SWWEEEEEEEET

The End

I should apologize in advance for what is bound to be an epic novel...I´m trying to make up for my laziness.

SO I left Leon for good on Tuesday, finished both jobs and now am in Jinotepe for the two weeks before I leave (to travel etc etc). Yikes, I can´t believe I´ll be home in two weeks! At some points, I felt like time was trudging by, but at the same time, I remember the day I got here like it was yesterday. I remember everything seeming so strange and a little scary, things that now are just a part of every day life. For example, even walking around the block of the hostel I stay at in Jinotepe seemed like a big ordeal my first couple of days here. Going to the market was like the "event" of the day for me. Taking buses anywhere terrified me, which I laughed to remember as I flagged down a bus Wednesday afternoon and proceeded to spend an hour crammed with 20 other people with my ear crushed to the ceiling and my butt sticking out of an open window. I guess that´s what learning a new culture is all about though.

Let´s see...Leaving the aldea was pretty much a heart crusher. I have a ton of pictures of all the babies but just thinking that I probably won´t see them again, and when I do they will be all grown up...I had such a hard time giving them up to their parents that evening. I´ve never worked with kids of that age before, but even at 7, 8, and 9 months you can see personalities and temperment developing. How they´ll turn and grin at you after knocking over a cup of baby food, or crawl over to you just to sit in your lap for a little while...ahh I think I´m in love. I still have a really hard time grasping what their lives will be like as they grow up...I´ve seen most of their houses, with rusted sheets of metal as roofs and small cement or cardboard structures as the building and trash all over the ground...but I really respect the center that I was working with so it´s great to know that their parents have this great resource for their kids. The women had this big suprise lunch for me to say goodbye, complete with a life size blonde cardboard doll that someone had made...which was a lot of fun. I´m trying to convince the volunteer organization I came here with to start sending volunteers there too, which the women were really psyched about. As I was saying bye to my favorite little boy, Edwin, his mom was really suprised that it was my last day. She came back about 10 minutes later and gave me this huge picture they had of him, saying his dad and her wanted me to have it (he´s the one everyone calls my son), which almost got me sobbing.

The last day at Las Tias was sad in a different way, but hard. I guess it´s different saying bye to people that can actually talk. All day my students were writing sentences for little assignments I would give them like "I will not love you forever if you go", "Porque are you going?", "I do not want to learn speak english si te vas (if you go)"...I guess I´ve never explained that a few of my students just think that the idea of Spanglish (which I had to explain) is hilarious. Sometimes I´ll say, okay ten minutes of Spanglish, and we write sentences and talk in this mixed jarble of all the words they know in english plus spanish. It´s fun and makes them psyched to speak and learn new words they can add so I´m all for it. So leaving there was a bummer, but there´s another volunteer there, Sam, who is a really great, enthusiastic teacher so I know they´ll all be fiiiiine.

I went out to the discotheque one of my last nights with my madre, Miriam, her son, Carlos and his girlfriend. I never went out in Leon so it was sort of fun to get out and even more fun to do it with my familia. Miriam loooooves to dance so we danced and danced, it was a blast. After a while a few guys started to ask me to dance and it always went something like this: dance, dance, "I like your eyes", dance, "Can I have your email address?", dance, "I love you", then proceeded some strange neck licking thing. Always. Followed by me shoving them away and going to sit down. After about three of these I wisened up and just stayed glued to my chair, until all three of the creepsters surrounded me with proposals to take me to Managua or the beach or a variety of other places. Carlos and his girlfriend were sort of laughing at how bewildered I was but Miriam (big lady with short curly flaming red hair that sort of sticks out like an afro, bright red lipstick, tons of bright eye make up...you get the picture) took the bucket of ice on the table, smashed it down and shouted "SHE´S TALKING TO HER MADRE, GET AWAY FROM HER". And they raaaan. It was hilarious and she told the story to everyone who crossed her path for days. As entertaining as it was for everyone, I´ll be happy to get back to the states where I feel like a normal person, and not like some strange, rare breed of unicorn. Leaving the family was a lot sadder than I expected, I was crying, Miriam and my abuela were sobbing. But at the same time I am SO happy to be back in Jinotepe. I really can´t explain it, but aside from my house with my family in Brookfield, this place in Jinotepe feels exactly like home. I know everyone that works in the house really well, and it´s awesome to see them all every time I come back...I have people I know in certain stores and restaurants I go into a lot, which is why I love that it´s a smaller town. I´m excited to be here and psyched that I have two weeks to travel and see some stuff that I haven´t gotten to yet.

