Randomness

Let's see…  

What has been happening with us lately…

Oh yeah!

We mentioned in several posts about how the drought has yet to loosen its grip on this region of Nicaragua.  To say it's had a huge impact on the lives of our local friends would be an understatement.  Certain staples are scarce and another - rice, normally harvested in a couple of months - is threatened.  

When we are blessed with rain, it r-a-i-n-s!!  It's been happening a little more regularly, too.  From our porch we are witnessing the slow rise of the lake, as our rocky playa (beach) slowly gives way to more water.  This makes the walk to go paddleboarding or swimming much shorter!  We've also noticed that the ground seems more saturated - when it rains, the water stays on the surface longer and creates more mud!  Hooray!  A month or so ago, ten minutes after a downpour, you could hardly tell, the thirsty earth taking it all in as fast as it fell.

My crafty wife made a rain gauge to measure how much precipitation we get.  It's a 1.5 liter water bottle with the top cut off and flipped to make a funnel.  The rocks in the bottom neutralize the bumpy, molded-plastic bottom of the container.  The funnel top keeps detritus out and it's ready to go.  Pick a mark to call '0 inches' and set it up on a level surface out in an open space. The bottle is marked inch by inch up the side.  

Nica Rain Gauge (patent pending)

I zeroed the gauge and reset it Wednesday of this week.  Here it is Friday and we've gotten two inches of rain already.  Awesome!   In fact, I was walking back from classes Wednesday evening and it was raining.  The route home goes up a hill from the lake and as I trudged up the incline, it was like walking in a burbling brook, with the water running downhill, washing over my feet!  Gave the Keen's a good cleaning, though, so that was nice.

Let's see… what else…?

Oh yeah!

This third semester of teaching is flying by!  We only have one week left, then it's time for our last required border run to get our visas renewed, which we have to do every 90 days.  After that trip, it'll be a short sprint to the end of this Central American adventure and the return home to Portland.  Which will be incredibly… weird… exciting… scary… comfortable… weird.

Let's see… what else?

Oh yeah!

Here are a couple of pics of the vultures that scavenge around here.  Red, featherless heads. Curved, sharp beaks and claws.  Soulless eyes.  (Shudder - I think I just described 'lawyers')

Sometimes I feel as though they are just waiting for me to trip and fall...

"Have you seen this guy on a bike?!  Trust me - he's gonna fall eventually!"

Sorry these pics are a little blurry.  I had to zoom pretty far with my Pentax Optio W60, so I didn't spook these adorable, cuddly little fellas.  Oh, and in case you're wondering, a group of these is called a 'venue of vultures'.  Unless they are chowing down on a dead something-or-other - then they are called, appropriately, a 'wake of vultures'.  And now you know.

Let's see… what else?

Oh yeah!

Power outages are frequent occurrences - pretty much daily, in fact.  They usually only last 5-10-15 minutes or so.  We have a backup battery power supply to keep the internet and printer functional during these times, which is a nice luxury.  

Wednesday night as we were each coming home from our respective classes, the power went out.  We meet up out on the road for the walk down the dark, spooky trail to our house.  We noticed that the lights were out only in our 'neighborhood'.  Not unusual.  We had a simple dinner by candlelight.  Awww!  Then we moved a few candles into the bathroom and took turns showering.  Thankfully, the temp wasn't too bad so sleep was attainable, even without the saving grace of the fan.  But, man, this outage lasted for about 20 hours!!  We didn't get juice back until about 3 PM Thursday!  Needless to say, the battery backup had long since run out of power, the fridge was warming up and we had been eating all the produce and whatever else we didn't want to go to waste.  

Let's see… what else…?

Oh yeah!

While paddle boarding today we came upon some sort of plant floating on the water.  Bex! says it looks kinda like duckweed.  We had never seen it before so we found it interesting.  (sigh)  We don't have cable, remember.

Quack, quack!

And speaking of todays' water excursion, the lake was like glass and it was pretty much gorgeous.  There is a really cute paddle boarder way off in the distance in this picture:

Let's see… what else?

Oh yeah!

Lest you think it is all play and no work down here, remember that we teach 23 classes to 8 different groups of students every week.  Between all the fun and relaxation, we stay busy scheduling the week, planning lessons, retaining or recruiting students, and, of course, actually teaching in the classroom.

Our weekly planning session: "Here we go again"

Let's see… what else?

Oh yeah!

