Our First Christmas in Nicaragua!

An update from us is long overdue, and now I'm not sure where to begin, so I decided that I'd start with our Christmas, since I just added a whole album of photos to our site for your viewing pleasure.

We had hoped that one day we would get to have a Christmas vacation just the two of us... Well that day finally came!  Here we are in Nicaragua with no family visits in sight!  So instead of pouting, we took the opportunity to explore new territory and went to the Spanish colonial city of Granada for three nights.  It is only about 45 minutes by bus from Managua, so it's an easy, stress-free trip.   

Granada's Famous Cathedral in the Central Park.

From the bell tower of La Merced.

Our Hotel - Santa Lucia Social Club.

Merry Christmas from tropical Nicaragua!

We stayed at a lovely hotel with only two other guests at the time.  So basically, we had our own private hotel equipped with a pool, full kitchen and cabana.  Our room was spacious and all the doors and windows were round!  It was a great place to relax and soak in the sun.  We strolled throughout the city exploring churches (from the altars to the bell towers), learned about cacao and sipped on hand-crafted hot chocolate in a café, and ate delicious meals after dark in outdoor patios of quaint little restaurants.

On Christmas Eve, we found two masses that were going on in the beautiful Catholic churches in the city.  Check out more photos of the churches, manger scenes and decorations at our photo site.  We soaked in the spirit of Christmas as incense drifted through the church, while listening to a choir and a message encouraging us to see past all the commercialism and seek the true meaning of Christmas.  Firecrackers went off throughout the night, culminating in a grand finale at midnight.  It was energizing to experience new traditions in a new culture. 

On Christmas Day, we rented bicycles and biked along a back road to a peninsula.  We found a restaurant along Lake Nicaragua with views of the Granada Islands. and in the distance, Ometepe Island that holds two towering volcanoes.   On Christmas Day, everyone goes to the beach or the lake to swim. This was indeed the case as we biked along the main beach.  Street vendors selling everything from ice cream to fresh coconuts, children swimming, parents hanging out, people biking around, BBQ grills, coolers and lots of family time!  If I was in the States, I would have thought it was the 4th of July.  It was wonderful to see all the action and great people-watching from our bicycles!

Spanish lesson:  nadar = to swim; bañarse = to bath oneself
Most Nicaraguans do not know how to swim, so instead of using the verb nadar, they use the verb bañarse.  If you ask someone if they will go swimming with you, they'll say NO, I can't swim!  But they they may go in the water anyways, and cool off where they can stand.


We returned to Managua 110% relaxed and refreshed from the holidays.  Here's the link to more photos on our Shutterfly site!  Check out our Granada Christmas album and more!    http://transitiontimes.shutterfly.com/pictures/345 

Locked-In & Locked-Out

The pigs that live across the street!

On Saturday, December 4th, we packed up our things and said goodbye to our host family in Managua.  It was time to head to Teustepe for the week so our house could get some needed repairs!  We were excited to get out of the city and see our place again since it had been one whole month since we had been there.  We arrived safely with clothes, towels and bedding, in addition to a week's worth of fruit and veggies.  The following morning we went to our landlady's house to pay our rent and check in about the repairs that would be done.  We returned to our place and unlocked the front gate when I noticed a mother pig and her baby were being let outside down the street from us.  They were walking around like a pet dog would be, sniffing in the grass and walking up the sidewalk.  I found this to be quite amusing and ran inside to get the camera.  After a few photos, I locked our front gate (from the inside) and went in our front door (which we usually leave open for more of a breeze.)  I heard someone at the door, so I went to see who was there.  A woman was standing at our gate, and she introduced herself as Megan, who just arrived in town with the Peace Corps.  She lives across the street in the house where the pigs live.  How ironic, right?!  Another gringo living a couple of houses down from us.  Nate heard that I was speaking English with someone and came to introduce himself.  Moments later a gust of wind blew our front door shut.  Our mouths dropped, as we realized that neither one of us had keys - we were locked out of our house and yet locked in our porch.  The front door can only be opened with a key, and the gate needs to be unlocked with a key to get out - plus there's a roof over this area, so there was no way to climb over the gate, and metal bars over the window prevented us from entering that way.  We stood sheepishly on our little isolated porch, and asked our new neighbor to go to our landlady's house for help.  Off she went, and returned with our landlady and her husband.  They looked worried and weren't laughing.  Nate and I were just embarrassed and felt stupid that the situation occurred.  Luckily, they had a key to the gate, but not to the front door.  So we went around to the back yard and scaled the the fence .  We have two doors in our backyard (one to our bedroom, one to our kitchen), and each of them has a metal gate with a padlock and a wooden door with locks on the inside.  Luckily we had left the wooden doors open, so we just had to somehow access the key for the metal gate, which was on a table, out of arm's reach.  Sticks were not long enough to reach, but then Nate had the brilliant idea to reach in and move the table towards us so we could access the key on the table!  WOW, quite the impressive break-in!  Could have been much worse, but we learned several valuable lessons.  #1: Keep your keys in your pocket at all times.  #2: Use a brick to hold open the front door.  And #3: Make sure your landlady has a copy of your house key as well!!  The adventures never cease in the lives of Nate and Liz, so stay tuned for more!!

