Business as usual

When we last posted, we were in Matagalpa with Ali and his awesome family. We bought them some Christmas goodies and would love to go back sometime soon!

We then made our way back to San Juan del Sur for 10 days over Christmas. We met a cool couple from Vancouver and went out for supper with them on Christmas Eve. They are interested in buying some land in Nicaragua and we had a good conversation about starting a business of our own in Central America some time. After, we enjoyed a interesting fireworks display outside the cathedral in the middle of town. Basically it was a bunch of kids and a few adults helping to light some huge fireworks, and the spectators could stand as close as they wanted. One big one blew up on the ground before it had a chance to shoot into the sky...it was awesome! For all of December, in Managua there are rows of kiosks along some of the main roads completely full of firecrackers and fireworks. After Christmas, New Years or their various Catholic celebrations, the streets are covered in exploded paper from the night of festivities. It's the place to be!

After tanning and surfing, we went to Managua to visit Wilbur (Corwin's son). We ate some fried chicken, went to see his home in a dangerous area of town, bought his family some groceries and enjoyed being able to speak English with him. We wanted to watch his soccer practice, but he said it wasn't a safe area for us to be. It was a short visit but Danee was glad to meet him (it kind of felt like I was meeting a celebrity!) and Grant was happy to see him again after a couple years.

From there we went to El Salvador and spent a week on the beach at Playa El Zonte. We stayed at an awesome hostal and only managed to get a little bit of surfing in. We sunned ourselves by the pool and on the beach, checked out some bat caves on the beach and one day were interviewed for an El Salvador tourism tv show. We had just crawled out of our room after napping and went into the kitchen to make some "gourmet" grilled cheese and hot dogs. A camera crew was there and asked if they could film us, although we probably looked like the greasiest hotel guests EVER (and Danee's blond hair turned a lovely shade of green because of the chemicals in the pool). So they filmed the green, greasy, hungry hippies making and eating some junk food. Good publicity. We thought we were relieved of our duties, but as we were attempting to escape to the beach, they asked if they could interview us...in Spanish. We told them we could only say a few words but that was good enough for them. After a few jumbled sentences, they decided to write out a script for us and we just read it into the camera. We actually got to see it on tv a few days later and laughed throughout the whole segment. They are going to try and send us a copy of the tv show on a cd in a couple months. We are now famous.

In San Salvador, we feasted on a Little Caesars large hot'n ready for $4.50 and went to a new movie at a big theatre for $6- an awesome cheap date. We also passed 3 Tony Romas restraunts in one day. Weird. We then took a extremely over air-conditioned bus to Guatemala City. When we got off the bus, it was even colder: about 10 degrees. We went to San Jacinto, Chiquimula, to the Songs of Joy kids home. We stayed for a week, playing with the kids and doing some cleaning. We cleaned some classrooms in the school and cleaned and completely organized the supply room. Never before have we seen so many pencils at one time. They had the largest Rubbermade container (with wheels) packed full of pencils and two more slightly smaller containers filled with pencils. Grant shared a huge lemon with some of the boys. It was the size of a grapefruit.

We are now in Antigua, Guatemala and are going to the market to do a little fruit and veggie and cowboy hat shopping!