Time Flies When You´re Sweating This Much

So, while it has still been raining every day, it´s been more at night and less during the day, which means the days are really, really hot. So I have finally been ¨Nicaragua sweating¨, which is like regular people sweating but to a much higher extreme. It´s all good, though. Who doesn´t like sweaty gringos?

To catch up, Thursday´s day in town was awesome. The only bad part was that it was blazing hot. We set to meet at 11:00, and last time we met they were punctual, so imagine my dismay when the family showed up at 12:00. Hmmm. First we went to Tip Top, which is like a Chic-Fil-A with a play place upstairs. However, the last two times we´ve gone, the whole upstairs with the play place has been reserved for a private party, so that was a bummer. Anyway, we always have the same waiter when we go. It´s a guy who lived in Miami for years, so he speaks English, and he always recognizes us and we speak in English and it´s all very enjoyable. I don´t know what I would do at Tip Top if he weren´t there. It´s as if he is part of the restaurant. The boys and mom chose their food (little Manuel wanted an entire roasted chicken, which of course he didn´t get) and after eating, headed out to the playground in the park. The park is always filled with lots of kids, and this day was no exception. Lots of kids were just getting out of school so it was hopping. The boys went on the swings, the slides, the jungle gym-type thing. It was great. Then we headed to the arcade to play air hockey, shoot some hoops, and for the little guy to ride in the fake police car. After beating Oscar 7 to 6 in air hockey, I was pretty proud of myself, even if he is 8 years younger than I am. After arcade games, we went to the Eskimo ice cream place and had huge ice cream cones. There is a little jungle gym inside the store, so the younger boys played while I saw with mom and Oscar. There was a little boy outside selling gum, and as each boy handed their ice cream to their mom so they could play, she would hand them to the boy outside. He was obviously VERY excited to have TWO ice cream cones in one day.

The routine is so familiar to the boys now, as this was the 5th or 6th time we´ve gone to the park. They look forward to it SO much, and you can see the excitement in their eyes as they´re walking up to Tip Top. They know that whatever they ask for on that day, I´m going to get it for them, and it doesn´t bother me at all, because they so deserve a day like that, even if it´s just once or twice a year. I love being able to do that for them, and their mom obviously loves seeing their smiling faces too. And truth be told, the entire day cost me about $50, which included food for 6, about $5 worth of arcade games, and ice cream for 6. Not bad at all, considering 6 ice cream cones at Bruster´s or Cold Stone would be about $35 in itself.

After I left the family in a taxi to head for home, I headed back to the hotel to rest for a while before church. Church starts at 6:30, so naturally I showed up around 7:10, to find that they had not yet started. The pastor had taken Jim and some other guys down to this neighborhood where they were doing some gang outreach, so everyone just waited for him to get back and set up all the sound equipment. I love how patient people are here. Definitely something I´ve had to learn and am still learning. So once church started, the rain started. And this was some serious rain. Eventually the lights went out and 50 people just sat there in complete darkness for about ten minutes. The night ended early since there was nothing to do, and I just headed back to the hotel for the rest of the night.

Friday morning, after I wrote, I was headed to the grocery store to buy all the ingredients for chili. When I make chili at home, I use turkey meat (because I´m not a big beef fan), three types of beans, cumin, chili powder, etc. You can probably guess that ground turkey is not available here, nor are Great Northern beans. Or chili powder. They don´t use a lot of spice in their food here. So I definitely had to improvise. The chili was still okay, it just didn´t have that kick that I would like it to have, without chili powder and all. The best part about that afternoon was when I asked Liza how Freddy and I were going to get the chili to the school (about a 3 qt. pot), since we normally would take the motorcycle. She asked if I felt comfortable riding on the motorcycle with the pot on my leg. I thought she was kidding. She was not. So yes, I rode on a motorcycle on the bumpy, pothole ridden streets of Chinandega, with a towel and pot holder underneath the pot (since we had JUST taken it off the stove), with a giant pot of chili on top, and held the lid on with one hand holding a towel, and the other side with the bottom of my left rib cage, since I thought it was a good idea to hold on to the motorcyel with at least one hand. It was awesome. I felt like the best gringo ever.