This is the time of year when the chayules hatch and swarm.  Chayules are like gnats, a 'non-biting midge'.  They are über-annoying.  They buzz in your eyes, nose, ears, mouth; they get in anything you're eating or drinking.  They land on your clothes and in your hair.  And because they only live a few days, they die and we sweep up piles of them everyday.

I found this picture on the innerwebs, gives you an idea of what they look like. 

(Not our picture)

We were at Playa Santo Domingo last weekend (more on that, below) and we saw a HUGE swarm of them moving down the beach.  It looked like a dust storm or a plague of tiny locusts.  Fascinating and creepy.  This is what it looks like when we sweep them up in the morning.

Thread from a towel?  Yep.  Piece of concrete, center bottom?  Yep.  White thing on top of the pile?  Gecko shed its skin, apparently.  And the pile of brown 'dust' - all chayules I swept up from our 8x8 kitchen!!

More chayules, this time complemented by ants and gecko poo.

Our friends tell us it's the season for this.  In fact, if you recall from this post way back in November 2013, we experienced these insects on the very first day we arrived on the island.  At that time, we didn't know what they were called and I simply wanted to go home.  Now we just pick (most of) them out of our food and carry on with our life.

And as a silver lining, lots of little bugs sometimes means lots of small swifts to eat them.  Clouds of swifts casting interesting moving shadows on the  ground.

One, two, three… wait, did I already count that one?

Let's see… what else?

Oh yeah!

It seems Bex! is getting married!!  Let me explain:  Tuesday's are our date night each week.  On this night we teach at the same location so have gotten into the habit of having dinner out on Tuesdays.  On one of our recent dates, we were eating at Pescadito's and a young boy named Walmero, about 9 years old, was hanging out watching TV.  Pescadito's is near his house and this restaurant has satellite and a decent television, so it's not uncommon for locals to congregate wherever there is entertainment to be had.

Part way through dinner, young Walmero comes over to our table with his niece Luvianca. He was holding something behind his back, both of them were giggling.  He walks up to Bex!, gets down on one knee and hands her a bouquet of fake flowers - then proceeds to propose to her.

Luvianca (l) with the future bride and groom

The happy couple has not set a date yet, but we'll be sure to let you know.  I think it will have to wait until he finishes 4th grade, most likely.

Let's see… what else?

Oh yeah!

As busy as our schedule is, we manage to find time to hang out and relax.  Sometimes we play cards, other times 'Pass the Pigs', and still other times Pachisi ('Parcheesi' is the westernized game board version we know).  Bex's grandmother Barbara gave us a very cool Pachisi travel set and we've put it to good use.  Made of cloth and weighted on one end for windy locations, the dice are actually four-sided sticks, with no 2 or 5.  

(Side note:  We were camping a few years ago and Bex! rolled the sticks and, somehow, landed one up on its end!  No, seriously.) 

August 2012 - We almost couldn't finish the game, we were laughing so hard!

Now, for those of you readers outside of Bex's family, we play this game with the standard rules, of course, but there are also the 'Fuller Family Rules' (FFR), many of which were developed and put in place by Barbara herself.  The FFR are mostly designed to make the act of, say, taking an opponents piece and sending it back to the start even more evil.  In the normal game, you land on an unprotected space containing an opponents token - boom - he gets sent back to start all over again.  Har har.  But with the FFR in place, the knocker-outer also gets to move one of his/her pieces a bonus 20 moves.  That's just one example.  Ten extra moves for getting a piece all the way around and safely home is another FFR, as is the opportunity to chase your opponent up their "little red lane", their porch as they try desperately to get home.  For the full effect, say the following phrase (a direct quote from Barbara) in your sweetest grandmother voice when sending an opponent home:

"I'm sorry, dear, I need the points."

I've been around a while so have adapted to these rules and have incorporated them into my strategy.  As you can see by the picture here:

What's that smell?  Oh, it's just... victory!!  Hell yeah.

Let's see… what else?

Oh yeah!

We celebrated our 2nd anniversary!  Remember last year we celebrated our first anniversary by doing X-Dog's Ride, Row, Run Triathlon.  You can read up on that entire year plus of craziness on that other blog o' mine.  Check out last years anniversary celebration here, here, and here.

What to do this year…?  Since our anniversary fell on a Monday, we opted to celebrate it over the weekend leading up to it.  We packed up overnight stuff, checked in with our house sitter Hamilton and biked down the crappy road the ~7k to Playa Santo Domingo.  

