shiksagodess75

I know. Many of you are in awe of me. "How does she do it?" you may ask yourselves. "How does she work full time, have a social life _and_ maintain a blog?"

Um, OK, I don't. Maintain a blog, that is. So here is a picture of Half Dome to appease you people.

Yosemite was lovely, the sky was blue, the waterfalls were rushing, we saw a bear, it didn't kill us. Life is good.

All this and only 4 hours from home.

It's seems odd that my trip will be over in a mere week. I'll return to Costa Rica for about five days, four of which will be spent with sea turtles on the Carribbean Coast without any sort of internet access and possibly even without electricity. So as of tomorrow I must bid Nicaragua a sad and fond 'adios'. So long Nicaragua. I shall miss your chicken buses, your relaxed regulations regarding prescription pharmaceuticals, your friendly bus operators, your lovely tiled sidewalks that turn into death traps in the rain, your cuajada cheese, your pithaya fruit, your love affair with cheesy '70s and '80s music (especially Richard Marx. Can't thank you enough for that.), your beaches, your verdant green mountains and volcanos, your ubiquitous internet cafes, your hot sunshine that turns my fair skin a delightful shade of pink and your friendliness that allowed this gringa to travel solo in relative safety.

...and my _last_ rodeo.

I'm staying with host family for a week here in Granada, Nicaragua and they are a most hospitable bunch. Three lively daughters in their early twenties who are more than happy to drag me along to whatever it is that they are doing. We've gone to the beach, we've gone out dancing, we listen to music, we talk about clothes, hair, boys, and other girly things. My first night in their house they dragged me out to see a rodeo. At first it was entertaining-a bunch of macho yahoos riding the angry bulls and another bunch of macho yahoos running from the angry bulls. There were about twelve bulls in total and after the 5 or 6th one, the whole rodeo shtick was feeling a bit commonplace.

And then on bull number seven out came the monkey. Not a macho man riding the bucking and angry bull, but a monkey. A real live freakin' monkey.

Yes, really.

They tied a monkey. To a bull. And let it ride around. _FOR FUN_.

Oh the humanity.

I either did something kind of exciting, or borderline stupid.

I went to Isla de Ometepe in Nicaragua. A lovely, idyllic place in the middle of Lago de Nicaragua consisting of a few small towns, a variety of fincas (plantations), lots of chicken, pigs and malnourished dogs and, oh yes, a couple of volcanoes. One volcano is inactive and the other, well... not so much. Before I got to the island many people on the mainland told me that they wouldn't set foot there because Volcan Concepcion was going to blow "any day now". I decided to chance it, since I was staying on the other side of the island and would likely be out of harm's way. Or not. I should mention that the only ferries leave from the side of the island with the active volcano, making fleeing rather difficult. All is well though and I am in Granada getting cleaned up and ready to suck it up and take some Spanish lessons. For those of you wondering why I went to the island in the first place and stayed, I think that the picture will suffice.

Oh yeah, and I got to sleep outside in a hammock for three nights.

A number of people who know me well have asked for an explanation of my blog title "ShiksaGodess[sic]75". So here goes:

shiksa-a Yiddish word used to refer to a non-Jewish woman. Frequently used in a derogatory manner.
goddess-Do I really need to explain this?

Coupled together, 'shiksa goddess' refers to the ideal of Western feminine beauty that consists of a willowy figure, straight blonde hair and blue eyes.

So why 'ShiksaGodess[sic]'?

I'm Jewish. Went to Hebrew School, Jewish day camps, Jewish sleep-away camps, participated in Jewish youth groups as a teenager and even once was the president of my college's tiny Jewish organization. My parents kept kosher and we got together every Friday night for Shabbat dinner. And even though I'm not as religious as I was as a child, I still identify culturally as Jewish. (Seriously, stick with me. I'm going somewhere with all of this).

But sometimes I would tell people of my religious and cultural background only to get the following response: "Jewish? But you don't look Jewish?" (insert their puzzled expression here). The problem with this question was not so much that they were unaware that Jews can be something other than dark and swarthy, the problem was with the faint, snarky implication that I am better off not "looking Jewish". I have, in fact, had some people tell me outright that I should be glad not to "look Jewish". Never mind that, well, I do look Jewish (Hello?!? Have you seen my nose?). Never mind that many Jews of Russian ancestry, like me, tend to have pale skin and lighter hair. In my case, a delightful shade of slightly enhanced strawberry blonde. Never mind that none of this should matter.

So I took on the mantle of Shiksa Goddess just to have a little fun at my own expense. As for the deliberate misspelling, there was another shiksagoddess out there. Bitch.

Hope this clears things up.

I think I'm up and running.

I am in the process of mastering the new-to-me digital camera (thanks to my favorite brother-yay Mike!) and remembering how to write clearly and concisely. I'll be adding a few items to this blog before I leave for my trip. Oh yeah, did I mention that I'll be spending a month in Costa Rica and Nicaragua? I leave on August 2nd and return to Mad-town on September 8th. I hear that internet cafes are easy to come by, so I might post a picture or two during the trip. I don't want to spend more time on the internet than I do out in nature, so no whining if I don't update this often enough. I mean it. Go have your whine and cheese pity party elsewhere.

Next, this blog may also wind up serving as a chronicle of my (mis)adventures in San Francisco starting in September.

Penultimately, if you have a blog and/or website, don't worry if I haven't created a link for it yet. It's just that I'm lazy. Or else I don't like you. Whichever.

Finally, keep it clean folks. Mom and Dad might check up on me every once in a while. Don't get me in trouble with the 'rents. They still think I'm the good child.

I don't have my new digital camera yet, so y'all will just have to be satisfied with a picture of me and the ladies gettin' a leg up.

We are lovely, no?

More to follow. I swear.