I felt horrible going to Freddy´s English class so gross and sweaty, as cooking a hot meal in a hot kitchen with no air or fan will make you hot and sweaty, but there was no time to change. All the kids were dressed in their school uniforms, and their parents were there as well. Here it´s customary for parents to come get the kids´ final grades, which I think is kind of neat. After a couple skits (students practicing conversational English), and a few songs sung by students and one playing the guitar, it was time for me to introduce myself. Freddy had told me that he wanted me to tell the students the recipe for chili in English, so they could write it down. Well, once I went up in front of the room full of 40 people, he then told them that I was going to ¨tell them a little bit about myself, as well as what the 4th of July is like in my country, how we celebrate it, and all about the chili¨. I was surprised, to say the least, and a little flustered, since I had to speak in Spanish about everything except the recipe and I hadn´t exactly prepared. And what exactly DO we do on the 4th of July? I don´t do a whole lot. Last year, if I remember correctly, I walked to the bridge to see the fireworks with two people and then we went to Squid Lips and had some drinks and appetizers. It went well though, because the kids are SO sweet and I think they can appreciate how hard it is for me to stand up in front of a group of people and speak a second language, since that is basically what they were doing too.

After that, we passed out little bowls of the chili for everyone to try. I think mostly people were impressed with how easy it was to make. ¨Cook the meat and then put everything into the pot¨ is a lot easier than most of the things they cook here. Then Freddy called each student´s name and their mom-dad-grandma-grandpa-older sister, or some family member, went up to the front to get their final exam and final report card. Freddy also called out each student´s grade, which made me laugh, since we´d probably get sued for doing that. The student with the highest grade then gave a little speech to thank their families and Freddy for everything they do. It was really sweet to see such devoted students. Freddy´s ¨normal¨job is at a private school, where the students are mostly spoiled rich kids who don´t appreciate much, so Liza has told me how much better these students are for him to work with, and also for her to be around at school events.

Back at the hotel later on, it started raining, and it was the biggest storm there has been since I´ve been here. It is fascinating to sit outside and watch the lightning in the distance, but it was raining so much that they shut the hotel doors and I even shut my room door because the rain was so crazy. By this time, it was just the hotel worker, the one I´m not friends with, and me in the hotel. The TV in my room was busted, and there wasn´t enough light to read, and this guy, Carlos, does NOT make conversation with me, or really with anybody, so I was BORED out of my mind. I thought many times, once the rain stopped, about going out to Liza´s house just to see if she was there and wanted to get something to eat, since I really didn´t want to go out at night by myself, but I thought she might not be there and the whole trip might be a bust, etc. So imagine how happy I was when I heard her voice in the distance. I slammed open my door and there she was, asking Carlos if I was there. I was SO happy to see her, and even more so when she told me she came to see if I wanted to go get something to eat. She read my mind!!! So we walked down to this place that sells the best darn taquitos in this hemisphere. SO good. It´s so nice to spend time alone with Liza where we can just talk and be like ¨regular¨ friends. We have no shortage of things to talk about, and she is one of the few people here that I feel this closeness with.

By the time we got back, my hotel worker friend, Moises, was back, so she left me to visit with him for the rest of the night. About a half hour later, the power went out for about 10 blocks, including the hotel. So we sat in pitch blackness for about a half hour, just talking. It was strange, to say the least. At 12:00 we watched the show we´d become obsessed with the last few nights, I Love Money (which is horrible, really), and then I went to bed. It was my last night in the hotel and it was very bittersweet. I absolutely LOVE that hotel, both for its location and for the people that work there. I hate to leave, but the other group came in Friday night and it was time to go. So, in the morning, I packed my things and moved to Villas del Cortijo, the Ritz Carlton of Nicaraguan hotels.

and the rest will have to wait. It´s about to start pouring, and I am going to run back to my old hotel to sit in the lobby to wait out the storm. At 2:00 I´m due back at the church to start cooking the chili! We´ll see how this goes. We are supposed to be making enough for 100 people... Stay tuned. Hopefully pictures next time. I forgot the cord for the camera.

And oh yea, Happy 4th of July!