Catching Up, Part II

Before I start with the pictures, I just have to say - some of the funniest things we see down here are the shirts that people wear.  All of them are in English because they mostly wear hand-me-downs from the states.  Thrift stores send their extras down here, the people buy them in bulk, wash them, and then sell them again in the market with their own price tags on them.  New clothing stores are pretty rare here, and very expensive.  So we see a lot of event and public school t-shirts as well as t-shirts with English phrases on them being worn.

But the great thing is, I bet most of these people have no clue what the t-shirt they're wearing says. I wish I was keeping a record of all of the good ones we've seen since we've been here, but the recent ones we've seen were a lady in her 50's wearing a shirt that said, "I ♥ Boys", a stooped over grandma with white hair wearing one that said, "My parents think I'm studying," and an older guy with a huge beer belly wearing one that said, "If you want a body like mine, you've got to work out like me" then it had the name of a gym at the bottom.  Classic.  I just had to share.  Wish our camera was fast enough so you could get the full effect :)

This picture was taken in honor of my brother who's been doing his summer internship with Twitter.  Pretty cool to be part of a company that's so known throughout the world!

Close up.

There is a German restaurant in town that we've tried going to twice, but it's been closed both times :(  We don't know if we'll make the three mile trek out there again before we leave, but it was pretty enough for a picture.

 A scorpion!  We've been lucky to not have to deal with these much, but in the last week we've seen two.  We were fast enough with the second one to get it flushed down the toilet - we're hoping both sightings were the same scorpion.

To end Hipica week there was a huge horse parade through Granada.  People bring their best horses from all over Nicaragua to show them off at this parade.  There were hundreds of horses, and I've never thought horses were pretty before, but I can honestly say, some of these ones were absolutely beautiful. Maybe it's because all of the horses that we see every day in the city are half starved and bony...

The whole city turned out for the occasion and I loved the fair feel of the whole event.  Lots of families, tons of fried food, cotton candy, street games, cowboy attire, loud Latin music - it was just a really fun evening.

So they have these holes in the street everywhere, and sometimes they're located right where people come walking off the sidewalk curb.  And they're deep too!  I'm surprised we haven't seen someone step in one yet.  Or should I say, I'm surprised WE haven't stepped in one yet!

The elders eat lunch everyday at this hole in the wall restaurant that they told us about, so we decided to try it out one afternoon.  The elders were actually there eating when we arrived, so they ordered their favorite for us - papusas, a food from El Salvador.  They're like pancakes filled with shredded chicken, beans, and Nicaraguan cheese.

Pretty tasty! Even better with their pureed salsa on top! The juice the elders ordered for us was made from some local fruit that sounded like "tambourine" when they said it.  It had lots of seeds in it and reminded me a lot of sweet pickle juice.  Mmmmm! :)

Some group playing music in the park.  There are always music groups or dancing groups performing in the park.  Fun to sit and watch and listen to.

This dog followed Joe all the way home one day from the town.  It was all I could do to keep from breaking out into song, "Sandy, Sandy's his name - if you please...." :)

 One thing that has been on our bucket list to do before we leave Granada has been to ride the "Music Bus" around the city.  It only runs on Saturday and Sunday and we've seen it a few times making its rounds and blaring music.  So we did it last Saturday.  WOW.  It should have occurred to us that if we had seen it before from two blocks away and knew that it blared music, that the music level from actually sitting inside the bus would be completely unbearable.  We plugged our ears the entire time and still walked off at the end of the ride with ears that will probably never be the same.  I don't know if you can see it in the picture, but the speakers take up the entire back row of seats.  They're speakers that should be used at football games - not buses. But, like most other things, we chalk it up to cultural experience and are glad we did it :)

Stopped by the San Francisco church during their mass. I've heard some claims that it is the oldest church in Central America.

It was beautiful inside and we sat through part of the mass before walking home.

Joe has gone on splits with the missionaries for the last two Sundays.  They visit people who have baptismal dates more than a month away so they can read the Book of Mormon with them.  It gives Joe a nice chance to practice his reading in Spanish and meet new people.

We made our own soy milk!  A lot of places in the market sell soy beans, so we looked up how to do it online and tried it.  I was amazed at how easy it was and how much milk we got out of just a cup of beans.

These are the dry soy beans that we bought from the market.

 I didn't think they looked much like beans, but after we soaked them overnight, they took on a bean shape as they grew in size.  Cool!

