Nicaragua: Part 1

Its summer!! I can’t believe its already june! I’m going to try and start blogging more as we begin our journey to the mission field. We will begin traveling the country at the beginning of august!!! that is only 2 months and will be here before i know it! If i can remember to blog, this will be a great way to communicate what we are doing! The last semester of dental hygiene school was the hardest thing that I have ever done. I could never describe to you how horrible it was and I think the only ones who really truly know are my fellow classmates. However, during the cold winter we did have a couple weeks of warmth when we traveled to Nicaragua for Christmas/New Years/ My birthday. We had BLAST. I think it was the calm before the storm. I never blogged about our trip so here it is!

We got to spend a week on Corn Island and a about a week at Jason and Tammy's in Diriamba, Nicaragua. It was so fun! We had been traveling all over for Christmas. We went to my parents and spend Christmas in St. Joseph. Lindsay was able to come with us. It was so fun! We traveled back to Springfield and then a couple days later drove up to St. Louis where we stayed the night with my grandparents who got up at 2 am to take us to the airport. We made it to Miami where we had to wait 5 hours for our next flight. We sat and read the book Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers to each other. We had been working on it since thanksgiving and we finished it that day. We were on the last pages of the book when Jaron realized that he had gone to the restroom about 10 minutes earlier and left his planner, which had all of our money, all of our cards, both our passports, our boarding passes and all of our information in it. I am pretty sure he had a heart attack. He slammed the book shut, dumped out the backpack and realized it wasn't there just like he feared. He sprinted to the bathroom, pushing people out of the way to get there, and came sprinting back with it in his hands. He had set it down to wash his hands and walked away without it. Crazy. Thankfully it was still there and all hope was not lost! We made it to Nicaragua that evening and Jason and Tammy came and picked us up and took us to Pizza Hut, Jaron's favorite restaurant in Managua. He swears its better than any US Pizza Hut. We drove back to Diriamba that night where Jason and Tammy had a birthday cake awaiting my arrival. It was the day before my birthday, but they wanted to celebrate immediately! We all sat out on the beautiful back porch and enjoyed some chocolaty goodness. The next morning I was greeted by the smell of a delicious birthday breakfast that Tammy had made for me. Jaron and I were hanging out that day because Jason and Tammy had some work at the church to do. So I sat around and got ready, painted my nails, and watched Serendipity with Jaron. I had been told we were going to have a womens bible study and I was excited to see everyone. We drove to the church and I walked in and to my surprise, there were birthday decorations everywhere and all the women were gathered around the tables singing(more like yelling) Happy Birthday to me in Spanish. Tammy had prepared an entire meal of lasagna for all the people at the party and they had gifts for me to open. I had to wear blue bunny ears because I was the guest of honor and I needed to stand out (as if my white skin wasn't enough ha!) We played a game where everyone had a silhouette of their face drawn and you had to guess who was who. Unfortunately the woman drawing the silhouettes was no artist and it was almost impossible to tell. We played another game where everyone had the name of an animal taped to their back. You didn't want to let anyone see what animal you were and you wanted to have the most names matched with animals as possible on your paper at the end of the game. It was fun. Tammy also gave a lesson for us (all in Spanish of course!) It was so humbling to see all of these people who have almost nothing, sacrificing and giving a little of what they do have to me for my birthday. It was the sweetest party, AND I finally got my first surprise party!!!!! I had always wanted one and I NEVER expected it to happen in Nicaragua! The next day was New Years Eve and since we hadn't done a formal Birthday Dinner for me, Jason and Tammy decided to take Jaron and I out to dinner in Granada. On our way we stopped at a stand selling pineapple on the side of the road. We got out and saw the giant pineapple field behind them. We bought two pineapples and a 3 liter bottle of freshly (so we thought) squeezed pineapple juice. We made it to Granada and went restaurant hunting. We weren’t sure which one we wanted to go to but we decided on a Mediterranean place(that’s us at the place in the pic) and it was SO good. It was run by a woman from Canada/France. However, they weren't open yet so we walked around the city and went to a coffee shop where I got a frappe and then we walked around some more. It started pouring rain and we went into a couple beautiful hotels and toured them. We made it back to the restaurant for opening and Jaron got some sort of steak with Roquefort cheese(a type of bleu cheese from south France) sauce. It was delicious. So delicious I can' t even recall what I ate! Granada is a beautiful city and we really enjoyed ourselves there. We made it home in time to hear all the fireworks go off (we couldn't really see any of them) and try our pineapple juice. It was very fermented. The bottle was rock solid... so we decided it would make a good New Years bomb. Jaron climbed up on a tank and threw it down where it exploded and sprayed everywhere (and smelled horribly of alcohol). Lindsay came down the following day, which was Saturday. While Jason and Tammy were on their way to pick her up, Jaron and I went to visit Chepe and Fatima and see where they were building their new house. We also went to visit Chuy and Liset. We were so excited to get to see these families again! Fatima had cooked Quesillo for us because she knows how much Jaron loves it. I'm not a huge fan, but I'm not really a huge fan of any Nicaraguan food!! Sunday morning, we went to church. I love going to Iglesia Bautista Gracia a Dios. It is an awesome church! Jaron taught in both morning and evening services that Sunday. I sang 3 songs in Spanish which was a blast. It was so fun to try and do that and the people seemed to love it. All those with phones or cameras were recording me and talking to their neighbors while I was singing. It was pretty funny. We also were able to see a few baptisms that morning. Its always good to see believers get baptized! We went home and had to finish packing because we had to get up at 3am to get to Managua to get on the plane for Corn Island!