Today our activity after class was a hike to Jesus. Armed with water bottles and flip flops we began walking through the outskirts of San Juan. Down dirt roads, and mud puddles we followed our two teachers, Fabienne and I. Fabienne is Swiss, and studying at the school for four weeks before she spends six more months traveling through Central and South America. She will fly out of Argentina in December. Right now she speaks German, Swiss German, French and English. Spanish is her new language and we are both learning together with private teachers. She's great, really fun to hang out with, and I'm glad we get to do these things together. First we walked along a the back streets of San Juan with a warning to not walk them at night, two lone white girls could get into some trouble, and then we crossed a little San Francisco bridge.
I'm not kidding it was an exact replica except designed for foot traffic, not cars. After crossing the "bay" we climbed these steep stairs to an even steeper street. Turns out there is a really rich neighborhood in San Juan, where the houses seem to belong in Beverly Hills, not Nicaragua. Strange how such poverty and wealth always seems to co-exist.
Panting like a dying race horse, we crested the hill and then still had more stairs to come to reach the statue. After paying our $1 entry, we got an amazing view of the bay of San Juan, the waves breaking in a perfect line creating white lines along the shore. Jesus stood pointing out toward the bay with some unknown message, while we snapped photos and enjoyed the view. Great exercise and a great first activity.
Back at the beach, we strolled through the main part of town, and it is has a very "beachy" feel with palm fawn huts for restaurants, stray dogs, and people lazing in hammocks. Buildings are brightly colored and people sell jewelry on the sidewalk. From the beach we looked back at Jesus and smiled knowing we'd been up that high and now were back on earth again. Welcome to life in perspective.
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