American Sensibilities

Today was the first day on the trip that we got to really tour around a city, witnessing the ins and outs of what occurred on a daily basis. We ventured to the local market, and this was an interesting experience for me. When one walks through the market, it is open to the air and sellers stick their merchandise on the wooden tables in front of them. The roof was a combination of crinkled tin and garbage bags. This is the first place that really struck me as genuinely different on this trip. Meat was just lain out at room temperature on the tables right in front of you, with flies buzzing around and customers reaching out to handle the raw meat only to decide to not purchase and return it to the stack of meat.

This experience made me realize just how clinical individuals are within the United States. It is very rare to find a place that would have meat just lying out in the open like that for most places have it behind windows in refrigerated display. It would also be equally hard if not harder to find a location that allowed the customer to handle raw meat, without prior knowledge as to the cleanliness of one's hands. We are quite the compilation of hypochondriacs. I am not complaining, I grew up in the United States and so having food prep areas and food sellers as clean as a sanitarium is just how I like it, but this experience made me think about how, we don't really NEED to be as stringent with our food preparation. It makes us feel safer to think that up until it is cooked everything was handled professionally and cleanly, but truly the temperatures at which we cook our foods would kill almost anything that happened to be on the meat before hand.

This experience also made me think about how we often, in the united states, we try and separate ourselves as much from nature as possible, to such a point then when we make it a point in going out in nature just to experience it (hiking, camping, boating, etc.). It is considered a sign of a poor house to have openings to the outside that can't be sealed immediately and completely. In Costa Rica and Nicaragua, even the hotels (which are very very extravagant for the areas in which we are staying) have gaps between the ceiling and walls on purpose to let natural heat and cool into the house or room. The only thing that separates the occupant from the outside world is a screen on a lot of the windows. Now, some of the separation makes sense. In North America, it gets much colder than Costa Rica and Nicaragua and so having a house sealed up is necessary to live comfortably during an South Dakotan winter (strictly as an example because that is where my hometown is). However, I have been to the south a couple times, visiting briefly and never staying more than a day, and the temperature there I would expect remains constant enough in, say Florida, that a similar architecture could possibly be employed, and yet as far as I am aware it is not. I, for one, quite enjoy the the effortless flow and oneness of the outside with the inside.

Overall, today was enlightening. If not for what was strictly on the guided tours but for the comparisons that can be drawn between america and america. (Tip, don't call the United States "America." America comprises two different continents and multiple countries.)

As always, below are some pictures that I have taken of my time in Nicaragua. For the heck of it, I will link it the pictures of Costa Rica also, being as it was talked about some in this post also. Hopefully they both work; fingers crossed.

Costa Rica
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150499136747550.386664.584287549&type=3&l=9169d04fe8

Nicaragua
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150509344552550.388065.584287549&type=1&l=a8c783f26f