Wednesday was an awesome day. The father of two girls I coached on the Park and Rec summer swim team, Mr Davidson, is in Nicaragua for a week with some kids from the high school he teaches at in New York. They ended up working about an hour away from Jinotepe, so I went to go see them and visit with him for awhile. I was pretty homesick when my Mom emailed me that he was going to be in Nicaragua and we should try to meet up, so it was something I had been looking forward to. So he had given me the name of the place they would be working at before he left, saying he would be out of email range once he got here but it wasn´t too hard to find. I hoped on a bus which plopped me on this big road in the middle of nowhere, the driver pointing to this dirt path/dry river bed that he said led to where they were staying. And it did, only they weren´t there. The guy guarding the gate told me that they were working far away and wouldn´t be back until lunchtime. So I chatted with the guard for a few hours, napped, walked around the town and stared into space for a few hours until the group pulled up. Super excited I rush to the gate and start saying hey to everyone, expecting them to know who I was, which it appeared they didn´t. As the last person came in the gate I realized Mr. Davidson was definitely not one of them. It turns outtttt...there had been a switch, and his group was staying somewhere else "farrr" away. So I set off down the dried up river with the name of the place they were staying and a big 10lb incentive to find them. You see, I had bought about 60 bunuelos from this woman up the street the day before. Bunuelos can only be described as the most delicious treat ever invented...cheese and yucca fried into little nugget balls and covered in this honey/sugar/cinnamon juice. So I´m hauling a ton of these around in my backpack thinking that if I don´t find them, there will be no stopping me from sitting down and eating all sixty of those delicious nuggets of yum. Therefor, my 10lb incentive. So I set off, asking random people selling stuff on the side of the road where this "La Francia" place is that they´re staying (that´s generally my way of getting around here, and it´s worked remarkably well so far). After awhile a woman flags down a bus and chucks me on it, which dumps me on the side of the road about 20 minutes away. I ask some people sitting outside of their house and they point across to this house that´s sitting on top of a hill...not too, too far from where we were, except for the fact that there was a very steep gorge seperating us. "No problema" the guy says, and sets off with me, both of us in our handy sandals, down the steepest, awesome trail I´ve ever been on. It was like...I don´t know but I half expected a dinosaur or some other strange, huge animal to pop up. There were these huuuuge, shaggy, palm tree-like things, and pineapple bushes everywhere (did you know pineapples grew on bushes? I had no clue, they´re these spikey red and green bush things), dozens of other trees and bushes I´ve never seen before and forgot the name of as soon as the man told me. So we get down the side in about 10 minutes, and then proceed to go back up. The going up was just as stunning and beautiful, but not quite as much fun...due to the fact that you pretty much had to run to get up the soft, slippery dirt. So we get to the top, where there´s a little cabin. He passes me off to his grandmother to walk me the rest of the way, which she does, and finally I come across a big cement building with a bunch of dirty, tired gringos inside...including Mr. Davidson. Lucky for me, he was extremely impressed with my adventures to get to his group. It was great to see the kids, they were all really nice, and awesome to talk with someone from home. It felt sort of strange, that I´m standing in this beautiful place in Nicaragua with the father of girls I had coached in swimming...small world. So we just chatted for a while, they were on their break after lunch, and then I went with them to the site they had been working on. Talk about incredible. They were building a house for a woman, whose original house was sitting right beside it. Her old house was TINY, I mean the size of a bathroom, and made of out rusty metal sheets and I don´t know what else. Her new house was about 6 times the size and made out of metal rods and concrete blocks...about a million times sturdier. It was really great to see the kids and how proud they were of the house, they had started with only the foundation only days earlier. All in all, it was an awesome day. I love my little travel adventures/problems because they always work out and I always figure out how to get where I need to be, which makes me feel very...able, I guess is the word. It was also sort of neat to break down my experience here with someone that at least semi-knew me after it was all over. It sounds silly to say, but it was nice to discuss it with an adult too...just different insight than someone my age is able to give.