La Playa

Last Sunday we went to the beach!  To be exact, on November 29^th we floated and swam in the Pacific Ocean….so awesome!!  One of the perks of living in the tropics!  It was a great Sunday afternoon get-away to the beach!  We went with three others in a personal truck, which made getting there a breeze!  It’s only about one hour to the closest beach from Managua.  We landed in Masachapa around lunch time and found a great hotel/restaurant to dine in.  The second-floor patio over-looking the beach at Hotel Summer was a winner.  We enjoyed delicious grilled fish and fresh-squeezed lemonade (without excessive amounts of sugar—quite a surprise).  Then we strolled along the beach and soaked in the sun. It was hard to believe that we were actually at the beach.  The five of us swam a while in the calm waters.  We were in an inlet of sorts, so the water was very calm and boats could easily launch from shore, to set off for an all-night fishing spree.  We saw many men preparing for this on the shore.  It wasn’t a surfing Mecca by any means, but it was a perfect place to float tranquilly.  I felt the stressors of the city melt away and I slowly surrendered myself to the salty waters.  Nothing more perfect in that moment!  We watched the sun set in all its splendor from the restaurant veranda and piled into the truck for our journey back to Managua.  A time for relaxation and self-care is sometimes a necessity.


If you want to see more photos, check out our album we posted!  
http://transitiontimes.shutterfly.com/pictures/275

The Old Man Selling Water

Out of the hundreds, if not thousands, of faces I see every day, it's interesting which ones stick with me.  Today I've been thinking a lot about an old man we encountered at Malecon, a park near the ruins of the old cathedral in Managua.  He sported a beat-up old cowboy hat and button down shirt, with a face wrinkled and leathery from years spent under the sun.  He was barely five feet tall, hunched under a bag of water he was selling.  You don't see much bottled water here, mostly just little bags that people bite off the corners and then drink.  He approached us and asked us if we wanted to buy some bags of water.  We said no, but he followed us and asked us again.  This time he was practically begging, pleading with us to buy some of his water.  It broke my heart to see someone like him, probably around my grandpa's age, who should be relaxing and enjoying his latter years of life.  Instead, he was out in the heat, working so hard to try to sell water for about a dime a piece.  I don't know exactly why I didn't buy any from him - maybe because I wasn't that thirsty then, or because I didn't have any small change.  Whatever my excuse was at the time, I now wish I had bought some water from him.  This happened about two weeks ago, but I still can picture his face in my mind.  When I told Liz I had been thinking a lot about the old water vendor lately, she said, "That's interesting, because I was just thinking about him earlier today."  I don't know what profound conclusions to draw from this - if anything, maybe it is to be more aware of those around us, and try to help and support them in little ways if possible - even if it's only buying a bag of water.

Our Photo Albums

We're new to this whole blogging thing, so please bear with us we try to figure out the best way to share what's happening in our lives with everyone.  We didn't want to innundate you with photos on this blog, preferring to keep this site for quasi-profound ramblings, but those of you who wish to view more of Nicaragua are in luck.  We recently set up a photo sharing site through Shutterfly, which you can view by clicking on the link in the right column of our blog under the heading "Liz and Nate's Photo Albums."  Or, simply click on this link: http://transitiontimes.shutterfly.com/  The photo albums can be viewed by clicking on the "Pictures & Videos" heading.  Hope you enjoy!  We will update the Shutterfly site with photos, and we'll update this blog again soon with more tales of adventures down here in Nicaragua.

MCC Office

MCC Office in Managua or "CCM"

The MCC office became our first home in Nicaragua.  It's situated in a nice neighborhood (Linda Vista) in the north-eastern edge of Managua, the capital.  We stayed our first night in country here at "CCM" as they say here.  [Most acronyms in Spanish tend to be the opposite of their English counterparts.]  We will be staying here off and on throughout our next two months of language study in Managua.  Additionally CCM will be our "home base" in the city whenever we need a place to stay.   It's also great to Internet & Skype access here.  Also, the MCC office is the home of our Country Representative, Angela. 

Nate in the kitchen at the MCC office (really it's a house).

The dining room.

The living room & place to have meetings.  Note the fans on the wall!

Our "adopted" bedroom.

Our new home in Teustepe!

This is our street and new home!  Check out the mountain views!

Here's Nate in front of our house after a motorcycle ride.

Here's our living room where we'll be hanging out the most.

Morning sun coming into our kitchen.

We have a HUGE back yard with orange and lime trees.