Playing Go Fish in Nicaragua And Other Stuff Too

So at the beginning of October I went with my host mom to Nicaragua to visit the family, per the usual.  And, since we left the same day Rebecca was heading up to Nicaragua for her three month volunteer stint up there, she came with us.  That was a lot of fun because it gave Rebecca and I another chance to hang out and chat!  Yay!  It was also sad because it was our last time to hang out.  (Well, hopefully not last last....hopefully it will work out so we'll get to hang out in Nicaragua or Costa Rica in the next few months...but last 'for sure' hangout!)  Anyway, we hopped on the bus around 3 to head up north.


Nieves on the bus!  She's rocking two pairs of glasses so I took a pic so she could see that it looks pretty normal! :)

The thing about driving up to Nicaragua is that when you get close to the border, there are TONS of trucks waiting to go through customs.  The trucks just sit in the street and block the entire right lane, so the left lane is used for traffic going in both directions.  I've noticed that "right of way" is determined by the size of your vehicle.  Since we were on a bus, any cars that were coming our way on the road had to get out of the way, even though they were technically driving on the correct side of the street.   So, when the big rig you can see coming at us in the photo below came up, our bus had to throw it in reverse for a while until we could find a place to get out of the truck's way.  I have to give it to the bus drivers (and taxi drivers for that matter) here; they're all pretty great at maneuvering the roads! 

Rebecca didn't have any photos of her with all her awesome backpacking gear, so I took a photo of her with all her stuff as we walked across the border.  She's my hippie friend and I love it!! :)

When we got to Rivas and dropped Rebecca off at a hotel for the night, I was reunited with my bestie Nassa at the house.  And this time I brought a deck of cards and taught her how to play Go Fish.  Let's just say she really liked playing and by the time the weekend was over, I had probably played like a thousand rounds of Go Fish (which eventually morphed a little bit and became Nassa's version of GF!).  But as always, I had a lot of fun with Miss Nassa.  When we needed a break from playing cards, we ran around outside playing kickball, and she introduced me to the vast quantities of Barbie games available for kids to play online (yikes!).

 One evening we also walked over to Nieves' brother's house where we chatted and met Aura, their parrot!  Actually, Aura had belonged to Nieves' father and was passed down to her brother when her father passed away.  She's like 36 years old and she's super chatty but a little grumpy!  This pic is Nieves, her brother, sister-in-law and Nassa...and their cat!

And this is my kickass pic of Aura!  Aura can speak and she will repeat vowels when you say them slowly, so we were all shouting out vowels for a good chunk of the time we were there :)  She can also do an amazingly accurate impersonation of your laugh (she nailed mine...it was kind of creepy...and I felt a little mocked!) and she can cry exactly like a newborn baby.  So much so, that I kept looking around for a crying baby!  Aura definitely entertained all of us for a pretty long time, and I am amazed by these parrots!  (Some of my students also have parrots and they've all told me some pretty funny stories about what they can say as well!)  Aura lives in a cage, but they also let her walk around freely too (like she is below), and I asked if she could fly or had her wings clipped or anything, and was told that she couldn't fly any more because she's too fat :(

Hanging out with Ana, Marlon and Nassa on the porch one night.  Happiness is sitting on their porch in the rocking chairs!  I told Nieves that some day I'd like to have a porch and four rocking chairs (we both decided four was the perfect number) and a little garden to look at just like they have in Rivas.  Seriously, rain or shine, there's nothing better than chatting or reading or drinking coffee on a porch while chillin in a rocking chair.  I'm hooked!

In addition to all our card-playing, Nassa and I also played one of those hand clapping games (you know, like we all played when we were on the playground in elementary school.  What the frick are they called?) where at the end of the song, you don't win until you make the other person laugh first (by making funny faces).  She almost always made me laugh first, and you can see why...home girl does a great impression of a monkey!

 Even though my impression's not quite so great, my lame faces allowed me to win on occasion :)

On Sunday morning, we took a tour of Rivas in a horse-drawn carriage, which was pretty cool!  I read a lot of Jane Austin when I first got here, so this was like a throw-back to how everyone used to get around back in the day.   It's actually a pretty common mode of transportation still in Nicaragua.  I see a lot of horse-drawn devices around!

This was our driver Don Jose Angel.  He totes let me sit up front and had me drive when we were on our return trip to the house.  Just saying...

 The view on the outskirts of Rivas was so pretty.  This is the view from the front of the carriage :)

Our first stop during our tour of Rivas/our paseo around town was at Evania's house (she's Don Hernan's daughter). Evania made us the best drink EVER made from Coyolita with cinnamon and I wish I could drink it warm at Christmas because it tasted like Christmas in a cup!  Unfortunately it's only something you can get in Nicaragua and we apparently can't even get it in Costa Rica.  Sad!  But it was nice to visit Evania at her cute little house.  Evania "took care of me" when Nieves went to Nicaragua in September for her mom's 80th birthday and I couldn't go because of my class schedule, so we're old acquaintances.

