Beautiful Granada

This is a view of our house. The yellow room on the left, with the doors open is our bedroom. This is the Convento San Francisco, located just across the street from our house. It is a very famous church, with a museum right next door.
This is our house. Maia is right out front.Isn't it beautiful!!
This is the view of Mombacho mountain, an inactive volcano that can be seen if you look right from our house.
Here is Adam, working away at the computer at the restaurant right next door to our house.

So, I know that I promised more about our business, but it is still kind of in the works, so I can’t say anything yet. Just to let everyone know though, we are planning on being home in Canada for Lauren and Jamie’s baby’s birth, so we won’t be here after July 20th, and we aren’t sure when we will get back. So, if you want to visit us, please come before July 20th. And please do come if you can because we would love to have more guests.
Granada is what I would like to talk about today. Granada is the city where we live. It is supposedly the oldest colonized city in Central America. It is a beautiful little town, with a population of approx. 130, 000. My friend Jessica just posted some pictures of Spain on her facebook account and I was stunned at the similarities. It is quite evident that this town was settled/colonized by Spaniards. The cobblestone streets, the red clay tile roofs and the interior courtyards all show a Spanish influence.
The people that we have met so far have been really nice, despite our first issues with trusting people. I am really starting to love it here, and would like to stay as long as possible. Circumstances allowing, we will be back to this little paradise soon. The sidewalks are kind of hard to navigate with the stroller, if they exist at all. But, what I love about this place is that even though you have to walk on the streets sometimes, all of the cars avoid you. Defensive driving is in full play here. This is a good thing because we have been caught driving the wrong way down one way streets too many times to count.
Every block has several small stores being run out of people’s homes. These places are called Pulperias. They are sometimes big and fancy and other times they aren’t even advertised on the street. The Pulperias sell everything from milk, eggs and pasta to school books and hair gel. They have an impressive amount of stock, albeit sometimes a little dusty.
The market here runs seven days a week and sells absolutely anything you can imagine. There are fresh corn or flour tortillas daily, as well as a huge selection of fruit, vegetables, fish, meat and various household items. You can buy shoes, hair elastics, and bras all at one little booth. It is busy all the time, except when I get there with Naomi strapped to me. Then, all of the hustle and bustle seems to stop and everyone stares at Naomi and I. People have even asked me if she is mine. She is quite the show here, as is Maia.
In response to my cousin Erin’s inquiry about diseases and the like. We have been pretty lucky so far. All of the vegetables and fruit that we are planning to eat raw, go into a sink full of water that has been treated with a tiny amount of bleach. This kills all the potentially harmful bacteria and has kept us free from traveller’s stomach so far. Also, one great thing about Granada is that you can drink the tap water. We have all been doing so without incident. As for other precautions, we all got immunized before we came. I cut Maia’s fingernails really short in order to avoid any contact with contaminated dirt. Other than that, we just hope for the best I guess.
Well, that is all for now. I have posted some pictures to give you an idea of our neighbourhood and new house. Sorry this posting is so short and kind of vanilla. Next time I promise more juice. Love to youall and thank you Becky for your comments about people reading but not posting comments. It gives us heart.

Returning to "normal".

Naomi and mom on playing on the chair. I just asked Naomi if she likes Granada, I think the smile is a "yes".

Dinner with Michelle at " El Garage". It was a real blast to have a Gill in our pose, it really reminded us of some of our previous adventures.

Bedtime at the Browns. A good book and a cuddle are the prerequisites of a good nights sleep.

