Here comes the rain….

I am here to write again and give some updates on my latest ventures in Nicaragua. Things are so amazing and changing down here. The seasons have gone from hot to rainy all the time.. There is not a day where the rain doens´t downpour.. meaning it takes over a week for clothing to try. I now have a nice mildew aroma that is always hanging about me. I have almost come to embrace the smell.. almost.

One thing I have noticed here during my evening stolls to the latrine are the amazing stars. They are so brillant and blazing inthe sky. I feel like I am looking at millions of glaxies and planets sparkling about me. So amazing!!! 

Alot has happened to me in the past couple of weeks. I have had my share of illnesses  like colds and some mysterious back pain with breathing difficulties that thankfully is over. However all in all I am doing well on the health front thankfully!  We have been working on our Huerto and have some nice plants growing. We are going to put an organic insecticide of chile and boiled water tommorow. It is supposed to kill the pesky ants that ate every single one of our Maranga seeds… it was a sad site looking at that garden plot. But we will prevail and kill every last one of them!!! We are learning though.. that is the important thing!  In our spanish class we got to make an american food to exchange for one of the local foods. We made chocolate pancakes.. and they have never tasted better. Our host families loved them too.. they kept saying ¨Que Rica¨… meaning they liked them  THey made us arroz con leche.. which is boiled milk with rice and cinnamon.. it was so amazingly good… You all should definitely make it.. I am sure there is a recipie online somewhere… If not I will perhaps find one for you all when I begin to make it for myself. My mom is going to teach me how to pound tortillas tommorow.. and I do mean pound.. They seem to nearly kill the masa as they smash it down and then plunge their hands into the fire to let it burn. I swear these people do not every get burned from fire no matter how long their hands are in it!

About a week or so ago me and some of my friends got to watch the local kids play a futbol game. It was pretty sweet.. These kids play from the time they are young, so they are pretty good I must say. It began to sprinkle which turned into a down pour and we got stuck under the trees to wait it out.. which did not help because a down pour here is like the ocean was lifted above your head and dropped all at once. We were instantly soaked to the skins. Once the rain sort of let up we walked back down, dripped from head to toe.. literally.. I am sure that just helped our fellow neighbors think we are even more crazier gringos than they had first thought.

Bugs here have been interesting. I haven´t had too many run ins with anyting other than small bugs.. however my friend has found two tarantuals in her room.. and apparently they do bite.. and hard. Here they call them a name that refers to something that bites and kills a horse.. So yeah, I hope it doesn´t bite me!

We have had a couple of weekends free lately and we took advantage of that to do some hiking. We went to Las Cuevas.. an adventure to be sure. We thought we knew the back hiking path from El Naranjo to the caves, however this proved to be false. We did take alot of awesome trails that brought us to the top of several amazing overlooks in perfect hiking weather.. but 5 hours later we realized that we defintiely were not in the right place.. haha.. We eventually came across a farmer that led us in the right direction, but then of course we took a wrong turn again.. Finally after 6.5 hours we found our destination! It was well worth the hike though. There is a open cave, pretty damp from a small stream that has a 2 square foot hole in the wall that led to the next cave. I couldn´t convince anyone to go in so wiggled my way through the hole into the next cave and discovered I was not alone. A nice lone bat awaited me.. swooping at my head at every chance. It was incredibly dark too. I convinced two others to come in and then i crawled to the back to look at the opening to the next cave. It was about half as small and I thought of crawling in.. but it was a bit creepier than they first. Then when a bat swooped out of the hole at my head I decided that perhaps not going in would be the best move for the day. It was a lovely trip though! THen this past weekend we were able to go and visit the nearby Cascades. La Salta de Estanzuela. They were awesome. THey are supposed to be more beautiful when there is less rain and the waters are not as muddy. But we still had fun wading in the waters and enjoying the hike there and back!

I am starting to get into the swing of things. I have been doing laundry and dishes. My underwear is nicely hanging outside for all of the world to see..  We have been learning about alot of medicinal plants lately which I am really excited to start using once I get to my site. We found which plant is used to make licorice as well. It tastes like licorice when you chew the leaves. We are going to try to make candy from it. I am pumped for that!

My birthday down here was amazing, thanks everyone for the cards and the birthday wishes too. I really appreciate it. My mom and dad here woke me up by singing and playing the guitar. It was a song my dad here wrote. THey were accompanied by the little cousins.. the adorable cousins.. so cute. Then they gave me a  gift of a shirt, bracelet, and earrings! I can only imagine what that cost them. I love my family here. So amazing. Then after classes me and some friends went to Esteli and got some amazing cake and coffee.. it was a lovely and relaxing day indeed! Now I am 24 to boot as well…

Another interesting update we found out about. Apparently there is a man named Jimmy the Loco who lives here.. he is crazy and doesn´t take his meds and preys on white women.. great great.. haha.. everyone in the towns around here know about him. He is pretty dangerous if you get in his way but its is easy to avoid him cause of his creepy dark circles around his eyes and he only has one arm. The other was eaten off by a lion. Go figure.

This coming week a group of us are going to El Sauce for tech days, so we will be learning first hand what a volunteer site is like. I cant wait. We got to read through all of the information about the sites that we will be placed in . Now we can start going through what interests us the most. So much to choose from I love it all!!!

Well my friends. I hope you all are well and healthy wherever you may be! In case you ever want to chat for free I have skype and you can too www.skype.com and my screenname is jojojojojoi. You just have to sign up and then if we are online at the same time we can talk computer to computer for free!!!

Talk to you all soon