Today I went to a festival in the next town over with Alejandro, who works in the house, a volunteer, Gabby, who´s staying in the house and an older man who´s looking to start "adventure travel" in Nicaragua for very wealthy people (it´s been cool watching him plan that). It was fun, but like any other Nicaraguan festival/parade, it was about 4 hours of waiting with bands playing to amuse everyone, and then about 10 minutes of actual parade. It was entertaining though. A part of the parade, I still have no idea why, is tons of guys dressed up as women, with masks and wigs and stockings and fake books and purses...noone really could explain why but there were about a hundred of them...some walking, some dancing, some stumbling from too much beer. Verrrrry interesting...and classic Nicaraguan.

Beacoup de lavaaa

This. Was. The. BEST. Weekend. EVERRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

Seriously.

This weekend would have to rank up there on the top five most awesome experiences of my life, I could go on and on. And I´m about to, so brace yourself. IIIIIII hiked a volcano this weekend, and it was awesome...did I say that yet?

Allright obnoxious enthusiasm aside...I went on a trip with the group Quetzaltrekkers (a group of volunteer hikers who organize hikes on volcanos around Nicaragua and donate their profits to the project I work for, Las Tias...I´ve mentioned them before because I was planning on working with them, but found my other job instead) to Volcan Telica, which is pretty close to Leon. We met up on Saturday early in the morning to pack bags and grab breakfast before taking the bus to the start of the hike. There were three of the Quetzaltrekkers volunteers (the way they do it is that each volunteer has to go on a hike twice before they lead it, so two of them were in different stages of training), a couple from Quebec who has been traveling around Central America for months, a guy from the Netherlands who has been doing pretty much the same, a guy from England who is basically an intern there and is in Leon for a few weeks volunteering with the cosmetic surgery branch of the hospital here, anddd me! We took the bus to a random place in the middle of nowhere, walked through a town and through a gate and right into this field of boiling mud pits! I´ve never seen mud boil before, it was pretty sweet...I felt like I should throw in some pasta or something. A kid from the town stuck his finger in the mud pit (braaave soul) and let us all take some. It was still super hot and I´m pretty sure he wanted us to smear it all over our bodies, saying it was great for the skin. Everyone politely declined, unaware that in a few seconds we would be coated with a layer of dusty mud from the trail anyway. So we started off on the hike, which was not (as I expected) a 7 hour hike up a volcano, but a 7 hour hike to the BASE of a volcano (which was actually pretty small and only took like 10 minutes to hike up). It was a beautiful hike though, first stop was under a lemon tree, second stop under a mango tree, third stop under a lunch tree (perhaps not the technical name, but at the end of the most burly vertical part of the hike, it was the most beautiful lunch tree I´ve ever seen), and last stop looking up at an active, steaming volcano. While intense, the hike wasn´t too bad, and it was AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME to be with a bunch of people that spoke English! Everyone was super friendly and open and it was really sweet to get to know everyone. We reached where we were going to sleep for the night, a really pretty clearing right at the base, set up camp and then hiked up to the crater of the volcano. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW. It was pretty much a straight up hike of loose tumbling rocks, probably not my most graceful moment but once you belly crawled the last few feet right to the edge, it was AMAZING. You´re on your belly peering down into this huuuuge put from which smoke is pouring upwards (with a lovely stench of sulfur)...I was definitely in awe. We scrambled down and walked around the volcano to see the sunset and then went back to camp to make a fire and hang out some more. Ate some dinner, played some Mafia (suprisingly fun, I hadn´t played for years), and then around 11pm went back up the volcano! Ahhh if I thought climbing up a volcano during the evening was cool/kick ass/hard, walking up in the pitch black was an even more...thrilling, scary, WOWWW experience. A few of us were feeling sort of lazy when two people set off to hike up during the night, so we stayed back (you know, after spending a few hours relaxing by a fire at the base of a volcano you get a little jaded by the fact that you´re BY AN ACTIVE VOLCANO). But the guy from Quebec radiod down and all I heard was "beacoup de lavaaaa" and I was ready. So most of the rest of us scrambled up after them and DUDEEEE....real lava. It was really far down and you had to wait for the smoke to clear but there it was, redish orangish bubbling lava (last eruption of this volcano was 2004). That was probably the most breathtaking part of the trip for me. We climbed down and everyone craaaashed, long day. Woke up in the morning before sunrise, which was pretty astounding to see from near the volcano, and started the hike back down.

