Livin' and learnin' and lovin' it!

 Oh man, I love this place! And I apologize that there is so much writing in proportion to how many pictures there are, but I figure that this update will mostly take the place of my journal, so of course I have to include every little detail :)  I won't feel offended if you just look at the pictures and skip all of the commentary in between :)

So my adventures the last two days have been the market place.  We survived the first two days on granola but finally needed to go out and try to figure out how to buy some food.  We had found Pali - the supermarket, but most things you can buy in the market place for a lot less money and more options.  I thought the market just lined the main streets up by the city square like this...

...but yesterday while I was exploring I discovered that most of the market is located inside those city blocks! Super awesome! I bought what I needed yesterday but this morning took Joe and the ipod touch back with me so we could take some pictures.

One of the purchases we made was a new hat for Joe! Yay! Only $4!

Stuff! Everywhere! It's like a whole other city in there! Pretty sure I could spend a few hours a day in this place and never tire of it.  SO AWESOME!

There are different sections for different kinds of meat that are a little cooler than the rest of the building, but not sanitary at all. 

We saw a pig head, but decided not to take a picture.  You're welcome. My favorite part was that in the middle of the meat building, with meat fluids flowing everywhere, was a girl sitting on the ground selling her vegetables on tarps and in baskets.  Yummy :)

Here are some pictures from the fish section:

 

The crabs on the tables were still moving...


The food court in the middle of the "shopping mall" :)

1 banana for 1 cordoba = 25 bananas for $1.  Not bad!

But watch out for that plastic ware! I got these beauties for $1 EACH!  And believe me - I shopped around too and even used my mad negotiating skills to get them down from $1.50 each.  Decided not to buy the cheapo plastic mixing bowl for $6.  They must not have a plastic factory around here.  Where is an All-a-Dollar when I need one??  Guess I'll just keep mixing up tortilla dough in my pitcher :)

Buying some mangos... yep, she's just got some parrots on her...

This is my very first beans and tortillas dinner.  We only have one pot, so I make beans every other day and rice every other day and keep the leftovers of each.  It's kind of a trick learning how to cook with one pot, one frying pan, no microwave, no oven pans, and no mixing bowls.  Joe's been a good sport, though.  We always smell delicious smells coming out of the other two houses - but none have come out of ours yet :)  I think I need to learn how to make something with this fresh cheese stuff I always see being sold in the market.  Cheese seems to make everything better...

On Wednesday this is what our kitchen drawer looked like and I'm pretty proud of it.  I'm feeling more and more like a Nicaraguan :)  Beans, rice, powered soy milk, oatmeal, salt, and YES, I found popcorn! I've only found one lady in the market so far who sells it.  I'll have to make friends with her.

And here are the things I've found to put in our fridge: bananas, pineapple, wheat bread, garlic, mangos, tomatoes, cucumber, mayonnaise, and margarine.  It's amazing how many hours of shopping I've spent to get this stuff in here. Hopefully I'll get faster at this, now that I know where to get everything!

I'm learning to really like mangos! I didn't care for them much before, but they taste better here. I'm getting better at cutting them too, but I wouldn't complain if someone discovered a way to grow seedless mangos :)

Yesterday Joe was pretty tired, so we decided not to go out on our evening exploring walk and stayed in and watched a movie on youtube instead.  And I made popcorn! Wow, a lot more work than I'm used to putting into that treat! I could only pop 1/6 cup at a time because our pan with the lid is so small. Probably won't be making that as often as I thought I would :) But it was so delicious! 

We've done a bit of exploring - usually in the morning and in the evening when it's cooler outside.  Our only camera is my ipod touch which doesn't take great pictures, especially when it doesn't have very good lighting.  So we haven't taken pictures of a lot of things we've seen: the big, old, beautiful, abandoned hospital, the gorgeous colonial cathedrals around town, the modern grocery stores we discovered in the north part of town that have a/c and everything a U.S. store would have at double the price, the chocolate museum and chocolate factory where you can pay $19 to make your own chocolate bars from cocoa beans.

We also discovered on one of our walks a museum of ancient pottery.  It used to be one of the old estates in Granada complete with servant quarters and courtyards.  A Danish man bought it some time ago, restored it, lived in it for a while, and then turned it into a free museum where people can come look at pottery and artifacts from throughout Central America. His collection is so large that every 3 months a new part is put on display.   

 He has also used his money to open up a school in Granada for children in poverty so they can get an education.  It's really neat to see so many foreigners here who have used their money to do so much good. 

This is another common sight on the streets. We see dogs everywhere.  They roam the streets and eat the scraps of food in the gutters and they are so skinny.

 Learned how to wash our laundry today! Wow - I will never complain about laundry day again.  It took me like 8 minutes a piece of clothing!  Our Swiss neighbor taught me how to do it.  She said she's had to wash her own clothes in most of the countries she's lived in except for the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand.  We are so spoiled!

She came out later to check on me and saw all of our whites in the tub.  She said, "You've never washed your clothes by hand, have you. Or else you wouldn't have brought so many white ones." :) Maybe next time we decide to head to a country like this we'll look into getting camouflage ones instead ;)