The San Nicolas Times

If San Nicolas had a daily newspaper, this is what today's issue would look like.

News: Local Teenager Elopes

Etni with her father

When English teacher David Wiegner took attendance in his 10^th grade class on Monday morning, one student, 15-year-old Etni Salas, was absent. Normally, this would have passed unnoticed. But as Etni's friends Katherine and Keyla told it, this absence wasn't a normal one: over the weekend, Etni had eloped.

No one knew about Etni's plans to get married – not her teachers, not her parents, not even her best friend Katherine. And as of Monday morning, none of these people know where she is either. “I really hope police are investigating her disappearance,” says Wiegner. “It sounds a little shady.”

Five months earlier, Etni's family had celebrated her quinceañera, a big party that traditionally marks a girl becoming a woman. Though she has never been a top student, Etni is a sociable young woman, enthusiastic about singing and cooking, who just a few weeks ago led her group to win the school's English song competition.

In rural San Nicolas and surrounding communities, getting married at 14 or 15 years old is certainly not unheard of. Every year, young women drop out of school because they've gotten married and are now required to stay at home and take care of a husband. But Etni's sudden marriage and subsequent disappearance seem to be a different case altogether. “I just hope she is safe,” says Wiegner.

Weather: Torrential Rains Finally Flood Streets

After months of drought, “la niña” finally decided to make an appearance last Saturday. Many farmers had all but given up on planting anything this year, having lost four months of the normal rainy season to drought. But on Saturday, everything changed.

All day, rain dumped from the clouds that had enveloped San Nicolas for the past week. The streets became rivers and people's yards became lakes. The rain pounding on tin roofs made all conversation impossible. “I have never seen such huge rain drops,” said local gringa, Sarah Rich. (Though admittedly, this is her first rainy season in Nicaragua.) “We thought we had fixed all of the holes in our roof, but on Saturday we had eight buckets out, collecting drips in our room.”

Farmers are unsure whether the rain is here to stay (in which case they can finally plant the crops they have held off on for so long), or whether it was a one-day fluke. For vegetables like pumpkins that need at least five months to grow, it's already too late; the rainy season is scheduled to end, as usual, in November.

Sports: Women Play a Fierce Match in First All-Women's Soccer League

The Barcelona-San Nicolas women's soccer team

For the first time ever, women have their own official soccer league in San Nicolas. On Sunday afternoons it has always been typical to see men out on the field in town, kicking a soccer ball around or playing baseball. But finally women are in on the soccer action too, and they are taking it very seriously.

The two San Nicolas women's teams played a heated match on Sunday, ultimately tying 1-1. The first goal was scored during the first half by the Manchester United team, launching an amazing ball into the upper corner of the goal. At the end of a scrappy second half with lots of injuries, Carmen Noelia of the Barcelona team scored the second goal.

“I hope that this women's league will be really good for women in San Nicolas,” said gringa Sarah Rich of the Barcelona team. “It is the first athletic outlet of its kind for women here, and I hope that it can start to change some of the very traditional ideas people have about what is a woman's domain and what is a man's domain.”