gone, Geoff manned Gabriel's family venta, or side store. Quite a sight to behold, a gringo trying to find his way around the space as customers pointed out what they wanted.

Forty minutes later, true to Nica time, we heard the drums and saw the flag bearers. Like proud parents, we snapped pictures and called out names. I inadvertently made one of our teenage students very popular... all his friends now think he has a gringa girlfriend.

When the students turned back toward the school, we followed pied-piper style. Shortly after that, one of the already famous Nicaraguan buses decided it didn't want to wait any longer and tried to push through the lines of children. Parents, in an uproar, used their bodies to block the bus and, so i'm told, called the police and then followed them to make sure he was incarcerated. Everyone else shook their heads and kept walking, telling us gringos to take lots of pictures to document the event.

Once we got to school, the real fun began. Evidently, the Nicaraguan equivalent of the danceline consists of high school girls shaking their tailfeathers in black stiletto boots. Their apprentices danced alongside them with what looked like pom-pons. Boys beat out the rhythm for the dancers with drums of all sizes. Both boys and girls made human pyramids to show their prowess (let me repeat: the girls had on stiletto boots!). All being said, the presentation lasted for 30 breathtaking minutes.

It started to rain, so we headed into the auditorium where each class had selected its candidate to be the queen (high school) or princess (elementary school) of the academy. Girls strutted out in traditional Nicaraguan garb and announced their names and grades... my favorites were the little ones who haltingly read their lines from cards their moms held. When the rain let up, we started the walk back home, amazed that it still was before noon.

I love this country.

Finding Balance in Nicaragua

Every Tuesday and Thursday evening the Manna girls lead exercise classes for "women" in the community ranging in age from 9 to 40. We work together to discover ways to exercise using only objects you can find in a typical Nicaraguan household (benches, towels and filled water bottles) and mix traditional aerobics with Latin dances—you know I relish any opportunity to shake my hips. The past two weeks Julie and Tessa have integrated yoga into the last half hour of class, explaining in Spanish active cats and downward dogs. Many of the women had difficulties with balance poses until Julie instructed them to imagine their feet as roots holding firm to the ground. Then, almost magically, all of the women could balance and we had thirty seconds of silence punctuated only by the sound of our breathing.

While my roots will forever be with my family in the US, I know that I now have roots in Nicaragua as well. Like the yoga positions, these past two months have been a quest in finding balance in my life, from knowing when I can help and when I've done all that I can to understanding that it's perfectly fine to choose a slice of pizza over rice and beans. The moments of balance seem all too few and far between, but they do come. In those instances I am truly traquila, letting the breeze brush past me as I listen to my own breathing.

En Paz

P.S. Many thanks to all of you who have been thinking and praying for me during Hurricane Felix. Since Managua is on the Pacific side of the country, we only received lots of rain, which has only delayed some of our programs because of roads becoming rivers… however, not all of the country fared so well. Please keep the North Atlantic region of Nicaragua (RAAN) in your thoughts as they begin to rebuild—the tallies so far have it at 4 deaths and 5,000 homes destroyed. --emd