"Put your hand in my hand baby, don't ever look back"

Today's lyrics are brought to you compliments of a bus that is a slight step above a "chicken bus" in the Nicaragua transport system.

Nicaragua is bright, colorful, sticky, and relaxed. I´ve yet to bathe (correctly figuring there was no point) and am glad for all of the baby wipes my mom packed in my bag. I was so squished on the last bus I took that at one point that I thought I was going to get sick, then a guy groped my butt several times before I realized what he was doing. All of that being said, I am grateful I didn´t take the shuttle and soaked in all of the nuances of the culture here. I mean...who knows if the shuttle would have been playing Richard Marx, Roxette, Starship, and Lionel Richie? At some of the stops vendors would squish through those of us standing in the aisle, propping goods on their heads. If you order a drink, they pull out a plastic bag with ice in it and dump the bottled drink in the bag, tie the top of it, and insert a straw. I guess it´s a bit like the concept of a Capri Sun. They looked yummy, but I´d been warned about the water and feared the ice consumption.

I gave up that fear, however, to have a pina colada after I had a really scary experience near the beach in San Juan del Sur. I ventured out with my mom's very expensive, fabulous camera around my neck, which I will not do again, and as I neared the end of the main drag a white guy started screaming at me in English and Spanish. He called me a "puta" repeatedly, which is the Spanish word for "whore" and that was just the beginning of the nastiness. He told me how he'd rape me, etc. I ignored him completely, and he finally stopped walking.

Other than him and the groper on the bus, I've met some lovely people. I chatted with a sweet Nicaraguan lady on my first bus. At a middle of nowhere sort of bus stop, I met Alberto while I waited. He was a blessing because he fought off all the taxi drivers. Alberto is an aspiring English speaker, so we had about 20 minutes to practice our respective second languages with each other. On my last leg of the journey I invited a couple to join me in my cab. Turns out the girl was recently in a new friend's wedding! Yep, the husband sat next to me at game night on Friday, and 48 hours later I'm setting next to one of the bridesmaids from his wedding in a cab in Nicaragua. It's a small world.

p.s. I'm grateful that I had so many opportunities to use my Spanish today, had some beach time, and have had much desired reading time.