We're here!

We're here! We are totally here in Granada, Nicaragua! And we are SWEATING like dogs. But learning to really enjoy this place :)

So to rewind a little bit - we moved out of our apartment about two weeks ago.  We had a lot more stuff than we thought we did, but the Meservy parents were very gracious to let us store it in their house for the summer - and to let us stay in their house until we could leave for Nicaragua. Joe was a trooper those few days of moving - he had to lift everything since my arm was out of commission from the tetanus shot I had.  It was red and swollen and extremely painful for a week or so.  Weird. We were sad to leave the apartment, it's been a perfect place for us and we have loved the ward, but all good things must come to an end so that better things can come - like Nicaragua :)

We were able to celebrate Dave's graduation since we left a week later than we had planned because of Joe's passport, which was fun.  Emsys looks like she's got a good head start on technology :)

Joe's passport came on the 27th of April, so we bought our plane tickets and packed our bags.  We took Joe's car in to get registered since it's due in June and we need to drive back from Vegas when we get back from our adventure, and it failed :(  His exhaust manifold had a crack all the way around one of the pipes.  But after spending about 6 hours and welding it twice, we passed!  The mechanic said cast iron couldn't be welded, but Joe showed him! :) We were able to get his car registered the day we drove out of Provo. We were pretty thrilled.
 

 We stopped by Katie and Andrew's on our way out and ate some delicious birthday cake and ice cream from Joe Joe's birthday.  She also gave us a big bag of homemade granola which has been a life saver on this trip! Thank you, Katie! Definitely worth the stop! :)

Joe had never been to Cove Fort, so we stopped to see it.  The senior couple giving the tour had only given one other tour - it was the second day of their mission - so they were a little nervous, but they did a wonderful job.

Drove to Vegas and stayed a few days with Joe's uncle and aunt, Dennis and Mara.  What a fun couple.  We went to the temple on Thursday.

Then spent the evening on the Strip seeing some fun things: The Mirage volcano, the pirate show outside of Treasure Island,

 

the shops in The Venetian, 

 Pretty sure my favorite of everything we saw was the fountain show in front of Bellagio.  I could have stayed there all night watching that.

 The second day we spent most our time on the Strip seeing a bunch of other stuff.  It all starts to look the same, but it was still fun.  Saw the shark reef at Mandalay Bay...

Watched a 3D show at the M&M store...

And walked miles and miles through tons and tons of shops.  The person who this picture is for will know it :)

And had a wonderful BBQ that evening.  Complete with s'mores! :)

 

 We got to the airport at 6:00 am for our flight at 8:11 am

And spent a lot of time in airplanes and airports that day.  We flew from Vegas to Detroit - 4 hour flight - and had a 4 hour layover there. Then we flew to Fort Lauderdale, Florida - 3 hour flight - and had a 1 hour layover, then we flew to Managua Nicaragua - 3.5 hour flight - and got in at 12:30 am.  Whew!

We were exhausted! Got our luggage, went through immigration and customs, and then found a good spot on the floor to try to sleep for a few hours.  The buses outside of the airport start running at 5:00 am and we didn't want to pay for a room for just a few hours. 

Joe woke me up at about 5:45 am (his cell phone was the only clock we had) and we made our way out of the airport, found the bus stop, and waited for the bus.  Which didn't come.  We waited for about 40 minutes (they're supposed to come every 15 minutes) so at about 6:40 we went to a Best Western that we could see down the street and asked them about the bus situation.  The guy told us exactly which buses we needed to take and where we needed to transfer buses (the info we had from research online wasn't exactly accurate), and we also found out that Joe's phone hadn't registered the time zone changes when we left Florida.  So when his phone said it was 5:45 it was really only 3:45 am.  OH...THAT'S why it was so dark outside and no buses were coming... :)

We made it all the way from Managua to Granada in 1.5 hours, 2 bus changes, no Spanish dictionary, no breathing room, 2 heavy backpacks, a 50 lb suitcase, and about $1 a person.  They dropped us off right here in the middle of Granada.  We were happy to be there.

We found the central park so that we could orient ourselves with the maps we had brought. 

Not many of the streets have signs, so we had to start somewhere that was on the map and count streets to find the LDS church we were looking for.  We walked about a mile and got there at around 7:00 am.  We felt like we had already lived a full day and it was only 7 in the morning.  I think we got about 6 normal days in that first day.  Time just had a hard time moving and we were exhausted.

We were so happy to be able to put down our bags and sit in the shade for a while.  It was already extremely hot and muggy and we were still wearing our jeans from the plane ride. A guy from across the street saw us sitting there and asked who we were looking for.  We explained our situation and he invited us over to his house to sit.  He said his cousin was a member of the Church and that her husband was a counselor in the bishopric.  Awesome. He teaches English at a university in Managua and was home for the weekend, so he sat and chatted with us until the church was opened.  He took us through his house and showed us his animals in the back.  For those of you who told Joe he needed to learn some Spanish words that he would actually use instead of words like "los patos" - you will be happy to know that the first animals he showed us were their ducks and Joe was able to use his word :) Thank you duolingo. Too bad he didn't have an elephant...

 Picture of Joe with the guy (Edgar) and his son, Franko, and their parrots.

There were about 40-50 members in the branch and they were all extremely welcoming and helpful.  The walls were lined with fans about every 4 feet and all of the doors and windows were open and everyone carried a cloth that they wiped their face with.  We'll have to invest in some cloths like that.