Then we blended the beans with added water and then poured it through a cloth to get all the milk out.  The left over bean pulp is called okara and can be added to foods or used to make veggie burgers.  But I don't think I'm feeling domestic enough to try that  :)

Then you boil the milk on the stove for a few minutes, add some sweetener, and voila! You've got soy milk! Lots of it! 

We stopped by a cigar factory to get a tour.  There are a couple cigar places in this city because there are so many tobacco plantations around here.

This guy uses a lot of different leaves and rolls them up into the cigar.  Leaves from different parts of the plant have different properties, so depending on what type of cigar he is making, will determine which piles he takes the leaves from to make the cigar.  Interesting.

 He cuts them off to be the same size and then fits them into this tray.

 The trays are then pressed for a few hours

Then tested to make sure enough air can go through them

 Then they're finished off by wrapping another leaf around them and sealing the ends.

Finished product.

 But before they're ready to be sold they have to be aged for 6 months in these rooms in the back with a certain humidity and temperature level.  They also have a nice pool for customers to relax in while they smoke their purchases.  I thought it was quite an interesting tour.  Probably because I had absolutely no knowledge about the product before :)

Took another picture of the market.  We spend at least 30 minutes here a day - it almost feels like home to us :) 

We've gotten to be pretty good friends with this family on the right.  The father, Frank, is trying to learn English, so we invited them over one night for him to practice English and for us to practice Spanish.  It was such a fun evening and we all had a great time learning about each other.  All of the members of the branch are such a mystery to us because we can't communicate with them, so it was fun to learn the background of this little family. 

Then the next week they invited us over to their home for an evening.  Frank and Maria on the right have two daughters who were in bed when the picture was taken, Gregorio on the left is Frank's brother, Gregorio and Frank's mother is in the purple shirt, and her mother is the cute little grandma in the middle.  I can't imagine what it would be like to live with extended family your whole life.  But everyone here does it!

And we're also learning that pretty much everyone in the church branch is related :) Here we thought they were all individual members and families, but we're realizing that there are only 4 or 5 families that seem to make up the whole branch.  Such good people!

Speaking of extended families, Joe and I have 4 new nephews that were born while we've been in Nicaragua! Crazy how fast our families are growing!  And with these recent births, Joe's family and my family are now tied with 40 grandchildren in each! Good thing we don't all have to live together! :)

Catching Up, Part I

I woke up this morning around 4:30 am and just lay in bed and listened and thought about how incredibly quiet it was compared to how it normally is, and then I realized how funny that thought was because compared to living in Provo, it was unbelievably loud.  And it was all animals.  It sounded like our bedroom was in the middle of an aviary, a dog kennel, a hen house full of roosters, and a pig slaughterhouse all at the same time, with horses' hooves clopping up and down the pavement outside our bedroom wall pulling carts to town.  And it all seemed so normal. Gotta love it :)

So, it's been a while since I've posted, and there's actually a reason - for the last 3 or so weeks being on the computer has made me sick.  It's been the weirdest thing.  I haven't been able to spend more than a few minutes looking at the screen without getting a throbbing headache and feeling like I'm going to throw up.  I've always treated my headaches before with water and it's worked, but this kind is definitely not a lack of water :)  I think it's because I've spent so much time on my computer down here.  EVERYTHING involves the computer because that's all I have - I read conference talks on my computer in the morning, I find recipes on my computer, I talk on the phone and Skype on my computer, I read articles and books on my computer, I research places to go and things to see on my computer, I practice my Spanish on my computer, etc. and then in the evening Joe and I play games or watch movies together on the computer.  And usually I spend my time in the bedroom so that Joe and I can each have our own fan, and it's darker in the bedroom than the living room/kitchen.  So I think my eyes are just done. 

Needless to say, I haven't been dying to blog :) One week I didn't even touch my computer.  Joe did everything for me that involved a computer: he read my talks to me in the morning, he checked my email for me, he googled everything for me that I wanted to know - and by the end of the week my eyes could handle a few hours on the computer again.  So now if I need to use my computer I sit near the door where it's the lightest, and I keep it to a few hours a day, and never after dark because our lights are pretty dim.  So far, so good :)

Then a few days ago, Joe's "a,s,d, and f" on his computer stopped working, so he's using my computer as a keyboard for his so he can program, which deletes even those few hours I could spend a day on it. So my journal writing has skyrocketed the last month, and my blogging has all but disappeared. So this post is my attempt to catch up with pictures using as little typing as possible. It's really random and choppy, but it's something :)

An old lady using her machete to get some firewood from some tree branches that had been cut down.  They use machetes here for everything.

