I have gone from first class flying to realizing the harsh reality of what we are undertaking in a matter of hours. Last night we ate a good size italian meal at Houston, then steaks on the plane,(no not snakes on a plane, steaks) then we got to our host´s house and we were basically required to eat or it would have been extremely rude. Believe it or not, our host´s name for the frist 3 nights is none other than Don Juan. Yes, thats right Don Juan. He´s actually not as much the ladies man as I expected but hes a darn good cook. I have to say it wasn´t exactly torture to have to eat a third dinner. He cooked up(go ahead guess), beans and rice! We also had sweet white corn tamales and a type of hard salty nicaraguan cheese that I likened to feta, but harder. o yeah, and I tried the world famous nica coffee, i really don´t like coffee, but I drank it out of respect and considering I could take it down without making even the slightest face, it must have been darn good coffee. I think was made it work was that he had like a pound of sugar in each ounce. It is definitely nicaraguas equivalent to sweet souther tea back home. It will get you wired!
After dinner we went to the Suni solar headquarters, where Grupo fenix assembles solar panels for installation in the remote villages. There we got to sit with 2 other solar culture course participants and drink some good ol´Veronica beer. It seems all the nica beers are named after women. Veronica and i aren´t friends anymore. She didn´t sit too well with me, although I can´t totally blame her because I did eat 3 dinners and drink some highly caffinated coffee, then came veronica, but she is the scapegoat.
That was the beginning of a miserable sleepless night. Apparently saturday night is party night in Barrio Edgar Mangia. There was a party right next door blaring music until 1 am, then another party picked up and ran nearly all night until 430 am! It was kinda weird because at the end of the night, when I happend to be in the midst of one of the greatest battles my intestines and stomach have ever had, I got a little comfort from the party when they suddenly broke into religious songs, one of which just happens to be the same as we sing at St. Jerome´s back home. Shortly thereafter the battle ended and I won´t say who won. So I really didn´t sleep nearly all night due to Veronica and the partys. So to end on a humorous note, here are a couple pictures to show you how GIGANTIC I am in Nica. No, they definitely don´t sell size 13 sneaks!
