Jim is enjoying breakfast at a cafe on the beach in Samara, Costa Rica.

Lake Nicaragua and Concepcion.



Hello all, Molly asked me if my Spanish was much better after a week in Language school. Perhaps a few stories will illustrate. Of course, a week of school is not much although intensive, it is only 20 hours of actually class time divided into grammar lessons, conversations and lectures and writing. The day I left San Juan del Sur, after my language school, it was raining hard so my negotiating skills were lost on the taxi drivers as I stood knee deep in mud with a 50 pound back pack strapped on. I finally agreed to a price and was on my way to Ometepe to meet with Jim. This was a 4 bus/taxi and one ferry ride experience and I had to either negotiate the price or figure out which bus and how much and I found that this I could do just fine. As long as I know what we are talking about then I am ok and can understand and respond. Now, the fact that the drivers all either hugged me or patted my back(Jim says, very unusual) may mean that they thought I was adorable or perhaps, they couldn’t imagine how I was going to survive. I don’t know!




On a day trip a couple of days ago to a geothermal underground site, we were met at a hastily set up gate and charged 4 times the price as the Nicas. I hotly protested, calling discrimination and saying it was a stupid rule and when the ticket taker put her finger in my face, I clearly made her back away which shows that now I can cause trouble in two languages. This area, like a lot of Leon has beggars, mostly kids, and when begged I told them the woman at the gate took all our money and we had no money for them. Hopefully, they were able to give her a hard time. Jim and I, in Leon( as Ometepe has no beggars) commonly will give a peso or two to street kids or old or disabled people but the rest of that day, we explained that we were robbed by the woman at the gate in San Jacinto. As Jim says, that woman had no idea what she had unleashed!!

I have been more confidant and that is really what a week of school did more than anything. I am simply talking more. I know my pronunciation is bad but I have to talk to get it worked on and I am doing that now.




We have had some experiences of people being astounded to find out we were from the states and that is a good thing! I always know the Americans. They are the incredibly loud, rude and lacking common sense ones. Not many of them here fortunately but they stand out! We are in Esterli right now for a couple of days, further north and no bugs. I see that our hotel room comes with a blanket!!!!!!

We’ll head back to Leon and then on Tuesday to Costa Rica for a couple of days and then home on Thursday. We are deciding that we don’t want to live in Nicaragua and that we
may be too old for this kind of traveling( I can almost hear my mother’s comments here!!) It is a lot of work!

Love to you all, whatever you are doing with yourselves.
Rory/ Mom

Dear Family,
I am getting ready to leave San Juan tomorrow morning. I will find a colectivo taxi (30 codobars) and head to San Jorge and take the ferry (35 codobars) to Ometepe and then the bus(???) to Altragracia where Jim and his nephew Patrick have been for a week .

It has been a difficult week here alone(without Jim though lots of kids from around
the world surfing) and trying to learn Spanish. I stayed with a family close to the school(which was on the beach) with a variety of other students from a variety of language schools. In the house is the mother(her brother was hit by a car two weeks ago in the streets here) who is prone to crying fits and furious bible readings and the father who says( i think) he is going to work but is always in the hammock when I come home at noon and there until the end of the day and a daughter who watches tv all day or at least when I am around. Then there are 2 or 3 others who come and go. When I first came last week, there were 3 others from Hawaii who are Christians doing god’s work. It could be that I told them when I met them that it was all god’s work that they haven’t taken to me. I don´t know. I am comfortable with them but they seem nervous around me. So, it was with great pleasure that a couple in their early 30s came who think god’s work is surfing as they have been doing that for 4 months everywhere. She is studying to be a dentist but is taking time off to surf and they both are in their first week of language training and from Canada. To round it off, 2- 16 year old boys from Florida whose parents sent them here alone to study Spanish. I asked them if their parents liked them and they told me that the parents mentioned to them that they needed some space. At language school, it just so happens that I have the best Spanish this week, so I have been used as translator while the teachers try to figure out what is going on with these kids who insist on speaking English to them which they do not understand. Although the kids are 16 they act a lot younger and after 10 minutes of talking with them I kind of understand why their parents sent them!!! There is no lack of money as the kids bought a surf board today and new sandals(the school took a field trip to the store as a lesson so they could buy the shoes. If they survive( and they just may as they already hang out at Ricardo’s and Big Wave Dave’s which are two places where no Spanish is spoken, filled with gringos) it should be a great experience for them.

