Stanford

A few weeks after our trip to the East coast, I returned to the US for a trip to Palo Alto ("tall stick"), California to visit Stanford Law School. Though we needed to buy sweaters and mittens for our visit to the East, the only things I found myself lacking at Stanford were sunglasses and sunscreen; the weather was beautiful, in the middle 70s to low 80s every day.

If I were choosing a law school based on weather and asthetics, Stanford would have won hands down. As it turned out, though, Stanford would have been my choice even without those bonuses; it was the perfect mix of all the things I loved about the other schools: it is one of the country's best law schools and will certainly open up a lot of opportunities to me, it had beautiful facilities, a really welcoming faculty, and students that seemed genuinely happy to be there; and it just felt right even in the first few hours of my visit. After talking to Paul on the phone one of my last nights there, he finally confessed that he had been rooting for the bike-friendly, dog-friendly, warm weather, close-to-an-Ikea Palo Alto all along, and we came to the surprisingly easy decision that we'll call Palo Alto home for the next few years.

I can't really capture the sense of community or the academic opportunities or the gut feeling that I got there, but I can express the beautiful surroundings, so here goes. Palm Drive is the famous one mile stretch of road lined with palm trees leading into the Stanford campus and the quad:

Here's the Stanford Memorial Church in the quad:

Stanford has fountains all over the campus, and unlike Truman, Stanford both keeps its fountains full and allows people to enjoy them. On the weekday I was there, there were students in swimsuits sunbathing in the fountains and others wading in to cool off between classes. Over the weekend there were tons of families on campus riding bikes or rollerblading or having a picnic, and plenty of people there with their dogs playing frisbee or cooling off in a fountain:

The law school itself is in one U-shaped building just a few minutes' walk from the student union, bookstore, post office, and the heart of campus. The middle section has the law school café with a beautiful patio out in the back and some conference rooms upstairs, the right section has the classrooms, and the left wing has the library and faculty offices.

Here's the view from the second story of the law school building. The skies really were that bright blue.

Here's the campus bookstore:

And this is the old student union:

Stanford has a tall tower, the Hoover Institute, that houses a think tank, library, and visiting faculty offices (Condoleezza Rice apparently had her office there). You can also ride to the top and take pictures, so I did. Here's the view to the north with the San Francisco Bay in the background:

And here's the view to the south of the law school building and the mountains back behind:

After the three days of admitted students events, I was sold. To make the trip even better, our friends Keith and Erin made the trip up from San Diego to meet me, catch up, and explore Palo Alto and San Francisco. Though the 7-1/2 hour trip is enough of a trek by itself, Keith ane Erin deserve even more credit for coming considering that they made the trip with their dog, survived the LA traffic, and spent seemingly endless hours in Wal-Mart thanks to a tire blowout. They finally arrived, and we stayed up late catching up. They (understandably) spent the next morning sleeping in while I finished the admitted students weekend by having breakfast with a lot of my future classmates and observing a class. That afternoon, Keith, Erin, and I reunited and went into San Francisco to Fisherman's Wharf and took a boat ride around the bay. We went under the Golden Gate bridge:

Here are Keith and Erin with the Golden Gate Bridge behind them:

And we went around the island of Alcatraz:

One of my favorite parts of the day were the sea lions that camp out on the docks of Pier 39. They were pretty noisy, a little smelly, and I'm sure Dora would have lumped them into the monkey family, but I thought they were pretty cute.

More than a year after starting the law school process and beginning to think about post-Peace Corps plans, it's a great relief to know where I'll be studying and where we'll be living. After having no control over where we did our Peace Corps service, it's quite the change to have had full control over where we'll be living next, and to have picked a place that's so easy to be exited about. Just today Paul found a list of 103 things to do in San Francisco; I've got #56 covered, so only 102 to go!

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9,055 Frequent Flyer Miles Later...

In March, we made a trip to the US to visit many of the east coast law schools that I was considering.  The schools I visited were having admitted students weekends in which they invite their admits to come and visit (most schools reimburse travel costs, which is why this trip was possible) and they talk about the school's strengths and give the admitted students the opportunity to sit through a million Q&As and panel discussions to try and make the law school decision a little easier.  Though I had hoped that I would love one school and hate all the rest (and thereby have a really easy decision), that of course didn't happen and I liked all the schools for very different reasons.

After sitting in Managua's airport for a four hour delay, we finally arrived in Boston.  Though our Google Map directions to our hotel didn't quite work out, we did get a nice tour of Boston at night.

We brought along all the pants and long-sleeved shirts that we had, but we still had to do a couple of emergency Wal-Mart and Target trips to get weather-appropriate clothing.

Our first stop was New Haven, Connecticut to visit Yale.  The architecture was really pretty, but since Yale rejected me just a few weeks after the visit, no need to dwell much on the school (no hard feelings, though).

