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Published: October 22nd 2011
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On October 14th, at 3:30 am, I left with my group for Nicaragua! Because we had to leave so early, some of the girls in our group and I decided to take advantage of Ladies Night and pull an all nighter. We went to La Birreria to see some good old shirtless male dancing, and this time I have pictures to show for it haha. Unfortunately the crowd was a little lame, so we didn't make it until 3:00, instead I went home at one, showered, slept for an hour, and then got picked up to go to the bus station in San Jose. It was a nine hour bus ride to Granada, Nicaragua, but so worth it. Crossing the border was a bit of a pain, but all in all things went well. Maria, our program director, invited her mom, aunt, cousin, sister, and sister's friend, to come along to Nicaragua with us and they were all awesome. I bonded particularly with her aunt, and they really made me feel like a part of their family. I loved spending time with them and practicing more Spanish instead of just speaking in English with our group like we normally do. Our
hotel was really nice and thankfully had air conditioning in the rooms, as Nicaragua was pretty humid. Our first afternoon we checked out one of Granada's main churches and went to the bell tower to see a panoramic view of Granada, it was beautiful. Later that night we went to dinner where we got to watch a typical folkloric dance show. Of course they wanted volunteers from the audience to come up and try to dance like them... and my friend Anna volunteered herself and I haha (flash backs of the Iguana Dance with Brett in Ixtapa) and so Anna and I went up and gave folkloric dancing our best shot, we laughed the whole time!
Saturday we got up early and went on a tour of Masaya. First we went to the Masaya volcano, which is a very large, still active volcano. The volcano was awesome but we didn't stay long as it started to rain acid rain on us. After seeing the volcano we went to one of Masaya's main markets and had lunch and shopped for an hour or so. The market was huge and overwhelming. Nicaragua had really great stuff that is significantly cheaper than the
things in Costa Rica. After the market we went to a ceramic school and watched a demonstration of how they make their ceramics and paint them with natural paints from the earth. Then we had an opportunity to buy their products, and I went to town! I loved the ceramics, they were all so unique and gorgeous. On our way back to our hotel, our tour guide Carmilo told us about a party that night at Hotel Con Corazon, which we all agreed to check out. After cleaning up for dinner, the group split and I went to have pizza and the local beer La Toña for dinner with some friends. While having dinner, and man with a guitar came up to me and asked if her could sing to me. I politely explained that I didn't have money to give him, and he insisted that he was inspired to play for me by my beauty... and so he serenaded me with a song about my hot body, mouth, and face and blah blah and when he finished he told me that I was so beautiful he just felt that he had to sing to me... hahaha I was quite
embarrassed but flattered and enjoyed my song ha!
After dinner we went to the hotel party which was fun, but the dance floor had a strobe light which I couldn't handle very well as it was giving me a headache and so I didn't enjoy our night as much as some of the others did.
The next day I went to another market with Helen and Maria's family and we had a great time shopping and gabbing. Later that afternoon we took a group tour of Lake Nicaragua and saw some of the lake's little islands. They said that there were islands for sale between 100,000.00 and 200,000.00... having an island is possible haha! After our tour we cruzed around Granada a bit more, had dinner, and then most of us went to bed because we were all tired.
We left to come back to Costa Rica about 11:00am on Monday. We ended up having to take an alternate route home that took us closer to 11 hours because so many of the roads were closed. This hurricane has really screwed us, today is actually the first glimpse of sun in two weeks! It's been raining non stop and all
of the roads are suffering from landslides and such. Also the bus oversold their seats, and so for the first three hours two members of our group were without seats and so we took turns each hour standing. I stood for an hour too. Luckily though two people got off so then we all had a seat.
Monday night was Lorena's 60th birthday and I brought her a ceramic pot and scarf from Nicaragua, I think she was pleased. Lorena spent the weekend with her family in Monteverde celebrating her birthday and we both got home about 10:00pm Monday night and went straight to bed.
Tuesday night I went on a date which was really fun. I'm starting to feel really good about my Spanish as I was able to carry a conversation in Spanish with a stranger for about 5 hours!!
Yesterday I worked on a lice campaign with Children Without Borders. I went to a school in San Jose with some other girls from out group and we checked kids for lice and distributed medication. They use pills here for lice instead of shampoo. Kind of a gross job, but I like the experience.
All in all life
is still wonderful here and I'm happier than ever! School is great, I love Spanish, my family here and my friends are amazing, it's all pura vida 😊
A trip to Panama is in the works for this coming weekend, more updates soon.
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