While today wasn't the most exciting day, I still had an okay day. It started with a solid breakfast and me starting putting out my laundry so my host-mother could graciously start the load for me. After that it was off to class.
Today in the conversation section we learned about "La Leyenda de la Mocuana" (Legend of Mocauna). This legend tells of a cave in a place near La Trinidad near Esteli in Nicaragua. In 1530 a Spanish group of explorers came to this area looking for treasures of the indigenous people. These explorers were given bags full of gold nuggets. Back in Spain, a young guy, whose father died on this trip, heard of the riches and traveled to Nicaragua. The people hailed him as a preacher. In Sébaco the young guy met the most beautiful daughter of the chief of the tribe (el cacique). The guy tried to make the woman fall in love with him with the intention of taking the dad's riches (great guy right?). The woman fell in love with the Spanish guy and to show her love for him, she told him where the riches were stored (meanwhile no one is sure if the Spanish guy fell for the woman). Quite reasonably the chief didn't like the pair being together and wanted to see if there were feelings between them. The only option the two saw was to travel somewhere where they could escape the wrath of el cacique. Unfortunately for the two, el cacique found them and fought the Spaniard. Since the chief was a better fighter and the Spaniard wasn't Antonio Banderas, the chief killed the Spaniard in combat. The chief, being the great father he was, locked his pregnant daughter (with the Spaniard's son) in this cave and sealed the entrance with humongous rocks. The girl quite naturally went crazy eventually and threw her son into an abyss because the son was the reason for her punishment and for her insanity and problems etc. After the woman died her spirit left the cave to walk the streets at midnight. She walks at midnight garbed in beautiful clothing and has a beautiful body with long dark hair and a large apparition size, but she has a skeleton face (too much facial cream on that one). The spirit of the woman is known as La Mocuana and walks at this time looking for babies and legend tells that he will cut their throats and leave gold for the parents to appease them (talk about cut-throat!). The people of Nicaragua tell this story to scare young children and the kids want to sleep with the lights on. The spirit of La Mocuana is a bad spirit. There is also another legend of a spirit called "mica" or "mona" that is in the appearance of a monkey that walks on rooftops at night and steals women's lingerie (also apparently this creature transforms into a woman during the day). I suppose the woman doesn't get judged as much as sopping at Victoria's Secret. There is also the legend of this bird called the Mancua (a multicolored parrot) that goes around making little birdies with other birds and takes a feather from each to build its nest. The feathers are then regarded as love charms and there is a drink that is supposed to make you get lucky (cue Tone Loc with "Funky Cold Medina"). Anyways, we also talked a bit more about politics and how the Socialists here want to be known as socialists because 1. that's the type of government and 2. they are much more peaceful than the word "communists" connotes. They also don't like Ronald Reagan or George Bush down here (score!).
After a normal lunch, we had a 2 hour lecture on both defibrillators and fetal monitors. We learned about how defibs need to be applied and generally how to test them (and to discharge them safely using a "freshly killed pig" according to the book). We also learned about fetal monitors and how they use ultrasonic transducers to find monitor the baby's HR (heart rate). We also learned about common problems with broken cables and the paper not feeding correctly through them. This was pretty much all that happened today. I also learned that my shoes and new REI towel disappeared at the laguna de Apoyo while I was 'scursioning and now I have to get a new towel and new shoes (I can hear my parents breathing a sigh of happiness over me having to get new shoes). I'll keep this one short (as at least one person has complained about the length of my blog posts). Talk to y'all later! Keep it classy!
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