The Bread Lady!

Each night around eight o' clock, an amazing thing happens. A saintly old woman comes traipsing through the street with a wooden cart loaded with delicious homemade breads, cakes, and rolls. Incredible honey sweet-rolls cost five cents each, so it is easy to justify the purchase and consumption of otherwise unseemly amounts of carbs. Please enjoy this little video, starring myself and the object of my obsession.

mas y mas

things are still good! we've had another full week of 4 hour morning spanish classes and are filling up our afternoons quickly with baseball, english classes and spanish conversations.

baseball (beisbol) has been super fun. all my church league softball practice has really paid off - now dave and i help lead drills and games for groups of country kids that get trucked into town to play. it's really interesting on days when not many helpers show up and dave and i are in charge of all the girls. they find it really amusing to interpret what we mean when we say "you push ball to her when i bat the ball in the earth."

we've also been checking out some english schools to look for volunteer opportunities. sitting in on some classes has made us realize how hard english is. i received an e-mail from someone studying english and she closed the e-mail with this phrase: "I wait for your comprehesion...overcoat for our englishman." she is still waiting for my comprehension.

getting involved in these activities has enabled us to talk to native nicaraguans not in the tourist industry. we went to a dinner party last night and much of the conversation revolved around the recent civil war and how much poverty nicaragua still has. it's been kind of a rough week in that sense, seeing more of the poverty as we venture out of the city center and trying to comprehend what kind of life these people have. the government has changed from dictatorship to democratic, but only in name, it seems. there is no enforced minimum wage and people work for whatever they can get. the hospitals and school are now free, but they don't pay teachers and nurses enough to live on, so they are all terrible. it's hard to live near poverty with no idea what to do about it. any ideas are welcome....

love you guys! hopefully you can see the video of kids playing kickball we took on our way to breakfast. more from dave soon!

Monkeys del Mar

Yesterday, we participated in our very first act of kitschy tourism: a one-hour boat ride on Lake Nicaragua. Here's a brief overview:

This cute little monkey lives with three friends on an idyllic island in Lake Nicaragua, which, as we learned, is the seventh largest lake in the world. He passes his days lounging in tree branches, munching tasty treats, and entertaining tourists. 

When we arrived at his island, our boat captain idled the boat up close, giving us some great photo opportunities. But the more we looked, the more we noticed a few curiosities: this was the only island containing monkeys, and it was a miniscule island seemingly devoid of food. As we were pondering our primate pal, another tourist boat idled up close, and its captain held out what looked like a large flower, which the monkey took and ate. We began to ask our captain a few questions in broken Spanish: 

"Are the monkeys only on this island?"  "Si." 

"Do they only eat what the tourists feed them?"  "Si."  

When pressed, he admitted that the monkeys had, in fact, been strategically relocated to the island for the benefit of the tourists and the tourist industry. The monkey's idyllic life suddenly became just a little bit sadder.  

The lake is quite beautiful, though, with its marshy inlets and hundreds of tiny islands, some deserted and others home to beautiful palaces owned by wealthy Nicaraguans and American retirees. Not surprisingly, the gentleman who owns Nicaragua's primary rum, beer, auto, credit card, and boat companies also owns a rather nice home on his own private island.  Now if he would just buy those monkeys a bigger island and some banana plants . . .

hello from Jenna! it's been a bit of a rough start for me here in Nicaragua. mainly because it was so incredibly hot. and not so much Indiana or Arizona or North Carolina hot. the kind of hot that only a country without air conditioning or safe-to-eat ice can have. and then i got sick - a cold i think. :( but i feel much better now and have exciting news!

1. dogs are everywhere here. and they are lovely and they love me. maybe not love in a real love sense, but they follow me. i think stray animals are supposed to be sad, but they bring me a lot of joy, seeing them lounging in shady doorways and...stuff. i guess that's mostly all they do. follow and lounge. but it's incredible.

2. when children want to stop doing something here they say "bom bom" and that means, "i'm done. i'd like to stop, please." so you're feeding them carrots and they say "bom bom" and that's that. no spitting or screaming or what not. how smart is that? dave and i have implemented the system into our conversings, so we'll let you know how it goes.

3. some toilets here do not flush. not in the port-o-potty way, but in a way which requires you to take the bucket outside your stall, walk to a large rainbarrel of water, fill the bucket and come back to your stall and pour the water in. i guess gravity takes care of the rest, because after a few rounds it seems to take the bad and leave the good. it's an ok system, but a bit of a bummer to pick up the "bathroom bucket" before washing your hands.

4. we made some friends! well, friends of friends that work where we will volunteer. so that's good! pictures to prove them soon. and we like our spanish classes. "like" is actually the median of our feelings toward them, mine being love and dave's being "they're ok, but totally great because i love you". i think once he can form sentences it'll get better...

