Funny incidents in Nicaragua

• I learned how to wash clothes the first week I got here. After we rinsed one of my underwear, my host mom told me to hang it up, but I noticed that there was still soap. I knew that soap in Spanish is "jabon", but I wasn´t thinking and just said, "todavia hay sopa!" which means "there´s still soup!" So my host family made fun of me the rest of the day about having soup in my underwear.
• In class one day, Sarah asked our facilitator what "underwear" is in Spanish. The facilitator thought she was asking what the word for "diaper" is, which she told us is "pañales." After that, we all though pañales means diapers. So as I was telling the story about the soup in my underwear, I said, "Estaba lavando mis pañales" ("I was washing my diapers"). The facilitator cracked up and asked, "You wear diapers?" I still though "pañales" meant "diapers", so I replied, "Of course I wear diapers."

Other interesting stuff about Nicaragua:

• Time is only a rough estimate in Nicaragua. I f someone tells you it takes 10 minutes to walk somewhere, give yourself 30 minutes. This becomes a problem for me when I need to pee and someone tells me it only takes 20 minutes to get to the next bathroom (which will usually be cleaner). I figure I can wait 20 minutes, and I´m about to die by the time we reach the bathroom 1 hour later.
• There are so many bananas here. Well they´re not all bananas, but they´re all part of the banana family. There are the regular bananas, mini-bananas called manzanos, and plantains. We eat these raw, we eat them cooked, we eat them boiled, we eat them fried. We eat them for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack. I love bananas and potassium is good, but bananas are slowly creeping into my list of least favorite foods.
• Everything here is fried. Last night for dinner at the hotel we had fried chicken, fried rice, fried plantains, and refried beans. 
• Catcalling sometimes comes from the least expected directions. A large proportion of them come from 12 or 14-year-old boys, and once, and 11-year-old girl also blew us a kiss and said "mi amor" (my love). As we were discussing this at one of the training sessions, one girl said, "With all this fried rice and beans that I eat, I´m putting on more weight everyday, but the Nicaraguan men still think I´m sexy."
• And more on machismo: Some parents are proud when their son gets a girl pregnant when he´s 15. It proves he´s a man. And he´s even more of a man if he gets 5 girls pregnant.
• One day, Lindsey saw someone walking their chickens. One of them was on a leash, which makes sense if we think that he´s afraid his chicken will run away. But this is a country where dogs usually don´t have leashes, and the other chicken that was walking with them wasn´t on a leash. So I don´t know what that chicken did to deserve such punishment.
• In Nicaragua, when you sneeze once, people say "salud" (health). The second time, they say "dinero" (money). The third time, it´s "amor" (love). The fourth time varies. Some people say "tiempo para disfrutar" (time to enjoy), "sexo" (sex), "gripe" (cold), "enfermedad" (illness), and there are probably more. I don´t sneeze a lot, so I´ve only gotten "salud". Lindsey sneezes a lot, so everyday, she gets "salud", "dinero", and "amor".