So here´s where everyone is probably thinking "So Alysse went on a trip, but had no problems??? This can´t be quite right"...and you would be correct. About ten minutes into the hike on Saturday up to the volcano I started feeling a little hint of blister on the back of both feet. About ten minutes later I started feeling a hint of the lack of a blister and the presence of raw skin on the back of both feet. Everytime we took a break I wrapped and rewrapped and rebandaged the backs of my feet, which would help for about five minutes until the mix of sweat and dusty mud would undo all efforts. By the time we got to the campsite my feet were screamiiiiiing "GET US OUT OF HERE", but at the same time my mind was screaming "DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDE, THIS IS AWESOME", so I rebandaged and was fine. The next morning I did a superb job with about 10 layers of bandage, tape, mole skin, fancy British blister thingey, more tape...hoping that would do the trick. It did for a good hour, mostly because I couldn´t feel my ankles anymore...but soon enough I was literally throwing one foot in front of the other and moving at a snails pace. The back of my feet hadn´t been blistered for about 15 hours now, they were way past blistered and rapidly losing layers of skin...which was a stupendous sensation. After trudging along for a good amount of time, I made a spectacular decision...lost the shoes and put on my flip flops. AHHH relief!!! So the rest of the hike was pretty spectacular, I never thought I´d hike down from a volcano in flip flops but it actually wasn´t bad at all, and I moved about a million times faster. When we got to the bottom we had lunch at a comedor and headed back to Leon, sweaty, stinky, dirty, tired and happy. So skip through goodbyes, and see you laters, and fast forward to when I took the bandages off the back of my heels and tried to wash the dirt out of my wounds...only to realize that the dirt was actually now part of my body and wasn´t budging. I tried to tell my family that it was just that I was now "one with the earth", mostly because pouring water over my ankles KILLED and the thought of any more effort to remove the dirt made my stomach queasy, but they didn´t buy it. Soon I was equipped with an antibiotical creme, some other polmade thing, pills for pain and sterilized gauze...and was sitting with my foot proped up on my hermano Carlo´s lap (have I mentioned that he´s a doctor...okay well medical student, but he had a prescription pad to prescribe antibiotical creme and plastic gloves so we´ll go with doctor) while he told me to brace myself. Miriam and I started chatting while Carlos got ready to ravage my dirty, possibly soon to be infected ankle wounds and the conversation went something like this as he scrubbed and washed and scrubbed and SCRUBBED:
Me: YEOOOOOW!!!
Miriam: AIYYY...okay okay that looks terrible, let´s talk let´s talk look over here...how was the trip???
Me: Okay okay, it was good there were a lot of peopleacoupefromQuebecwhowerereallyniceAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH It was really fun I got to see the lavaatnightwhenitwasdarkAHHHHHHH CARLOS I HATE YOU I HATE YOU And there was a guy from Britain who´s a doctor andworkingwhereCarlosstudies AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH CARLOS I DON´T NEED MY FEET PLEASE NO MORE NO MORE...

and on and on until I limped away with cleaner, antibiotic-ized feet. SO while this weekend was still one of the best, most amazing weekend of my entire lifetime and the foot issues didn´t take away from the weekend at ALL...I´m having a lovely time limping around Leon now with sweet gauze bandages on the backs of my feet...warding off predictions that I´m going to have an infection etc etc. Luckily I´m still on a high from such a great time so I could care less. Let´s see...a little over a week left of work, some traveling and then home! I hope everyone is doing well...love you all and can´t wait to see you!