This is how it all started......I was lying on the ground in the sun, watching my baby play nearby. Maia was asleep and Adam had gone to work on his muscles. I noticed that one of the chairs just to my right had a big bump underneath it. I never would have seen this bump, if I hadn’t been lying on the ground. This chair was one of a group of four chairs, and none of the other chairs had a bump underneath.
I stared at it for a while.
It started to move.
I jumped up quickly, knowing with certainty, that I had uncovered a nest of scorpions, or snakes, or even worse...cockroaches. I grabbed Naomi, and ran to the bedroom where Maia was sleeping, blissfully unaware of the horrors that were lurking on the other side of the garden.
When Adam returned home, an eternity later, I had closed all of the doors in the bedroom and was waiting with heart pounding knowing that every noise I heard was the sound of the baby creatures emerging from their womb in the chair. I quickly recounted my tale, and he bravely went over to the chair and whacked the cushion. I couldn’t believe his brazen disregard for his personal safety. I thanked my lucky stars that I had married such a courageous man.
When he returned from his heroic encounter with...who knows what...his face held an expression of disbelief. He must not be able to accept my tale as true, the strange bugs that we are meeting here in Nicaragua, I thought to myself. Yet, he was also slightly smirking at me. “It was nothing” he said. “Nothing”, my voice trembled, “you mean, it was nothing you couldn’t handle”? “No” he replied “There was nothing in any of the chairs. You’re going to have to toughen up a little Emilie” and then he mumbled something about cowering in the bedroom. Part of me was elated. No strange lair of animals was living in the cushion. It must have been the wind that created movement in the cloth. Another part of me felt slightly indignant, as I had only been trying to protect my children from unknown horrors. The greater feeling though, was one of shame. My Grannie told me a long time ago, that you should never show your fears to your children, because it will transfer to them. Since having children, I didn’t realise just how many fears I would have to hide. Who knew I was such a scaredy cat?
The intent of this story though, was to introduce the topic of animals. As I sit, in our new home, I can see 5 different birds in our garden. We also have a large frog living in the garage, bats that swoop into our living room at night, many geckos, ants, beetles, grasshoppers and the list could go on. For a squeamish person like me, I have had to come to terms the fact that I live in a world that has other creatures living it in with me. Nicaragua has been a real education in becoming closer to nature. It will take me some time, but I will come around. I already have come farther than I ever have in the past.
As for our new house, well, it is fantastic. It has a swimming pool. Enough said. Come and visit as soon as you can.
Maia loves her new school. She has made some friends and is exhausted by 1:00 when we pick her up. Adam and I have also been at school on the mornings. Adam goes to a non-profit Spanish language school, which uses their profits to house and educate street boys in Granada. I have teacher that comes to my house in the mornings. She is really great. Yesterday we went to the market, and I learned the culturally appropriate way to bargain. It was quite the eye opener actually.
As for Naomi, well she continues to grow and laugh. She is a happy person, who is a delight to be around. We are very lucky parents to have two very wonderful daughters.
As for our business, I know that I promised to tell you more next time, but we don't want to reveal too much, until we have more of it worked out. We have a meeting today with a man who will be helping us, and then perhaps afterwards I will be able to say a little more.
Love to you all. We miss you tremendously. Please send many, many notes!!

Humbly Frustrated

Michelle and Naomi with a water bottle. Naomi really attacks plastic bottles and any type of glassware.

Maia and Mark Anthony having a squat. They played really well together.

Maia found Mark Anthony's markers. Looks like she started with some lipstick then proceeded to the face tattoo.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, that is what I have for everybody....who tries to learn English.

What a feeling of helplessness, not being able to speak the language here. My limited Spanish and theatre training has served as a buffer, but I am certainly not getting into any serious political or literary discussions here. I want to, believe me...Adam and I start Spanish school here on Monday. He will be attending classes, and I will be getting taught in the comfort of my own home. Hopefully, by the end of four weeks, we will be on our way to having some pretty in-depth conversations, about...the weather perhaps. Isn't that what Canadians like to talk about?

Adam, Maia and I have been keeping busy since our last blog.

We went to Leon, and we loved it. The energy of Leon was quite the change from sleepy little Granada. There were many students and lots of action, even with the hot-hot-heat. We even managed to get out to a beautiful little beach called Las Penitas. On the way back into town we picked up 5 university students hitch-hiking. They were really nice to us and we gave them the link to this blog. If they are checking it, a big hello to all of you! Unfortunately, there were no houses for rent in the centre of town. At least, not any furnished ones. All of the houses that we looked at were in the suburbs, and since we were planning on sending our van back to Canada soon, we wanted to find a place that easily accessed the downtown on foot.

So, we were fine with returning to Granada. We have started to settle in here anyway, and it really is a beautiful little town. We have been meeting with many people who have settled here and have ideas about business. In fact, we are meeting the editor of the local English-Language newspaper in about 15 minutes.