5. we're slowly finding ways to get involved in Granada. we're trying out teaching english tomorrow, so that will give us something for the afternoons. and dave found a group of Nicos to play basketball with, so once he learns "pass" and "shoot" and "watch out" he's set. and i found a place to go to paint twice a week, with other Nicos and americans. i tried to ask about tap dance lessons for me, but people only seem confused about "baila de tap"...or maybe they're just confused that an adult wants to take class??

ok. more soon. thanks for checking up on us. even though central america is so cosey between nor-amer and so-amer it can get lonely here... :) love you guys!

bom bom.

Comida, Cerveza, and Such

It's our third post:  high time we said something about the delightful food and drink we've been enjoying here in Granada. 

This is a picture of Jenna enjoying a "Premium" brand Nicaraguan beer. "Premium" is so named because it tastes 50% less like water than the other leading Nicaraguan beers, which means that it tastes 180% less like water than Budweiser. It's not half bad. In a fancy establishment like the one Jenna is gracing in this photo, a refreshing Premium goes for about $.65. It's these little things that make all the sweating worthwhile.

The typical lunch in Nicaragua (the "comida corrientes") consists of a plate of rice, beans, fried plantains, and some kind of meat (carne or pollo usually). It's very hearty, and tends to make a person very sleepy in the early afternoon (yaaaaawn).

Also popular are all varieties of jugos, tasty juices made from fruit, ice, and sugar. Beet juice with lemon? Yep! Rice and pineapple juice with sugar? Hooray! Jenna and I have enjoyed Dragonfruit jugo and Hibiscus flower jugo thus far. Staving off scurvy never tasted so good!

  

Welcome to Granada!

After narrowly escaping the Houston George Bush airport ahead of hurricane Ike, we arrived here in Granada safe and sound on Thursday night.  We've spent a few days walking around town, taking in the sights and sounds before we begin Spanish classes tomorrow (Monday).  

First of all, there are cats on the roofs here.  Entire societies of felines tiptoe along from one roof to another, hunting for small birds and rodents.  Occasionally they surprise a homeowner by leaping down into an open courtyard in order to attack an unlucky hummingbird or a plate of rice and beans.

We've been staying at a guesthouse with an extremely kind family.  They even brought us along on an outing to the Nicaraguan national zoo with their toddler, Ernesto.  Ernesto loves running, and he loves birds almost as much as a roofcat.  This made the zoo trip quite entertaining!

Granada is a colorful colonial city of exceptional beauty.  There are several Spanish churches built in the 16th century, their stucco walls cracking and mud-caked while their sanctuaries are lovingly cared for and pristine.

Almost as soon as we arrived, we met Mr. Cool.  Mr. Cool is a wanderer from the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua, where Caribbean culture dominates in a way that seems strange in Spanish Latin America.  He speaks perfect English without so much as a hint of a Spanish accent, and would seem much more at home in Jamaica than Granada.  He wanders the streets here, painting small pictures on pieces of clay and selling them to tourists.  With a kindness typical of the people we have met here so far, Mr. Cool composed a spontaneous love poem for us, speaking with the relaxed cadence of the Caribbean as he pointed to the trees, the birds, and the flowers of Granada.

Be sure to check out our pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/davidmstaples

Octubre

Green Valley, AZ. One week to departure.

On our morning walk today, I once again suggested to Jenna that we someday name our firstborn son "Octubre." While many of you may be nodding your head with approval, or even thinking to yourself, "why didn't I think of that?" this suggestion is actually problematic for a number of reasons.  First, there's my assumption that our firstborn will, of course, be male.  Second, as Jenna pointed out, there's the fact that "Octubre" sounds a lot like a James Bond super-villain, or perhaps a small, pudgy Bavarian lad from a bygone era. 

"Dave, do you really want to subject him to a childhood nickname like Octopus Boy?" Jenna asked. 

"It'll be worth it," I assured her. "He'll thank us later in life, when he's the head of a covert criminal enterprise, or a famed marine biologist."

As you can see, I've been boning up on some Spanish basics these final weeks in the States in preparation for our great Nicaraguan adventure. Just simple things, like the days of the week, the colors of the rainbow, and, of course, the months of the year. This morning on our walk Jenna taught me the word for "fork." This gave rise to another option for children's names: "El Tenedor."

"El Tenedor?" Jenna asked. 

"Yes, El Tenedor. It's a great name. Sounds like a bullfighter. Or maybe El Tenedor could just be his nickname, or middle name. You know, Octubre "El Tenedor" Staples. That's nice."

We're still thinking it over.