The school itself is a colectivo of women . Another school, the Latin-American language school are the men who broke off from them 4 years ago. I would love to know that story, but alas, my Spanish can not handle it. I walk on the beach and swim every day and that as you can imagine is wonderful but my room is tiny and hot and yesterday we chased a huge crab out from under the bed. The bugs have been miserable this summer and sunscreen and repellent are my cologne of choice these days.

Wish me luck on getting myself to Ometepe by MYSELF( what am I thinking!!!!) I look forward to the comforts of my wonderful home July 17th. I expect that it will be more difficult if not impossible to find internet as easily as here so with love I say Hasta Luego.
Love you,
Ro/Mom

Students from Si A La Vida




Hello family,
Jim(Jamie)(Hi Jim) is in Managua picking up Patrick from the airport and I am studying this week , by myself at Language School in San Juan del Sur. Jim and Patrick will spend the week at Ometepe and I will join them on the 30th.

As you know, I am very dependent on Jim while we travel and so this is a huge change for me. Language school is hard, exhausting work but I have a bit of new hope that I can actually learn this language, even at my grand age!! My teacher is patient and
fun and just the perfect match for me. I am reading Pinocchio in Spanish and it helps that I know the story as it is in all these Tenses of which I am clueless.

After class, I had lunch at my house with the other 3 language Students living there and the mother of the house. The four of us just kept our mouths full to avoid any opportunity to be expected to reply to the mother except with smiles and nods and I can do that well. We were all just done!!
After lunch I walked to the beach with my homework and had a couple of
interesting encounters.

The first was with a 19 year old just finishing her 6 months study abroad and spending her last two weeks here. She approached me( unusual for young people to notice us 50
year olds but it is happening more) and asked me if I knew how to get to the lighthouse. Jim and I had done that trip last year and it was extremely difficult to find but we ended up talking and visiting for a time enjoying each others company.

Next, I found a place to sit in a restaurant having agua mineral and a woman my age approached me and asked if one of the sailboats was mine. She told me I looked like someone who had a sailboat and she and her husband had been sailing for 6 months and so we visited. Mostly, i am delighted that to at least one human being, I look like someone who owns a sailboat! At the end of our talk, she greatly encouraged me to
get out of the u.s. I laughed and said that I was out, that I was here and then soon I would be there and you can imagine the rest.

All is well.
Time to get ready for la senna.
a big noisy fiesta is in San Juan so I go to bed early to be ready for
their pre dawn noises.

Love you all,
Mom/Ro

Jul 11

Just a couple of more stories. I am looking forward to being home , spending time with you all. I am feeing especially close to Naren, who is one class away from a degree in biology and Mollyrose, who has shown so much courage in leaving Florida and trying new things and in being an incredible friend to those who know her. I am so proud of
them both.


The first story happened in the early part of the trip while crossing the border from Costa Rica to Nicaragua We take the bus to the Border, get off with our stuff, walk a couple of hundred yards with all our stuff and then wait in line, get our passports stamped and pay
an exit fee. Then we walk and wait in more hot lines and get stamped again and pay an entrance fee to Nicaragua. Most people at this point get back on a bus( but we have been walking now and let go of our bus) or find a cab to take them to the next
town. It is very hectic with people and buses and cabs and beggars and figuring out what to do next. Because we have been through this a number of times, we know what to do. We walk away from all the chaos, pass the makeshift fence that everyone else enters to get a bus or cab and these people get charged $1 for what they call a ¨municipal
tax which is a made up way of screwing tourists out of money. (Yes, yes, I know it is only a dollar. It is the principle!!) Jim and I walk on by and do not go in and are spotted and chased and told to pay the money. We refuse and a big argument begins. Jim,
with me cheering him on, explains that we already paid our official tax and will not pay this made up one. Did I say it was pouring rain.¿¿? Did I say that a large crowd was gathering??? Just as I mentioned to Jim that we may end up in jail, a cab stopped with a couple of surfing kids from England we met earlier and the doors opened and away we went.




The next story happened a few days ago on one of our day trips from Leon. We went to the beach. It was a beautiful beach with powerful waves and we had decided to heed the sign, in English and Spanish, warning all not to swim because of danger. So we walked and we sat and we walked. We had gotten off the bus and decided to walk the couple
of miles to the end of the beach. Ahead, we saw 6 or 7 people swimming in the water and Jim mentioned this as this might be a safe place to swim. As we got closer, we realized that a body was being pulled out of the water. Without hesitating, Jim ran ahead and caught up with them and began working on trying to save this young person. After about 15 minutes, the old women said, ¨¨ya no,Poppi. ya no which means,enough. The young man died, probably in the water. Jim helped to carry the body to a car of his friends and we continued our walk. Here, in this country, it is clear that
death is just a breath away.

Love,
Rory\Mom