¡Noise!

Nicaraguans celebrate everything by making a lot of noise. Everything. Thankfully, my town isn’t very loud relative to the rest of Nicaragua, except during holidays, when it’s nearly impossible to find a quiet moment. Last month Nicaraguans celebrated La Gritería (which literally translates as “the shouting”), a festival for the Purísima, or the Immaculate Conception of Mary. It starts with festivities on December 7, and continues through the 8th. There were parades during the day and fireworks at night. There were also bombas going off all day, and many at night as well (bombas are like fireworks, except they don’t produce any light, and they are WAY louder; sometimes they even set off car alarms). There were also bands playing music for many hours after sunset. I can’t wait until Semana Santa (a week of celebrations around Easter), when my town is apparently a very happenin’ place.

I really hope that nobody reading this is getting the impression that Nicaragua is only loud during celebrations. Actually, that may be a perfectly fine way to think about it, but there’s always something to celebrate. Always. “It’s 2 pm? Let’s have a desfile!” “It’s Wednesday? Let’s set off some bombas!” Sometimes the bombas give me quite the surprise. It happened once when I was shaving, and it almost lead to a disaster. In many towns that have multiple high schools, during the school year there are often frequent competitions between their marching bands, in the form of desfiles (parades). And when I say frequent, I mean about two per week. A couple weeks ago there was a small band that started ­­­­­playing near my house at around 12:30 AM, and went on for nearly half an hour. And yes, that says AM, not PM. I’m not really sure why they were playing in the first place; I think they may have been trying to wake someone up for their birthday, but I’m not really sure.

More about directions

Sometimes when there’s a major geographical landmark next to a city or town, people there use that landmark as a guiding point. For example, Lake Nicaragua borders my town to the east, so when giving directions here, instead of saying 2 blocks east, people will often say 2 blocks towards the lake. Also, people will sometimes use up and down to indicate east and west, respectively. So when giving directions in Managua, where Lake Managua borders the city to the north, south is never replaced, but north may become towards the lake, east may become down, and west may become up. Thus 2 blocks west, 3 blocks north, and 1 block east may be said as 2 blocks down, 3 blocks towards the lake, and 1 block up.