What is quite interesting here are the little stores that people have in their houses. There are the pulperias (like kiosks) but then there are also the private people selling some groceries or meals from their living rooms. Some people simply put up a grill and a stand next to their houses on the street and sell meals that they prepare outside. Sometimes it is difficult to make out if it is a plce where you can buy something or not because people here have a tendency of having their doors open and a couple of people sitting outside on the street watching TV so it looks like you could just walk in. I know that very close to where I live there is a place that sells some very nicely cooked local food but I haven’t dared to try and find the house out of fear of walking into the wrong one…

The other day I went to the municipal market in Granada. I had bugged my Nice-housemate about this for a couple of weeks and finally we found a suitable day. At the market there are mainly fruits, vegetables, movies, music and clothes at very low prices. In size and selection it did not come close to the municipal market in Masaya but it was still impressive. Since I went together with my Nica-housemate the vendors did not totally rip me off. I bought some tomatoes, some cucumber, oranges and pithaya (a purple funny looking fruit that is used a lot to make juices here and turns your tongue purple). The fruits and vegetables sold at the market are obviously from the surrounding areas and it was interesting to experience the difference in taste and texture from the foods that you buy in the supermarket. The oranges I bought at the market had an unusual high amount of seeds and suddenly I realized that the oranges I´ve been buying my whole life most propably are manipulated (Im a supermarket girl that has plucked on or two apples from a tree in my days but that is more or less it for my experiences with fruits directly from nature).
Just like the market in Masaya, the market in Grananda was messy and a bit dirty, so when I bought my last fruits I was looking forward to leave the market and continue to our next stop, a French/German bakery in a hidden away alley next to the market, to buy some sourdough bread. Yummy! But my housemate had other plans. She said that she needed to eat something. We dove into the middle of the market where there were a lot of  people selling the typical meals such as Nacatamal, Vigoron and Gallo Pinto, only to mention a few things (another time I will go into the typical food of Nicaragua). We sat down outside of a little hole in the wall (literally) with a stove. They had put a table and a bench i the narrow hall way. I looked skeptically at the place… this was not a place where I would ever chose to go if I would have been alone but I trusted my housemates judgment. There was already a man sitting there and we sat down next to him. We ordered Gallo Pinto (fried beans and rice) with fried cheese, tortilla and scrambled eggs; absolutely delicious and more than filling. We sat for a while just relaxing before we paid (30 cordobas each, about 1 euro).

After this I went to work with two bags full of nice, fresh foods and a full stomach.

Last night was one of the first nights where I actually slept well. It has been difficult for me to get used to all the sounds here. Firstly, it seems like our area is overcrowded with stray dogs because they don’t seem to belong to anyone and they keep on barking during the nights. Then there are the cats that are running on our tin-roof making sounds like a grown person is running back and forth on the roof. First night I got really scared until my housemate told me that it was just cats running between the roofs of the houses. The fact that we have a tin-roof does not help when it rains either, it gets almost impossible to watch TV and if someone calls you don’t even have to bother to pick up the phone, you won’t hear a thing anyways. Going to sleep while it rains is not an easy task but believe it or not, I have gotten used to it and I am a terribly light sleeper. Maybe it is not that strange that I have gotten used to the sounds afterall, I have been here for a month now, as my housemate reminded me of the other day. In addition to the other sounds in the night there is the occasional 4-o´clock-in-the-morning out-break of music at the neighbours place. The first time it happened I woke up and I got really annoyed. Then I heard it was really nice Bachata music so I turned around and fell asleep again. The first week I could not for my life see how I would get used to it, now it is the sounds of being home.

This morning, before I left home, I ran into our cleaning lady (yes, the living standards may be low but the ones who can afford it have someone cleaning their homes and wash their clothes). She is a fragile-looking beautiful old Doña (you use this title together with the first name when you want to show respect) and I always feel bad that she “has” to clean our house. But she says that she loves coming to our house to clean and have some nice conversations, and of course for her it is an income.

At the moment, it is rain/low season here (goes from July-November approximately) which means that it is almost always cloudy, humid and around 30 degrees Celsius. The only thing that can get to you sometimes is the humidity but it is not an unpleasant climate. This morning when I was on my way to work, the sun was shining and I could see the Mombacho volcano rising up behind the city. It was beautiful and it became more striking since in reality the volcano is always there, just that I don’t see it because of all the clouds.

The past weeks I have been busy putting together a training program for the kitchen and restaurant staff in the hotel. Next week the hotel will be closing for 4 days of maintenance (the first session of maintenance, we have another maintenance at the end of September). At the end of next week I will have to instruct the staff in hotel standards of the Western world… in Spanish. I have to admit that I am a little bit nervous. I am not too fond of speaking in front of people and definitely not in a language I do not master.

But I´m sure it will turn out fine…