Aside: An interesting phenomenon often occurs when I and other non natives attempt to speak in Spanish to Nicaraguans, especially those who are not accustomed to speaking with us all that often. In this phenomenon, no matter what you say or how good your grammar or accent happens to be, the person you´re speaking with will simply respond with one word answers, for example the price of what you want to buy from them. Its as if they expect you to not speak Spanish well or at all and are catering their responses to that fact. This has an especially frustrating effect on one of my friends from Spain, who happens to speak very little English. Based on his appearance alone, some people can´t ¨accept¨ that he is a native Spanish speaker and then give him a hard time and not answer his questions or engage in conversation with him. But I digress.

This phenomenon was happening to me at the moment as well. At first I thought 10 cords for an avocado was a little steep based on most prices I had heard or seen. I expressed this sentiment to the woman and she looked puzzled and replied ¨diez.¨ Ok fine, I´ll just take that one and I indicated one of the larger avocados. Again she looked bewildered and said ¨diez¨ just to clear everything up. I was now equally confused and reached into my pocket and held out a 10 cordoba bill so that this whole thing would end. She understood that and then leaned toward her pile of avocados and begin to put some in a bag: one avocado, two avocado, 3 and 4 and 5 avocados all in one bag. She handed it to me and finally everything made sense. I was clearly not versed in the ritual of avocado buying and didn´t know they came in groups of 5 only. She couldn´t fathom that anyone would like to buy any less than 5 avocados at once.
All told, I spent 50 cents on 5 avocados, what would cost about 7 dollars in an American Wal-Mart and probably closer to 10 dollars in an ¨all natural¨ farmer´s market. In the end I had an avocado for breakfast and carried the other four with me for the rest of the day to school and back.

This story reminds me of a great T shirt I´ve seen for sale in a few places and it reads. ¨100% Nica. ¡¿Y que?!¨

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written by  mls12 on May 28, 2010 from Granada, Nicaragua
from the travel blog: Volunteering with La Esperanza Granada in Granada, Nicaragua
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Just caught up on your blog posts... I especially enjoyed the additions to your list of crazy nicaraguan things. can't wait to see you super soon.

written by  junine on May 31, 2010

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