Picture time!  Any excuse to get off the bike seat for a few minutes!

Pavement!  Honest-to-goodness pavement.

This part of the island is basically the east side of the isthmus that connects our two volcanos and forms Isla de Ometepe.  Please refer to your map, people.  The beach along here is sandy and beautiful.  It's the slow season so we didn't bother making a reservation.  We did our research and had a short list of hotels to check out.  We ended up with a room at our top choice, the Xalli Ometepe Beach Hotel.  Great place, would recommend it to anyone visiting the island.  

Our one-night home.  It was even nicer inside.

Beautiful park-like grounds.

Shinto shrine access to the beach.

No one said anything about stairs!

There was no one else at the hotel, so we asked Nolbar to show us a deluxe room.  Nice digs.  He quoted us the standard rate, we balked and asked to see a regular room - and he immediately dropped the price for the nicer room by a third!!  Perfect!  We settled in, then changed into swimsuits for our first ever dip in the east side of the lake.  Boy, was the water warm.  Almost too warm.  We walked out quite a long ways, too, the bottom sandy and smooth.  This side of the island faces the big side of the lake.  We were surprised that we could make out the coastline looking east toward the Caribbean.  After our swim, we changed clothes and went for a walk on the beach.

For all we know, this beautiful vine is an invasive species.

Like all good beach walks, this one ended at a bar.  We enjoyed Nica Libres, sitting out on the deck watching the waves roll in.  One of the staff was pulling coconuts off the trees, using a long pole with a hook on it.  They do this so one doesn't fall and crack some tourist on the head.  After he made the deck safe for all the customers (i.e. us)  he took a machete to a couple of them and…

We went back to the room and spoiled ourselves with TV and hot water showers.  Around 7 or so we went to the onsite restaurant for our anniversary dinner.  We enjoyed a bottle of red wine and started the meal with a delicious salad.  For dinner, I had a big slab of veggie lasagna that I quite liked and Bex! tried their 'pollo jalapeño', a chicken breast served with a spicy pepper sauce, complete with mashers and veggies.

Bex! here.  Polllo jalapeño is one of my favorite Nica dishes and I will almost always order it when I find it on a menu.  This version was well done, meat still juicy, salsa (that's sauce to you gringos and gringas) creamy.  But, it had no heat!  And after two years married to Dave, plus many more years eating with him, I crave the heat.  Ah well, guess my search for the perfect pollo jalapeño (aka, my excuse to eat it at every opportunity) can continue.

After dinner, we had bananas flambé with ice cream for dessert and I had a cup of strong black coffee.  And to top off the evening, our server Carlos brought us complimentary drinks - the Macuá, Nicaragua's national cocktail.  It was a great dinner!

We see beautiful sunsets just about every day from our side of the island.  Since we were on the east facing side, we thought it would be cool to get up early Sunday to watch the sun come up.  The alarm went off and we promptly went back to sleep - it was pouring rain.  There would be no clear sky for sun viewing this morning.

A few hours later, we had breakfast onsite - again very good food, by the way.  Then it was more beach walking.  And Bex! brought her hummingbird kite, too!

  

We thought about going for another swim but the lake was cold this morning!  The previous day had been hotter and the lake more calm, so the water warmed up.  But now?  Brrrrr!  Besides, we swim all the time at our place so we weren't feeling disappointed.

Soon enough, it was time to head for home.  We packed up and settled the tab, then hopped on our trusty steeds for the ride home.  We rolled out of the hotel driveway at exactly 11 AM.  We were home on our porch at 11:51 AM.  

So close, yet it felt like an entirely different world.  It was a great way to celebrate our anniversary.  Now, what should we do for our third?  

Let's see… what else?

Oh yeah!

This little guy wasn't too sure of me at first, but soon enough he was smiling.  And… when I took him, he had the hiccups; shortly thereafter, his hiccups were gone.  Okay, I think I scared him.  Only 25 days old and already he is - one… cool… kid.

'Wait a second!  You're not Nica!!!"

Let's see… what else?

Oh yeah!

Walking home Thursday night after classes, making our way by flashlight down the dark trail to our house, I heard a noise behind us.  

Me: "What's that sound?"  
Bex!: "No worries.  It's just a dog following us."
Me: "Okay, cool." 

Thirty meters more down the trail.