4 weeks!

So that´s the official countdown, and now that I´m at the 4 weeks mark I´m not as anxious as I was to get home, weird how that is. This week was AWESOME. This story starts with a very very kind man about my Dad´s age who comes into the pub often when I bartend, not in the creepy way but in the kind person, pleasant to chat with sort of way. So he was there as I was counting down until the day I would come to Nicaragua, and there for the millions of times people scoffed and asked me why the hell I wanted to come here and do this, and there for the millions of times I said I was so excitedexcitedexcited. Anyway, my last day of work he came in and handed me a rolled up bundle of bills, a few hundred dollars, and told me that he wanted me to be able to help the kids I´m working with as much as I possibly can, and if the money can help one person, or all of them, then to use it at my discretion. He wouldn´t accept thanks, or an offer to send him a letter telling him what I used it for, he said he wanted to be anonomous, and just wanted me to be able to help as much as I was anxious to help. So...along with the gringos and official man that helped me out at the border, he receives an awesome person award. I was really moved by his actions and the fact that he was quite timid about being praised, and also that he trusted me not to run away with the money. With that being said, finally yesterday I got to put the money to good use. I wanted to wait for awhile to see what my kids really needed, and I went out with the director of the SOS yesterday shopping and WOW, it was AWESOME! Money goes really far here and we got dozens of cloth diapers and new bottles that were desperately needed, as well as a bunch of new toys...rattles and big plastic balls and huge pillows and little tambourines...for the kids to play with. It was so much fun seeing them all play today, the balls were definitely the favorite...they´re light so the fan moves them around and the kids were like a dog with a flashlight, chasing around in circles and circles endlessly. I´m pretty sure if they had tails, they would be wagging. We also got to buy stuff for the other classes, dozens more plates and bowls and little cups for the kids in the next level up that are just learning to eat. Plus I had a good amount of money left, which I´m going to use to buy a bunch of string to make bracelets for the kids at Las Tias. They are fascinaaaated with the bracelts, it´s really funny to see but nice, because when they´re all making bracelets they´re sitting in a circle, chatting and calm, instead of running around beating on each other or going nuts. So needless to say I´m really grateful that this man gave me such an awesome opportunity to buy these things for the kids. Let´s see...FINALLY this weekend I´m going to hike up a VOLCANOOOOOO! Unbelievable excited. Volcano Telica, active volcano...sweetness. If it erupts I´ll try to collect some lava as souvenirs! Chao!

Preciosaaa

Good week

Holaaa. It´s been a pretty great week actually, but compared to last weekend anything would be awesome. Seriously though everything has been grand. I´m still loving work, and realizing how sad I´m going to be to leave all the kids. At Las Tias, where I teach, I´ve ended up being really happy. I´m having a good time teaching the one on one classes (although a few more weeks is about all I could do, I´ve realized that there´s a lot more to teaching English than just speaking it, so the basics is about all I can handle) and I´m actually really enjoying the time when I don´t teach too. I have a bunch of different color thread and the kids (actually strangely mostly the boys) love to make the bracelets. So when I don´t have a class normally we´ll just sit around talking and/or making bracelets, which has been a nice experience. Teaching is fine but I mostly enjoy making bonds with the kids, and learning about their lives and thrilling them with talk about the States (you mean mangos are $2 there???? But they´re only 5cents!!!!!!!!). It´s also been interesting watching the other volunteers come and go. Most of them are only there for a few weeks or a month, which explains why the kids were so frustrating when I first came. I guess if you have a stream of new people, who all start teaching at the beginning ("What. Is. Your. Name???") there´s not a huge incentive to learn or progress. Up until this past week all have been girls, but this new kid, Sam, came and he seems to be having a little more luck. I always peek in with the kid that I´m teaching at the moment and since they´re not spending half the time blowing him kisses or asking him for sex, he has a lot better classroom control...so I´m happy for him and hoping that he´ll make some more headway with them.

