Vegas baby!

Greetings all,
Up until now I have only ever written these e-mails when traveling abroad. However, my good friend Laura and I spent this past weekend in Vegas, and I think it's plenty foreign enough to merit a few musings.
First of all, here's a list of classic Vegas activities in which I did not participate:
1) Ascend the "Eiffel Tower". It was too windy. Apparently. I don't think they shut down the real Eiffel Tower due to wind. Silly American hyper safety concerns.
2) See the Bellagio fountain show. Again, due to high winds.
3) Gamble away my life savings. No need for that as my tuition bills for next year will suck them dry quite efficiently.
4) See Wayne Newton. Self explanatory.
5) Get married. However I did receive an offer while walking past the very classy Chapel of the Bells.

That said, Laura and I did partake in a number of typical Vegas attractions. We saw an Elvis impersonator. Actually we saw an Elvis impersonator, a Britney Spears impersonator, a Christina Aguilera impersonator, a Tim McGraw impersonator and MIchael Jackson impersonator. All in one show. And they were all quite good. Though the Britney impersonator has retro Britney abs instead of the current ever pregnant look. We saw one of the four (a fifth opens in June!) currently playing Cirque de Soleil shows. As far as we could make out it was about a baby turning into an enormous snail. Certainly stunning though. We ate more than we should have at the Excalibur buffet (hooray for American gluttony!). We gambled a bit (Laura won $5.75, I lost $25) and we ran across many, many weddings. (Bride count for the two days: 19)
This was my second trip to Vegas, but as the last one was when I was about 12, and all the mega casinos are 5-7 years old, the experience was quite new to me. A few observations on Las Vegas in general. The strip is quite long. We found this out our first day when we ended up walking nearly the entire length of it. Even for a New Yorker like me this led to some sore feet. The mega-city casinos look like Epcot at Disney World, only darker. Vegas-style Paris, New York and Venice are all way too clean, just like Disney. But with no windows. Or clocks. And more alcohol. Lots more alcohol. Approximately half of the escalators seem to be out of service at any given time. Suspiciously, they seem disproportionately to be the escalators leading out of the casinos. Hmmm. Las Vegas is full of swank restaurants but decidedly unswank patrons. Lots of tank tops and shorts. And about fifty percent of the women seem to have had half their clothing lost during the course of the day. This happy coincidence allows them to reveal to the entire world that they spend approximately 16 hours a day in the gym working on their abs. Las Vegas must also be the most smoker friendly city in the US. Though the casinos have some sort of crazy efficient ventilation system so you really don't smell it much. Perhaps this is just my having lived in New York too long, but everyone in Vegas is shockingly polite. I have grown quite unaccustomed to having people say "excuse me" when they slam into me on the street, let alone when they almost bump into me. That and the holding doors and having employees suggest ways for me to save money on the things I am purchasing from the store. Wow. Though Las Vegas walkers will never match the skill of New Yorkers.

Now why did you go to Vegas this weekend, you ask? Aren't I leaving for Europe for several months very soon? The answer to the second question is yes, I leave tomorrow. The answer to the first is one word: MADONNA. Madonna is touring this summer and as her schedule is essentially the inverse that of my travel plans extreme measures were necessary for Laura and I to fulfill our plan to attend her tour. Hence the trip to Vegas. And we most certainly were not disappointed. She was fabulous. Amazing. Unbelievable. She's 47 and yet can dance and sing for two hours straight without losing her breath. And she looks better than most 17 year olds ever could hope to. She began the show by descending from the ceiling inside a huge disco ball. She was quite far away, even from our $175 seats, but her energy filled the entire arena. She performed just about all of her new album, along with a number of classics including "Lucky Star" and "Like a Virgin". Her tour is just starting and I highly recommend attending if you can. Well worth the (admittedly astronomical) ticket price.
I hope you all are doing well. E-mails for London/Berlin/Austria are soon to come.
Happy Memorial Day!
Molly

¿Adónde vas, chela?

3 May 2006
Buenos días de Managua.
For those of you who don´t frequent this sweltering city of two million, here´s a translation of the subject line. "Adónde vas" means (in Nicargua or anywhere else Spanish speaking) "where are you going?". Chela (or chele for a man) however is a very Nica word used to refer to people of my coloring. According to the Real Academia dictionary, it comes from the Nahuatl (pre-conquistador language of much of Central America) for green or unripe. I find this etymology very amusing, but then that won´t surprise anyone. Anyway, that is often how the taxi drivers ask me where I want to go. No blending in for me down here as usual.
Things are hectic (exciting?) as always in Managua. A transit strike has been threatened to start each day, but every morning I wake up and still see the tricked out American school busses in the streets and know that thus far the strike has been averted. I am very lucky to have a good taxista (cabbie) friend down here though, so I should be able to continue roaming the city seeking out deaf people strike or no strike.
Overall things are going quite well on this, my first solo trip to Nicaragua. The weather is as hot and humid as ever and the shower is as cold as ever. I have learned a few new Nica words in the last week. Guess how you say handcuffs in Spanish (or at least Nica Spanish)? Esposas. Yup, that´s right. Wives. Handuffs, wives, all the same. Apparently. Why have I learned the word for handcuffs you ask? Well on my flight from Houston to Managua there were about 15 men handcuffed together on the plane. I was not aware that people were deported on commercial flights. Perhaps it´s another brilliant idea of W´s. . .
In addition to Spanish I´ve been signing as much as my brain will allow. It is getting easier and I no longer get lost for entire
topics during a conversation. Can´t ask for much more than that. I have however learned of one thing that makes it absolutely impossible for me to sign. Holding a baby. On Monday I visited one of our subjects here who had just had a baby. He was very cute but I found it virtually impossible to converse while I had the baby in my arms. She, on the other hand, had no problem at all. I do, however, still have my special touch with Nica babies. He peed all over me. Now I am two for two!
Daylight savings time started here early Sunday morning. And I´d say that now, four days later, about half of the people down here know that the time has changed. You can imagine this scheduling problems this causes. Up until it actually happened about half of the people I talked to assured me that the time was not actually going to change because people hadn´t like the change last year. The other half of the people I talked to said it was going to change, but most thought it would be on Monday. Then I missed the first hour of a movie on Sunday because the movie theater thought the time had changed already. It´s enough to make your head spin. And to make it very hard to make appointments with people. Hopefully in the next day or two everyone will synchronize. Vamos a ver...
I´m off to lunch now at Managua´s only organic restaurant. Organic and air conditioned. Sometimes you have to spoil yourself.
Hope you all are well!
Saludos,
Molly