Me: "Do you hear that sound?"  
Bex!:  "It's just the dog."  
Me: "No, no.  Farther away."  
Bex!: (pause) "Um, what is that?!"  (pause) "Rain?"  
Me: "Yep.  And it's coming our way - fast."

And, boy, it was.  We picked up the pace.  Suffice it to say that the rain made it to our house before we did.

Let's see… what else?

Oh yeah!

We saw this pile of rocks on the road where it drops down to lake level on the way to Hacienda Merida and points south on the island.  It hadn't been there the day before.  Hmmm...

That is quite the pile of rocks

The piedras hadn't fallen down the bank on their own - they had been purposely placed there.  Upon further inspection, we saw the reason why.

A 1" plastic line buried just under the surface supplies water.

The recent rain had eroded the dirt on the hill and exposed the plastic water line that supplies the village south of this point.  Yes - this is the water main, such as it is, and if a truck or bus ran over it, it would crush the line and subsequently cut off the supply of fresh island water to a lot of people.  But vehicles ain't gonna run over a pile of rocks, are they?  No-sir-ee-bob.  These rocks are Nicaragua's version of the 'orange cone' and quite a brilliant solution, really.

Let's see… what else?

Oh yeah!

If you know me closely, you probably know that I used to have an irrational loathing and fear of moths.  Pretty much any erratic flying thing, but moths specifically gave me the heebie-jeebies.  I think maybe it was too much Mothra when I was a kid that caused that.  Well, I'm proud to report that Nicaragua has cured me of that fear.  Yeah, I still get jumpy when my peripheral vision picks up an EFO (erratically flying object) but once it's ID'd as a moth, my ninja reflexes shut down and it's back to whatever I was doing.  I think I'm fine with moths now because there are so many other creepy, dangerous things here to worry about.  I only have so much fear to go around - I can't waste it on stupid moths.

Just grab 'em and toss 'em outside

Let's see… what else?

Oh yeah!

Our dear dear friends, the Lorio's, continue to bless us through their generosity, love, and support.  Matriarch Rosebela has given us fresh corn tamales several times in recent weeks.  These are traditional tamales - no filling, just delicious masa wrapped in banana leaves and boiled until they're dense, warm bundles of sweet fresh corn.  This family is overwhelming in their generosity and we will always cherish their friendship.

Let's see… what else?

Oh yeah!

Our friend and fave produce vendor, Doña Clara, called to Bex! as she passed by one day.  Bex! walked around the backside of the shack where the produce is sold.  Doña and her daughter were making cajetas (Spanish for 'little box').  These are made in many Latin American countries, each culture having their own unique version.  They are a local treat for us!  

How much for todos (all of them)?

These sweet morsels are made of milk, sugar, rice and sometimes, like Doña Clara's version, shredded coconut and/or cocoa.  They are de-lish.  They always give us free ones whenever she makes them, but we always buy a bunch, too.  "Here, have a free cookie."  Mmmmm… "Now you want to buy some, don't you?  Yeah, that's what I thought."

Let's see.. what else?

Oh yeah!

This morning Bex! was in her hammock and she saw a bit of white fluff on the porch.  As she watched it, she realized it was moving... purposefully.  She got up to look closer and found the teeniest little caterpillar.  We'd never seen one quite like this before!

Let's see… what else?

Oh yeah!


Once a week we do a listening comprehension lesson with our awesome afternoon beginner group, using a video series Bex! found on line.  The videos tell a story about four roommates in London and each short vid (4-6 minutes) has a grammatical and/or vocabulary theme, although sometimes rather loosely focused.  The students like them a lot and it gives them the chance to hear other speakers of English besides us.  And besides, who doesn't love a British accent?!! 

In the video Bex! was showing them for this class, one of the characters (the newest roommate) was videotaping her new apartment and roommates to send to her sister.  Bex! realized she could make a video with her phone and proceeded to do so! 

Funny note:  Bex! filmed with her iPhone 4; in the video lesson, the character uses a ginormous VHS camcorder!!!  Haha!  Technology rocks.

Let's see… what else?

Oh yeah!

Mmmm… I smell delicious breakfast being cooked, too.  We scored a couple of pounds of beans from Tia Margarita - she loves us.  Bex! is making gallopinto and eggs for breakfast.  It's been a while so we're both excited about this! 

Magically delicious!

Okay, well, we don't have much else.  It's Monday morning, 29 September and again(!) we're all caught up for now.  

Gotta go!!  Ciao!