el arte no es un conjunto de reglas, sino una armonia de caprichos.

capricho: idea o propósito que uno se forma sin razón aparente. 
I am now a resident of Granada, Nicaragua. I paid rent and moved into a lovely room yesterday, and then slept like a piedra. Capricho, caprice, the whims of the world, have come together in harmony to find me again wandering the colorful streets of [...]

leaving gigante. wandering.

I left little Giant Beach, all my things condensed once more into my backpack.
I am now the ‘content editor’ (a title I bequeathed upon myself) of Between the Waves magazine, Nicaragua’s best (well, only) English-language magazine, as well as a contributor for the Nicaraguan Post. This may seem a bit abrupt, and indeed it feels that way. My life has accelerated exponentially [...]

hello to you, my first freelance article

How are you? Swell, thanks.
And today $25 arrived in my bank account. I hope this will be a moment I remember for many years to come. As in, I remember my first paid article, said in a nostalgic tone while accepting the Pulitzer (ha). Or perhaps, hopefully, I remember when I got paid [...]

river day: a field trip

Where’s the ball? my students scream to me (in Spanish, oh well.)
Oh no! Where’d it go? I respond, mock shock and concern.
The current took it down the river, says Leana with a giggle, thinking that I couldn’t see that she was actually sitting on the ball, floating with it between her legs. 
I took off [...]

happy birthday, nica (independence day): parte dos

Happy birthday, Nicaragua, round two. September 15, 1821, ganó su libertad desde España.
And in 1979, the Sandanistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in the name of Nicaraguan sovereignty. In the name of f— you, United States, we don’t need your imperialism breathing down our neck, we are independently independent, Nicaragua (with lots of dependence on the [...]

happy birthday, nica (independence day)

These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
That’s dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don’t cry baby don’t cry
Don’t cry
-p.simon

lets shoot there son

In one of those random acts of the world converging, today my tutor from my online TEFL certification class sent me the link to a particularly interesting article. It’s almost a direct response to what I was musing about yesterday: spelling. 
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=403092&c=1
If you’re interested. In my very unique and isolated situation here in Nicaragua I quite [...]

lost in translation

I love translation’s mishaps and misnomers. Not only are they funny, but they illuminate things that we take for granted in our own language, demonstrate with clarity the black holes within and between languages that make translation such a tricky task.

A sign in San Juan del Sur tells tourists that a restaurant offers natural juices [...]

teenagers in gigante

It’s been sunny for a whole four days now. It did pour noisily this morning and actually, a lot of the night, but I was sleeping so it no count. 
On Sunday, I took advantage of the cloud-less sky to take a hike to Colorado, the beach one over from Gigante, and go for a [...]

a crab bit me today

I was fording a river leading to the ocean on my run this morning. As is now standard operating procedure, in the rainy season, I encountered this river, took off my shoes and socks, and wadded in. To my shock and pain, down in the murkey water below, a crab’s claw clamped onto my big toe. Hard [...]