The big news here in Nicaragua is the transportation strike. For the past two weeks, all inter-city buses and taxis have been protesting the rise in gas prices. They believe that the government should be subsidizing the cost. While gas prices are similar to Canadian ones, the average monthly income is so much lower, that it makes it quite difficult for people to afford transportation at all. The goverment is washing it's hands of all responsibility, saying that gas prices are out of their hands. It is quite funny (not in a ha! ha! way), given that a similar strike happened when the current Sandanista government was the opposition, and was even financed by them. Now Daniel Ortega is just waiting out the strike, because he knows that the people who work in the transportation industry cannot afford to stay on strike for much longer.

The bus and taxi drivers that line the road, are not asking for money from all private vehicles driving by. This may be a good route to take given that most people in the country are supporting the strike.

On the other hand, the strike meant that our friend Michelle Gill, has been unable to explore the country, the way she had intended too. We had to pick her up from Managua, and on Sunday, we will drive her to the Costa Rica border, so that she can finish off her eight months of travel through South and central America. She's had to see alot more of us than she intended, but she has said that she is getting much more sleep than she normally does. I guess that means that Adam and I don't really party the way we used to....NAW! That's impossible. We're still hip cats...

Next time, we will let you in on our new plan for a business. We are still working it out, so we don't want to let the cat out of the bag before we are certain.

Luckily, Michelle has a camera, so we have been able to get some pics off of her camera. We have bought a new one though, so more pictures and video will follow.

Love to you all...and Stewie, not sure who you are...please let us know. We got both of your messages though.

Ciao...

Slow as molasses

The internet in our home is down and repairs and service happen at a slower pace here in Nicaragua. I am in an internet cafe that is about 5 blocks away. The reason I am here is because the sign outside claims a whopping 2 mps!!!! Whoa...I hope I don't lose my hair! It is a little painful watching this computer trying to download and I will be pleasantly surprised if I can even post this blog.

Em and I are keeping quite busy making new friends these days. We had a fantastic birthday party for Maia at the library across the street. We booked it from 11 to 12 and about 30 kids from the area showed up. There was only 7 kids at the beginning but news travels very fast here considering nobody has phones. A large Pricemart cake and four pizzas were quickly devourved by the horde but the pinata just wouldn't break. The pinata had a clay skeleton and the broomstick handle broke before any candy was extracted. Maia laughed and cried and is very happy to be 3.

Today we were invited to a small pool party at our neighbors house. Some of the people at the party have been living here for 10 years and have thier finger on the pulse of Granada. It was informative and refreshing as the party was cleverly set for 2pm which is the theoretical hottest part of the day. There was a 2 year old boy at the party who played very well with Maia and nobody was hurt until Maia decided to jump into the swimming pool without her water wings. To her credit she did ask Em if she could go in again. Emilie had agreed she could go back in but was expecting Maia to wait for her. Maia jump in and was very surprised to find herself sinking like a stone. Fortunately we were all very close and watching and the result was only mild coughing. Maia insists that she wasn't scared. I told her that being fearless and reckless are not the best combination.

We are heading to Leon tommorow. The ocean is much closer to Leon but everybody is telling us that Leon in unbarebly hot. The weather network reported 43 degrees last week. We are getting used to the warm weather but we will see if we can handle the real heat. Perhaps when we come back to Granada it will be cool and refreshing.

Adam

Freshly squeezed OJ

The link below should bring you to a page with pictures of the house we are renting. I would have taken pictures myself but as you may know our camera is broken.

http://www.gpsnicaragua.com/renthomes/casalucia/

We are settling in to life here the following are some of the major differences. The quantity of bugs in the house is hard to get used to but we are shifting our perception of "normal" and coping quite well. There are lines of ants in our kitchen. For those of you that are in love with ants like I am you kmow they are mesmerizing. I keep on killing entire tracks but the ants seem unoffended and have their trail rebuilt in a few minutes. The home for the ants is a tiny hole in one of the wall tiles. They are lines to the sink (water) to the counter ( food crumbs) and to the tv which I can only guess is for entertainment. I have no problem with the ants as they are clean and not poisonous. We have at least 20 geckos in our house. They scramble on the walls and make weird noises that sound like someone is at the door. We kept on opening the front door until we figured that one out (Emilie excluded). The is always a plethora of dead bugs on the floor. Some dead from our lumbering feet, some burn themselves alive on the light bulbs at night and some probably die from old age but it's hard to tell. The cockroach room is the only real offender. The problem was that the light in the room wasn't working and cockroaches had been sighted. I had two cockroaches running about my feet when I was showering. Luckily the house has been fumigated and the house was bug free for a couple of hours.