By far the most successful part of the Connecticut trip was our visit to its gigantic Ikea.  We were like kids in a candy store looking at all the neat, cheap stuff they had on display.  All potential law school cities were vetted that night to make sure they had an Ikea nearby (they all did).

After our night in New Haven, we went back to Boston via Providence, Rhode Island and met up with Dylan and Stefani, our wonderful Harvard hosts.

We had a free day before the admitted students weekend events began, so we went into Boston to do some touristy stuff like eat famous pastries, sample some awesome New England clam chowders, and take pictures of Barack Obama cutouts wearing Harvard t-shirts.

It was a remarkably nice Saturday for Boston in March (or so we were told) and there were lots of street performers out and about.  This guy ran and did a flip over these five people.  He cleared them easily--he probably could have made it over six.

After all the fun, I actually did spend three days at admitted student events to learn about HLS.  Here's Harvard's Langdell Hall:

After Boston, we took the Bolt Bus to New York City (I'm quite proud that our two tickets were $11 total thanks to dedicated Internet sleuthing).  Though we only had a couple of days there, we visited both NYU and Columbia's law schools and squeezed in a pretty impressive number of sites like Times Square.

Equally impressive was that we were able to squeeze into our tiny hotel room.

Rockefeller Plaza

Museum of Natural History

Here's Paul at Columbia--proof that we actually did visit the law schools along with all our touristing:

From New York City, Paul had to go back to Managua and I continued the law school tour on my own. I went from New York City to Ann Arbor, Michigan to see the University of Michigan Law, also known for its impressive architecture.

This is the reading room, though it could easily substitute for Hogwarts' Great Hall.

Apparently all the buildings on the law quad have to be built in the style seen above.  When it was time to build the new law library, the stones were too expensive.  Instead, they built the library underground with a strange, modern-looking triangle dug into the ground to let light in.

I really loved Michigan's campus and the city of Ann Arbor.  Everyone was really friendly and there was a great sense of community.  Even the squirrels were really welcoming:

After Ann Arbor, I got to go spend a few days in Springfield to catch up on laundry, replenish our dwindling mac & cheese supplies, and of course spend time with family and friends.

From there, I went back to New York City for a scholarship interview at NYU and their official admitted students day events.  I couldn't get a flight back to Nicaragua the afternoon of the interview, so I had an extra afternoon and evening to fill seeing some of the sights Paul and I hadn't made it to on our first visit. I went to the Central Park Zoo and saw the polar bear and seal feeding show:

And I spent a long time just walking around Central Park.  I must say, it has Masaya's Parque Central beat.

From there, it was back to the stifling heat of Nicaragua and the daily grind of school.  I wasn't even close to being ready to choose a law school because they all seemed great, but in very different ways--Harvard has classes, clinics, and opportunities to do anything; NYU had beautiful facilities in the city that never sleeps, and Michigan had midwestern charm and people that really seemed happy to be there.  I was becoming quite nervous about how to weigh these criteria and how to pick which school to attend,  and I still had Stanford to visit... fortunately, in the end, the decision was an easy one.

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731 Down, 47 Days to Go

I would love to say that the two years have gone by so quickly that we haven't noticed, but that's not entirely true. It feels like it's taken forever. However, one perk is finally be able to tell taxi drivers that we've been here for two years and be telling the truth. Two years ago today we came to Nicaragua; we recapped our first year already.

In the last year we've had fun with all of our visitors. We survived a transportation strike, Revolution Day, a drug bust, getting sick and having stuff stolen.

We finally found a new house, and then tried to have things fixed in said house. We made a trip home and ended up with a broken-legged puppy, but she made a full recovery, fully able to wreak havoc again. We took in a street dog and tried to give her away, but she ran away instead. Dora got a brand-new (misguided) look and found a new BFF in Luna.

We celebrated the election of a new president in the US, Thanksgiving with friends, and survived the Nicaraguan mayoral elections.

We talked about how to do laundry, tried to channel supernanny, and got introspective about the value of our service.

Right now we have just 47 days to finish our work, say goodbye, and empty our house of 2 years' worth of accumulated junk. Right now we are ready to be home with family, friends, gringo food, and, we can't lie, air conditioning.

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Our Final Visitor

With every visitor that came down here, we went to at least one new place we had never been, and each trip had its own feel.  On the Ragans' first visit, we went to Selva Negra in Matagalpa and regretted not bringing winter coats or avoiding the salad; when Laura and Nancy came, we enjoyed Pelican Eyes paradise; when my parents came, we braved the bumpy roads and one-way streets to visit León; and Danny's visit took us all the way to the Atlantic coast to ring in 2009.  My brother Jake was the last visitor we'll host in Nicaragua, and his trip was the most laid back of them all.  We knew Jake would be easygoing so we didn't really have a set plan or even reservations for where to stay during the trip.  The (lack of a) plan turned out to be a success, and we wound up visiting volcanoes all over the country and finally making it to Ometepe Island.