The aldea, where I work with the babies, is also going really well. I love love love the babies. It´s neat to see them developing, in the first few months they change so much in their abilities...so I´m able to see them learning to walk, or crawl, or sit up on their own, which is awesome. Im going to take some pictures next week, which I´m hoping will convince my parents to let me smuggle some home with me. Only 2 or 3, I´m trying to be reasonable.

Leon is Leon, I´m not much of a city person BUT at the same time it´s sort of cool to feel comfortable in a city....you know, having certain people you walk by every day and don´t know but say hi to each other. There´s a guy that runs a parking lot right next to our house and the first two months he used to whistle and yell out "chelllllita bonitttta!" as I walked by, so I ignored him most of the time. I decided to start saying hi to him one day, which prompted him to ask for my name and now he says "Hola Alysse! ¿Como estas?" instead, which is a lot more pleasant. We just entered into the HOTTTEST month now, and since Leon is the hottest city in Nicaragua, that´s pleasant. Strangely though I´ve gotten used to the heat I guess, because it doesn´t feel any hotter than when I came here. The only thing that´s changed is that I have to drink more water, which I haven´t been doing so have been a little loopy and sleepy the last two days. Let´s see...I´ve tried something today that I´ve walked by for months and never tasted...and will certainly be my downfall over the next five weeks. Imagine fresh plaintain chips in a bag topped with shredded cabbage soaked in vinegar. Ahhhhhhh amazing. Not really imagining the deliciousness? Maybe a little odd but that can´t be too suprising. That´s about all I´ve got for now, I´m trying to have a uneventful weekend so we´ll see what I come up with. Ciao!