We only stayed for Sacrament meeting because we could hardly stay awake.  We kept squeezing each others' hands to keep each other awake throughout testimony meeting that we couldn't understand a word of.  But after Sacrament meeting we were able to talk to an English speaking missionary about how to go about finding an apartment in Granada and if there were areas we should stay away from. When a member of the bishopric heard that we were looking for a place to stay he offered to move his family in with his cousin for the night so we could stay in his house.  Wow, that's hospitality for ya.  What amazing people!

Joe forgot his hat at Katie and Andrew's house, so this has been the substitute until we get another hat.

  We walked to a couple of hostels and found this one that had a room available.  Joe regretted his decision to stay here for the rest of the night.  We don't even have any pictures of it - that's how much he wants to forget this place :)  It was a small private room with bunk beds and a fan on the wall, but come to find out, the fan didn't do much and the room was stifling.  We tried to take a nap since we had only gotten about an hour the night before, but it was so hot we decided to get up and start looking for an apartment.  We looked at 2 of them and tried calling a few others, gave up, and decided to walk and see a little of the town.

 We walked down to the lake.  Beautiful.  The mosquitoes were out and we got a few bites, but there was a breeze and we weren't carrying bags around, so we were in heaven. 

 If you look closely you can see a statue of the guy that founded Nicaragua.

Beautiful sunset and skyline.

The main tourist street out to the lake looks somewhat like what Europe would look like with restaurants and shops out in the street - just a little dirtier :)

Went back to the hostel and talked to some family members on Joe's computer. Then tried to get some sleep.  Joe was so hot and miserable.  He spent a while on the top bunk, then the bottom bunk, then the top bunk, then the bottom bunk... we tried moving the fan up and down.  Finally dragged the bunk bed over to the wall fan so that Joe could stick his head right by it and a while later we were able to finally go to sleep.  Longest day of my life.  But hey, we made it to Granada and found a place to spend the night, so not bad.

Got up this morning and walked over to check out another apartment and saw this guy sitting on the bench in the park.  If you look closely, the guy is wearing an orange Vivint shirt.  We saw another guy wearing one the night before, but didn't get our camera out fast enough to catch it before he was gone on his bike.  Seems like Vivint will follow Joe wherever he goes :)  (For those who don't know - Vivint is a company in Provo that Joe's company is working with right now)

We decided to rent one of the apartments we saw our first day so we packed up our things and headed down to it.  It's about 1 mile from the center of town.  And Joe ended up carrying our bag half the way there because the roads were so bad and we wanted to save the wheels. What a guy. We passed another LDS church on our way there.  There's one located on the north side of town where we went Sunday morning, and then there's one on the south side, half way between the city center and our apartment on the same road.  It's a bigger church and has a much bigger branch.

The guy we're renting from is an American but he has been living in Central America for about the past 19 years.  He spent some time in Costa Rica and Panama and has been in Nicaragua for 5 years now.  He's a navy Vietnam vet and was a construction worker in the U.S., so he's built this little compound very American-like.  There are three little houses that share an outdoor courtyard in the middle.  He lives in one with his wife, a Swiss couple live in the other, and we now rent the other :)

It has good water, screens on the windows, internet, cable t.v., fridge, stove, and is fully furnished.  Two fans on the walls and a/c potential, but if we use it it will probably run us another $70 a month.  So we'll see. The rent is $360 with utilities included. It's super safe because someone is usually always in one of the three houses so people leave it alone, and it has a big gate outside of the compound.  We feel lucky to have found such a safe, clean place.  He showed us the washboard where I will be washing all of our clothes, so that will be a fun skill to learn :)

Here is our first Nicaraguan mango!  We haven't bought any yet, but our landlord claims that right now they're in season so you can buy them 12 for a $1.  Not bad!

Joe was able to do some work today.  The fan on the wall is just enough to keep him sane and his computer running.  Our computers get really hot really fast, so we'll probably buy another fan to sit right by the computer so it doesn't overheat. 

When it cooled down enough to leave the fans behind, we ventured out to the supermarket to buy some food.  Here's the road that we live on.

Pali is pretty close down the street - it's a store owned by Walmart.  It's probably the size of an Aldi, or double the size of a Payless shoes store, and we were able to find cleaning soap, toilet paper, milk, rice, oatmeal, salt, margarine, and flour.  A good start to our apartment :) We're hoping to be able to explore the street markets tomorrow.

The time zone is the same as Utah right now, but it gets dark around 6:00 pm. It's nice that it can start cooling down that early, but it feels a lot later than it really is in the evenings.  I'm not used to it being dark and hot and it only being 6:00.  Pretty fun.

Also, we have 3 new pets - at least (we'll probably discover more in the next few days).  They're geckos!  We've found a mama gecko, a papa gecko, and a baby gecko.  Apparently they're good at eating mosquitoes, so we'll keep them around.  :)  I've made a deal with them that they can stick around as long as they don't try to share our bed.  I hope they hold up their side of the bargain!

Some of you have asked for our address.  We don't think we get mail out here, but if you'd like to look up where we live on maps.google.com, you can put the GPS address into the search box and it will pinpoint where we are.  GPS addresses of interest:

Casa del Meservy

11.914875,-85.955422

South LDS Church

11.91977,-85.955379

North LDS Church

11.939284,-85.954778

Pali (aldi like supermarket owned by Walmart)

11.926011,-85.95569

Hostal Mochilas (Where we stayed our first night)

11.928596,-85.953684