quiet comfort...

I can't get over how quiet it is here. I sit in my room in the house I grew up in and all of life sounds subdued. It's a chilly morning and I can hear birds out my window, but they're chirping softly, in the distance. In my room in Managua birds woke me up most mornings (if not the heat) and did so with volume and abrasiveness and persistence that seemed fitting to the intensity of that place. Their calls and cries shared the soundtrack with the pleas of street vendors and aggressive drivers, horn happy and sin muffler.

Here in my other reality - my first reality - the neighbors are exchanging niceties, cars hum by, a lawn mower purrs down the block: consistent, gentle, throwing that quintessentially small town, fresh-cut-grass-smell into the air. For a few days, I felt somewhat out of place here, and I suppose that won't go away entirely. But I don't know that I'll ever feel totally out of place here, this is where I grew up, this town is in me. As much as I marvel at the contrast between life here in small town Minnesota and life in Managua, it's frighteningly easy for me to start thinking that this, this quiet, comfortable way of existing is normal. I struggle with the temptation of that comfort, it's alluring in many ways.

I'm beyond blessed to have a few months here at home before I head back down to Central America for another year of work with the same program. I'm very much looking forward to the opportunity to work with my team again and be part of a process that I so strongly believe in. But in the meantime, I've come home to a new nephew, to loads more family that I adore and to friends that squeeze every possible drop of meaning and humor out of any situation, and that constantly teach me how to grow. I'm home and I'm happy, not comfortable but cognizant of all of my blessings.

new light...

One of my favorite phrases in Spanish is 'dar a luz' which is used to talk about women giving birth. However, literally it translates to 'to give light' or 'to bring the light'. This week, the Menning family was blessed with new light!

Anyone who has talked to me at length in the last 9 months has likely heard about how excited I have been to have a niece or nephew. Pues, por fin soy tia! I arrived home just in time; Monday night at the airport I talked to my brother as Bri was about to go into labor. Best homecoming gift ever! On Tuesday, I got to meet little Noah Elloyd and, as a proud aunt, thought I should share a few pictures here as well.

where the streets have no name...

I spent a better part of last weekend at my coworker's house as a little getaway. Her family is endearing, the house is beautiful and I'm always grateful for an invitation to enjoy their company. On Saturday, a friend called to see if I'd like to go out for drinks and said they'd swing by to pick me up. I stuck my head into my coworker's room to ask for her address and she chuckled and said "give me the phone, I'll explain how to get here". How silly of me, I forget sometimes that here in Managua an address and the directions of how to get somewhere are the same thing.

You see, here in Managua streets don't have names. Buildings aren't generally numbered either. So how do you find a place without street names? Easy enough for locals, you pick a big landmark and work your way toward your destination from there. For example, to grab a cab to the Theatre Justo Rufino Gray you'd have to tell them: "from the Montoya statue, 3 blocks down, 20 meters toward the lake". It seemed to me, from the beginning like some sort of cruel joke - 'down', 'toward the lake'? But really, it's just a system one must learn. Down means west, because the sun goes down in the west. Logically following that, 'up' means east, where the sun rises. The lake is situated to the north of the city so 'al lago' means north and ...well, south never got a code word I guess, you just say 'al sur/to the south'.

It baffles me that this system works...mostly when I get addresses that start with "donde fue el Hotel..." -- 'where the Hotel...used to be'. What if you don't know where the hotel used to be? Or when they finish with "and 20 'varas' up", what the heck is a 'vara'?! (I just looked it up for this post, it's apparently an ancient Spanish unit of measurement measuring approx .875 meters...that will help me when I can finally remember how many feet are in a meter.)

I guess the system all started after the earthquake in '72. Apart from killing nearly 20,000 people, it also demolished buildings and seriously altered the grid patterned streets of this capital city. People figured it out, they made up a new system...one that works well enough that they apparently still don't feel the need to create a new one, or put up street name signs any time soon. And while I miss street names and house numbers, this is certainly an exercise in my sense of direction.

*photos taken and kindly shared by Jenny Ajl