We started by staying a couple of nights in Masaya and riding our neighborhood bus, visiting the markets and hunting for souveniers, and enoying the best restaurants Masaya has to offer (one day was more than enough time for the restaurant part).  Here we are waiting for the bus:

We then made the journey down to Rivas to catch the ferry to Ometepe island, the large island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua that's the home to two large volcanoes.  From the water's edge, the island seems so close that you could swim to it, but that's actually not the case.  It's about an hour-long ferry ride that seems much longer when you're stuck with a lot of backpackers playing their guitars and bicycle enthusiasts wearing their padded shorts:

It gave us a great view of the volcanoes and the island, though, so we just tried to tune out Freebird.

We eventually made it to the island then took a taxi to our hotel, a nice little resort that was recommended to us by a Volunteer on the island.  We made it just in time to catch a really pretty sunset:

The next morning, Paul and Jake woke up before the sun rose to celebrate Paul's birthday and Obama's inauguration by climbing Volcán Concepción, the big, active volcano on the island.  My birthday present to Paul was that I stayed at the hotel instead of accompanying them to climb a really steep volcano.

 

The beginning of the path:

Taking a quick break on the hike up:

They couldn't go to the very top to look in because it was too windy, and the guide said it was too steep and difficult to be worth going all the way up anyway.  Here's the view from the volcano:

And proof that they were there:

There were even some monkeys up in the trees (don't tell Dora):

They hiked back down and made it back to our hostel by the middle of the afternoon in time for Paul to watch some of the inauguration activities and Jake to enjoy Paul's Nintendo DS until the battery gave out.  We went to the main city to have some dinner and explore and then left the island the following morning.

We unintentionally match a lot.

After a ferry ride back to the mainland, we took a bus up to Granada.  Masaya is only about 45 minutes from Granada in bus, so when we go we normally make it a day trip and come back to Masaya.  We had heard good things from other Volunteers about a hostel called Oasis, so we decided to give it a try and planned to stay there for two nights to be able to hang out in Granada without having to travel back and forth.  Plans changed, however when we woke up after our first night covered in flea bites.  We packed up our things, stored them in our little hostel lockers, and decided we'd spend the second night in Masaya where we'd at least know they were our own bed bugs biting us.

We decided to spend the day visiting our second volcano of the trip, Mombacho.  This was the volcano that cemented my hatred for all paths inclined, but at least this time we were only going part way up to do the canopy tour. 

On the very wire, you go from the platform to the ground and the guy at the bottom pulls on the wire so that you bounce.  My favorite is at the very end of the video when Jake crashes in to the guy:

We made it back to Granada, had some lunch and picked up our stuff from the flea-infested hostel, and went back to Masaya.   Jake's trip was quickly coming to an end, so we had to decide how we should spend his last day here: visit the old political prison? Go swimming at the Laguna de Apoyo? Visit Volcán Masaya?  Go to the zoo?  Go to the parakeet nature reserve?  Play more Nintendo DS?  We asked Jake for input, but he deferred to our judgment and said he'd be happy doing whatever.  Now, Jake and I did our fair share of bickering as kids, and a few short years ago he would have not only voiced an opinion, but he would have made sure it was the exact opposite of whatever opinion I had.  For him to be so darn agreeable was quite a shock, and it was nearly impossible for us to choose, even after consulting our guide books and telling Jake the pros and cons of each possibility.  Eventually it became apparent that Paul and I were just going to have to make a choice, so we decided to round out our volcano tour with a visit to Masaya's volcano.  Jake's response? "Oh, good.  I was just about to say I wanted to go to the volcano."

Masaya's volcano has a nice, paved road to the crater at the top and lots of trails surrounding it.  We went on the cave tour to get out of the mid-afternoon heat and to see some bats: mission accomplished on both counts.

 

We couldn't really take a lot of pictures in the cave because it was dark (we should have brought own own head lamps, because their flashlights were pretty weak), but the guide took a picture of us in the back of the cave.  It took a few tries since he was just pointing the camera at darkness.  Also, Paul and I have too many green shirts:

  

Here we are after the hike with the big crater behind us.

 

There was a lot of smoke coming out of the crater; the guide said the reddish color was because it was sulfur dioxide.  It smelled really bad and burned our throats.

 

Apparently this cross was built in the 16th century to keep the devil away; people thought the volcano was the mouth of hell.

 

Paul and I both had a great week, and since Jake never expressed an opinion to the contrary, we'll just assume that he did too.

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