We are slowly acclimatized to the heat. Apparently its takes approximately 2 weeks to become accostumed to the heat. I haven't stopped sweating since we got here. Even the breeze is hot. We have arrived in central america in the hottest time of the year. The rivers are dry, roads and trees are covered in dust and the land aching for the rain that is coming soon.

A few promising things in Granada are the women who walk up and down the street selling fresh fruit. We have been buying oranges, papaya, canteloup, watermelon, banana and carrots from these ladies. The fruit is locally grown and is delicious and the juicer has been working overtime. My favorite is carrot juice and Emilie likes the orange juice. There is a kids library across the street that Maia and I went to this afternoon. All the kids know Maia now and scream her name when she arrives. She is taking the fame in stride. We read "A case of the stripes" which is about a girl that wants to eat lima beans. Another convenience here are the taxis. They are not beautiful and they don't have shocks or seatbelts or doors that shut BUT it does cost only 1 dollar to go anywhere in town.

Hope you enjoy the photos of our house,

Adam out.

First Night

Hello Everyone,
We are terribly sorry for the long wait between blogs. We have had a lot to do and digest.
First and foremost...we have a cell phone! The number is (505) 970-3789. Call us whenever you can!!
Here`s what I have been thinking about lately... please indulge me for a moment.
We moved into our new apartment yesterday. It is HUGE by our standards, but small compared to others we have seen! It has a lot of room for guests. We want to show you some pictures, but in a moment of insanity, we let Maia play with the expensive digital camera, unsupervised. Now it is broken...we will try and get it fixed today.
On with my thoughts. Thw apartment we rented comes with ``Maid Service``. Every rich Nicaraguna, as well as most of the foreigners, have employees, or as they are called in Spanish, empleadas. It makes me feel weird. Also, everyone warned us that we have to be careful about securing all of valuables at all times, because even the most trusted of people will steal from you if given the chance. Our doors have heavy steel frames that must be locked at all times as well., because apparently (and this has been corroborated by at least 5 different sources), people will just walk in off the street and take what they want.
All of this information, true or not, makes me sad. I am having a hard time falling in love with a place where I need to be on guard at all times. This is not in my nature. I like to trust people first, then get to know them a bit more as time goes on. Apparently, Nicaragua is not as bad as Costa Rica for stealing, but that is very little consolation. We have met some really nice people here, or so I think....maybe they are casing us for all of our stuff. See, paranoia has begun to set in. I don`t think that this is a healthy way to live. I am hoping that this will change in time. I hope that I will learn for myself that life is not as bleak as it has been painted.
On the other hand, we went to a lake in an old volcano crater yesterday. The water is full of minerals that are excellent for skin and hair. It was a perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon!!! You had to drive down an incredibly steep hill to get there. We were afraid that Tink wasn`t going to make it back up again, but of course, she did. Good old Tink, she sure has been pulling through on this trip.
Today, we are checking out a school for Maia. It is a Waldorf school, for those of you who are familiar with Waldorf philosophy. We think that Maia will thrive there, because imagination is really encouraged. We hope that it works out, because Maia really needs some friends. Her birthday is coming up, and we want to invite some people to her birthday party.
The last thing I would like to leave you with, in the disjointed rambling I call a blog, is this, first night in our new apartment and we have some things to work on. First of all, the hot water tap leaks in the kitchen. No big deal, that can be fixed easily. Secondly, there seems to be a mosquito colony living in our garden. This can also be fixed with mosquito coils, etc. Also, no big deal. What is a big deal, are the ten cockraoches living in our first shower. They are nowhere else in the house so far, but we can`t put Maia in her bedroom, because of them. Maia had to sleep on our floor, on a makeshift bed last night. This was probably for the best because she was up quite a bit in the night, but that doesn`t change the fact that we aren`t using one whole room in this house. Even Adam was grossed out a little, when a cockroach ran over his foot.
Our friends the gekkos are hard at work, so lets give a few props to them for their help last night. I am sure that by our next blog, the roaches will be taken care of.
Love and nire love to all of you. Please write and call when you get a chance.

