¡JinotepeJinotepeJinotepeJinotepe!

If you want to come visit me where I am, step out in the street until you hear a bus driver yelling the above, over and over and over. Depending on where you are, the ride may cost you a bit more than the 3 cordobas it costs me. But don't worry. There are 16 cordobas to the dollar.

I am in Jinotepe, Nicaragua, on the last day of my working visit with the Florida Fly-ins class from UF. This morning I finished the last few interviews for a story about the care of disabled children here in the second-poorest country in the hemisphere.

In the past week, I have visited dirt-floored homes, ridden three-wheeled taxis, gorged myself on fried plantains, heard Barry Manilow's "Mandy" five times on the radio, and asked directions to a deaf-mute kid's jungle hut from a guy with a machete. And that was just in my capacity as a reporter. In my tourist guise, I drove to the top of a volcano that constantly spews clouds of smelly smoke. If we stayed quiet, we could hear the lava gurgle.

The beauty of it all is that I can still blog.