Nassa and I did a little exploring around the house and Nassa made me take lots of pics of the trees and flowers, etc.  But only some of them are making it to my blog.  (Really, just the ones with Nassa in them because she's such a cutie patootie!  And because really, nobody wants to see random pics of flowers and lines!)

We made another stop at another one of Nieve's sister's houses (Elizabeth's house I think) along the way and said hello to all the family there too!  And then, it was back to the house!

Let me introduce you to our very awesome horse! I was told that his name is "Gorrión" which means hummingbird in Spanish (in Central America). His full name is "Gorrión pecho amarillo" which means Hummingbird with the yellow chest, and it's part of a song. I thought it was cute/funny that he named his horse hummingbird and we all laughed and chatted about it when we got back to the house.

On Sunday afternoon, Nieves and I made our way back down to Liberia.  Of course, when we got to the Nicaraguan border, it started to rain so we totally elbowed our way into this guy's bike thingamabobber at the border. Thaz how we roll. He didn't seem to mind too much though :)

Our driver was happy to have us though..probably because he got bonus money!

And Other Stuff Too

So aside from taking my third trip to Nicaragua at the beginning of October, I really haven't done much at all so far this month!  That is mostly because it started raining almost 24/7 here around the second weekend in October, and I guess it just took away any motivation I had to go out and about on the weekends. (Also, I lost my new-found travel buddy Rebecca (tear!) and I'm clearly lost without her and I have stalled on ideas of where else to go!  I feel like I've already done a lot of the "must-dos"!)  So instead, it's just been nice to hang out with my family, read (LOTS of reading!) and catch up on some sleep!  Also, I got a little cold last week, so I was feeling a little under the weather anyways.  But don't worry travel-fans, my weekends will be picking up again soon!  Next weekend I'm going to Playas del Coco to go diving and to drink with some of my students for Halloween (apparently Coco is the place to be for Halloween!  Hooray!) and then I'm assuming there will be another trip to Nicaragua coming up, and then my friends Jane and Heather are visiting me for Thanksgiving week and we'll be heading down to Manuel Antonio!!!

And it's not like I've been doing nothing!  For instance, there was the Sunday morning when I woke up at 7am because I thought it was Monday (oops) and ended up being the co-pilot for my host dad to pick up some tourists at the Papagayo Hilton and take them to the airport.  Not only was it a nice drive, I also got to chat with some random American tourists and do a little translating.  It was actually pretty funny because the night before this little outing, Hernan had randomly come up to me and shoved a phone in my hands because he needed to know the room number for this particular couple and they were having trouble communicating, so I got to be all handy by speaking English to the guy and translating for Hernan.  So really, it was like totally perfect/appropriate that I happened to be up and ready to roll in the morning when it was time for Hernan to go pick the couple up.  

So anyway, there have been lots of random things like that to keep me busy/entertained.  I mean, just yesterday I was wandering around Liberia and I got a marriage proposal from Oscar, some old dude sitting at a bus stop who made me sit and chat with him for a bit.  Because I was chatting with Oscar for so long, I actually took a pic of him and his buddy Pedro: (he literally got hold of my hand and wouldn't let it go! haha)

And then later, when I was sitting in the park reading, Pedro came by and we chatted for a bit.  And then a while after that, some random guy named Ruben came by and started telling me about his wood-selling business and gave me his business card and told me to email him and then maybe he'd take me out for a cup of coffee.  So I have all these mini-adventures just by staying close to home!  And lots of date and marriage proposals :)  Actually, I think it's going to be an adjustment when I get back to the states, because it's like a regular occurrence for conversations to go like this: "Hi, what's your name?" (Emily) "Where are you from?" (California) "Do you have a boyfriend?" (Nope) "You're beautiful, do you want to...go out/be my girlfriend/me to be your boyfriend/marry me?" (Um....)  I actually really appreciate the up-front-ness of the guys here, and I think it will come as a shock when I get home and guys start acting all too cool and coy again. :)  And when I don't get weekly marriage proposals from random old dudes.

I mostly just can't believe October is already on it's way out though!  Time here just goes by so incredibly quickly!  And my "time awareness" is also a little off.  It's actually a really good thing there's been so much rain here otherwise I would be convinced it's still summer!  The rain and slightly cooler temperatures are the only things that signify any change in the seasons.  And actually, it's going to start getting dryer and hotter over the next few months instead of colder and rainier!  Not gonna lie, it's kind of a mind trip!!  I actually just figured out a way today to watch some of my favorite holiday movies online (hello Hocus Pocus and White Christmas!).  I think I need some of that consistency to mentally prepare myself for the fact that Halloween is followed by Thanksgiving, which is followed by Christmas, and all of those holidays will be marked here by sunny weather and beaches!  Too crazy and too cool all at the same time!!!