Looking for an apartment.

The matriarchs of a family that were staying in the same hotel as us, just outside of Xela in Guatemala, spoke English very well. They lived in the States and were back in Guatemala visiting their family. They arrived in the same size van as we did except their van had bench seats and 13 people in it. We didn`t take many pictures in El Salvador and Honduras because we we getting exhausted and we were really pushing for Nicaragua. The border crossings were impossibly exhausting and always very hot. This picture was taken right after our final border crossing into Nicaragua. Maia is sad here and is showing signs of exhaustion as well.
We have been in Granada for two days now. We are staying at the hotel casa San Francicso and making new friends. I look a little drunk here because I am. We just got back from dinner and we finished two bottles of wine. Our friends name`s are Adam and Grace. We are relaxing at the hotel in the courtyard by the pool.

We made it to Granada....and its great. After leaving Guatemala we thought we could drive to Nicaragua in one, long day. As you know, the border crossing was crazy and we drove for 3 hours looking for a city big enough to have a hotel. We ended up in La Libertad right before dark. Emilie got some food and we went to bed. We had decided to take all coastal roads after Mexico because Tink simply cannot handle the big hills.

We left La Libertad without incident at dawn. We filled the van with gas and oil made fairly good progress despite the check points, construction, wandering country folk and stray animals that mosey across the highway without a care in the world. We thought we would make it to Nicaragua today (April 21) and we passed through San Miguel with only 3 u-turns. There are very few signs in the cities and the ones that are legible are often misleading. Em and I use a combination of intincts, a compass and luck to get through any of the cities and towns. Once we drove right through the Town`s main market. The streets were filled with people and shops of all kinds of beautiful art and fresh fruit. We took a right, then a left and soon the density of the population on the street decreased. A couple more turns to a traffic circle and off we go!

The border of Honduras and El Savaldor was not as horrendous as Guatemala but was very expensive and took a very long time. I was waiting outside, in the 40ish degree heat while the "officials" sat on the other side of the glass, in an air conditioned room and ate their lunches. There was 3 or 4 young guys in there lounging and in no rush to stamp my paper at a cost of 10 dollars canadian. The final bill for all the different government divisions was over 70 dollars. We were at the border for about 4 hours and when we finally starting driving in Honduras we were spent.

We made it Choluteca and found a hotel. It was 2 pm and we could have been at the border in 40 minutes or so but we heard that the Nicaragua border is just a bad as the Honduras border and so we resigned ourselves to one more day on the road. The hotel we found was unremarkable but comfortable. Strangely, we had somehow driven on a pseudo city bypass. The hotel was situated on the highway to the border and we drove straight to the border (through two checkpoints ofcourse) without incident.

The Nicaraguan border was dream. It was fast (ish) and the people were very nice. We were at our first Nica police checkpoint by 10:30 am (April 22). The roads for the first 30 km were the worst we'd seen. Potholes a foot deep and wide as the highway itself. There was a crew of about 30 boys doing some repairs with tampers. After that, it was smooth sailing through Leon and Managua. We were stopped again near Leon and pulled over by the police in Managua for a bribe. We paid the 200 cordobas and kept on going. I was a little upset at my first "robbery" but it is only 10 dollars to me and 10% of their monthly salary so I will forgive him eventually.

We drove straight downtown and found a room a the Hotel San Francisco. We scheduled an appointment to see some apartments on April 23 and we also were invited to a very grand 60th birthday party on Saturday night. The owner of the Hotel is having the party. We met Adam and Grace that night and things are moving along nicely.

Today is the morning of the 24th and we will have a place to stay by tonight. We saw places ranging from $4oo to $1600 all in the downtown area. The $1600/month mansion is a summer home for a German family. It was HUGE. Hard to explain but I will try. It had 4 bedrooms, all with their own bathrooms, a pool, garage, indoor fire bar-g-que in the courtyard beside the gardens and a view of the mountains. The entertainment room was atleast 1000 square feet. We thought about renting it for 1 month just for fun but we would have to sublet half the house.

Talk to you soon!