Our landlords have a bird nest that was built on top of their cupboard because their house is completely open to the outside. The nest is on the top right of the right cupboard. They told us the baby birds are learning how to fly now around their house. 

 Close up of the baby birds.

Running of the bulls! Quite the event.  The whole city turned out for it. We didn't know the route, so we just followed the hoards of people walking there.

We found some space on this wall to stand and watch.

It poured rain the whole time and we were all soaked.  Clocks really have no place in this culture, so no one really knew when the running of the bulls was going to happen.  We probably stood in the rain a good 1 1/2 hours before the bulls came, but there were plenty of drunk people around to provide entertainment in the meantime.
 

The crazies in the middle of the street waiting for the bulls to appear so they could run for their lives.  We loved the people sitting in the trees. Brilliant.  By the time the bulls actually came there were 9 people in the tree.

The first bull! He was the least exciting of them all, but after we got a picture of him, Joe's camera stopped working because it was soaked. So those are all the pictures we got.  There were probably 9 bulls altogether - one went off course and created a stir in the nearby park, and one kept changing direction so the people would all scream and run down the street ahead of the bull, and then scream and run back up the street when he turned around, and then scream and run back down the street.  The whole thing was way more fun than I thought it would be, and no one on our little section of the route got hurt, which was definitely a plus.

Just had to take a picture of our kitchen drawer.  We go for variety around here. 

 We went out to Diriomo to visit the Whitings.

 While we were standing on the bus, Joe got a kick out of the repair job on the red plastic tub.  These people sure make things last for a long time!

The central park in Diriomo.

I didn't take any pictures of the meal the Whitings fed us, but she made homemade bread and it was absolutely divine. The first real bread we've had since coming here.

Some street food we tried.  Little scone balls that they pour liquid honey over.  Delicious!

I love to sit on our porch in the mornings, evenings, and during rainstorms and read...or eat banana splits :)  It's so beautiful here!

When Joe and I wake up before 5:30 we like to take walks down to the lake and wade up and down the lake shore for a while.  It's so beautiful and peaceful.  And usually no one else is out there but horses :)

This is what cilantro looks like here!  It took me forever to figure it out - I just figured they had found a way to cook with dandelion leaves or something.  I saw this stuff and mint everywhere in the market but finally stopped to smell it one day to figure out what it was and found out it's cilantro in disguise! (It looks oily because it's wet).

I love the little girl dresses here.  They're in almost every store and they are adorable! The funny thing is that you see little girls wearing these elaborate dresses while they're playing in the dirt in their front yard. Hmmm...
This particular dress made me think of my niece, Emily, who loves to dress up and play princess.

A picture of the Whitings leaving our house one day in a taxi.  We found out not too long ago that Angie Whiting was in my sister-in-law's elementary education cohort at BYU before they graduated.  Small world :)

This is the biggest bike rack I have ever seen.  And I'm sure during church on Sunday it's full.  If you look closely, you'll see that there is a chain already attached at each section so the biker just needs to carry a lock.  So smart!

Everyone carries baskets on their heads - and sometimes the baskets weigh like hundreds of pounds! Amazing!

This is a common sight - people pushing carts of pigs around delivering them or trying to sell them.  The other day we saw a guy carrying pigs around the market trying to sell them.

Women selling fire wood on the street.

Mangos and avocados for sell!

A Nicaraguan version of a hearse that we thought was pretty cool.

There are always soccer and basketball games going on at the church, but one evening the youth in the branch did a fundraiser for their EFY and invited teams throughout the city to come play at a soccer tournament.  There was quite the turnout and teams were playing all day and pretty late into the night.  We just stopped by for a bit to watch and take a picture.

One evening Joe was asked to play the piano for a meeting the church was putting on for a bunch of civic leaders in Granada. He took this picture in the chapel while they were setting up.

Elder Ayala (from El Salvador) and Elder Parish (from Brigham City). They were a big help to us our first couple of months here.  This picture was taken when Elder Parish found out he was being transferred. Elder Ayala has since been transferred too.  They were both really great elders.
 

I love seeing the little kids try to sweep. This little girl was in the market helping her mom.