Stuck in limbo

AHHHHHHHHHHH. So the best part of this blog is that once I´ve written something down normally it seems a lot funnier than when it actually happened...which for a ridiculous day like Saturday, will be a blessing. ALLRIGHT, border trip to Costa Rica. Foreigners aren´t allowed to be in Nicaragua for more than three months, so as my three month date is almost here (time flies, sort of) last weekend was the last time I had to cross the border. While I had heard that you have to be in Costa Rica for 72 hours before entering Nicaragua again, I had also heard that it wasn´t really necessary (and have friends that have done the trip in one day, which I planned to do). So I took the bus early to la frontera, the border, which actually wasn´t as far as I thought it would be. Due to how easy it was to get to the border, I figured I was in for an easy breezy trip...also thinking I would be back by noonish which would be awesome. I definitely thought wrong. Once you get off the bus you´re swarmed by all these people who have the papers you need to fill out before crossing. It´s overwhelming but I stuck with one guy who had a badge, he seemed much more official than many of the other guys, seeing as he had clean clothes and shoes on. He helped me through this hole in the fence and helped me to get my exit stamp for Nicaragua. It´s about a kilometer between the Nicaragua immigration office and the Costa Rica office, so he walked with me as far as he could without a passport, which was very nice. This limbo land between the two borders was quite interesting, as it was basically a huge truck stop. I felt like I was at a highway truck stop in the States, there were a million trucks either driving through the border or parked and hanging out there. At this point I was vaguely amused with the whole experience, until my official guide man left me and I was on my own. About halfway between the two stops there´s more immigration guides, that only let you through if you have the appropriate stamps. After I went through this check point and walked in the truck parade another 1/2 K, I got to the Costa Rica side. Unfortunately this was where my LUCK CHANGEDD. I stepped into a line that was long enough that I figured it was for the immigration desk, when another guy stopped me and asked where I was going in Costa Rica and if I needed a taxi there. I told him no, I was just going to enter and exit Costa Rica so I could get my Nicaraguan visa. Here´s where Operation "Scam Alysse" begins. He told me I had to be in Costa Rica for three days, I said no that´s not true, he said yes it was and on and on until I walked away. Proud of myself for escaping a scam I went up to a guy at the immigration desk and asked him about the 72 hour rule. He told me that yes, indeed, I did need to stay in Costa Rica for 72 hours, and that the rules just got stricter. A little dicouraged, I left the desk and sat down trying to figure out how I was going to stay in Costa Rica for three days, when the first guy came up to me again, saying that for $60 he could call a friend he has at the desk and get him to give me a stamp to exit today instead of three days from now. I told him I only had $30 and he said fine, ushering me to the front of the line, and his friend, who gave me the stamp. Now maybe it´s not well known to anyone except Jake (who argued endlessly with me about this) but I really don´t like bargaining, so when I said I only had $30, I wasn´t trying to drop his price, I really had only $30 on me. However, I had my credit card on me so I figured I was good to go (as it costs $7 to get your stamp to enter Nicaragua). So I walked back to the Nicaragua side of the border, and oh man, my card doesn´t work, and some guards told me that the whole 72 hour thing isn´t true, so I´d been had. Significantly worried at this point, I walked back to the Costa Rica side of the limbo/border/truck stop from hell and tried that bank. And to my dismay, my card didn´t work there...and the bank manager informed me that there were no other banks inside the border zone. Nice. At this point I was pretty much a wreck...and was crying too. So I was a crying wreck, that ended up wandering between the two borders trying to figure out what to do. When the guys between the two borders tried to stop me for not having the right stamps to keep going back and forth, I literally just sobbed until they nodded me through. At this point I see the guy that took my $30, and when he asked me why I was crying I said "BECAUSE YOU TOOK ALL MY MONEY AND NOW I´LL NEVER GET BACK TO NICARAGUA"...perhaps a little dramatic but I think it got my point across. Now being the strangest scammer I´ve ever met, he gave me his number and the process to go through to call collect, and told me to call him in a little while if I still handn´t found a bank. So a while later I called him, we met up, and I figured I´d just sob until he agreed to give me back at least enough to cross the border and get home. Well he was in the process of trying to get money from two other Americans/gringos when I found him. By this point I had passed through distraught onto furious and I butted in and told them not to pay anything. They asked me what happened to me, and I told them I was waiting for this guy so I could argue with him to get enough money to get out of this place and go home. I turned around to go and they told me to wait, and put $10 in my hand. This is one of those situations where I wish I could write them a novel of thanks, or nominate them for a Good Samaritan award because I don´t think they have any idea how extremely kind they were...except that I started crying of happiness and gratitude so maybe that gave them an idea. So when I got back to the Nicaraguan immigration desk, I saw my nice official badge guy, and when I told him the story he was FURIOUS, and got a description of the guy at the immigration desk who took the money and lied to me and was telling all his other official badge friends. Another award to hand out here, because he filled out all my immigration papers for me, marched me through the hole in the fence before leaving Nicaragua (which is another $1 fee but he just marched me through telling them that I had no money and therefor wasn´t paying), plopped me on a bus back to Jinotepe and gave me a big hug. Awards all around to everyone that was so kind to me. I ended up meeting somone on the bus who was equally as angry as I was, because he had paid for a work permit to Costa Rica that ended up being false, so was denied at the border when he was trying to get back to work...so we ended up venting to each other for two hours until we were both calm and could talk about something other than how much we hated the border. Now I remember observing/complaining to Jake when he was here that for some reason a lot of people I meet tend to feel the need to take me under their wing and take care of me, which at times makes me feel like people think I don´t have a clue. But at this particular moment, I am very very very grateful that I instill this need in people. 6 more weeks here and I promise I´ll try to stay out of trouble.