Salsa, merengue, assemblies, students and farewells - never a dull moment!

June 2013

Well as you can see San Juan del Sur is greening up.  The rainy season is in full swing although it hasn't been too bad, it mostly rains at night and we've only been caught out in the rain a couple of times.

Although with the rain the rubbish is still coming down the river and being washed out to sea.  Thankfully the alcaldía (council) seems pretty pro-active with picking up the rubbish and each day teams of men sweep the streets (by hand) and pick up the rubbish from the streets and sometimes from the beach.

Last weekend we had our assembly so we were up bright and early meeting at the park at 5.50am to catch the bus to Ticuantepe, about 2.5 hours from SJDS.

Zac had organized a minibus for us all that worked out really well.

As you can see, a few of us are not really morning people :)

Three of our Bible students came with us which was awesome, here is our lovely bike mechanic friend Jesus.  The assembly was in English so he was soooo excited as he understood most of it.  We've been studying with him and his brother in English and Spanish and helping him out with an English course that he's been doing so his English is really improving.

Here we are with Jesus and Juan.  Now Juan has quite a story.  I hope he won't mind me sharing it with you - he's homeless and lives on the streets or on the beach here in San Juan.  Up until recently he was drunk most days and was living a very sad life.  He was born in Nicaragua but during the civil war, when he was young his family moved to Los Angeles.  I'm not sure what happened with his dad, I think he left them and came back to Managua, Nicaragua but his Mum was an alcoholic and Juan ended up being shuffled through the foster care system.  His head is covered with the scars inflicted on him by one of his foster dads.  :(

Juan grew up very angry with life and things didn't go well with him.  He ended up spending 10 years in a maximum security prison and reliant on alcohol.  Finally he was deported back to Nicaragua, unable to speak Spanish, unwanted by his family because of the way he was living and without any papers to be able to work or travel legally even here in his land of birth.

Anyway he met a few witnesses and started coming to the odd meeting, usually inebriated but liking what he heard decided to make some changes.  He has now not had a drink for over three weeks, has been coming to our house each week to study the Bible with us and has been coming to all the English meetings.  When Jovany left he gave us a bag of clothes to help someone out in need so Juan was wrapped to get some nice dress shirts, ties and long pants.

Sadly SJDS is a small community and although he's looking for work I think everyone's waiting to see if the good changes he's made are here to stay.  He makes a few cords each day collecting cans and trying to help tourists for tips.  He's also saving for some proper shoes to wear to the meeting.  Every other day or so he gives Porl a few cords and Porl has a little bank book going to keep track of how much he's saved.  He's so excited watching it grow.  We're tempted to just give him what he needs but I think it's going to be such an accomplishment for him to do on his own that we'll just keep encouraging him and giving him a some good square meals and our company and friendship.  

As he doesn't have anywhere to stay he often sleeps on the beach or in some deserted lot which he says isn't too bad but the worst thing is that the crabs come up from the beach and bite him and they sometimes have a really good go at him and he comes round covered with pincer bites.  Who would have thought that crabs would be so vicious!

Juan is really good company with lots of stories and often pops in for dinner or to get dressed for the meeting and we've taught him how to play Skip-Bo so he loves coming round for a game of cards.  We really hope he'll stay off the alcohol and he can get his life back together.

Now, back to the assembly .... Why is it that so many people have to make funny faces when the camera gets pointed at them? jeje

and no, we're not pulling funny faces, they are our regular ones :P

We met some lovely young bro's from Blue Fields and as we're hopefully heading up there next month we might meet up with them.

After the assembly we were all a little more awake, the lady with the grey hair, front and centre, is my lovely Bible student Arlene and she thoroughly enjoyed her day out with us.  She's the legend that travels a couple of hours each way from Cardenas each week to come to the English meetings.

Porl was interviewed but I was too busy listening to take a picture :(  Here's our friend Franscisco (Pancho) from Granada being interviewed.  Chase and I are going to stay with him and his parents in August when we attend the pioneer school in Granada for two weeks. 

While we were at the assembly, unbeknownst to us Renee (the coconut seller) and his wife Liz had come into San Juan and came to our house looking for us because they wanted to attend the Spanish meeting with us.  As were weren't there they headed up to the hall by themselves.  We caught up with them later and they were so happy and excited, they said that they had enjoyed the meeting so much that they wanted to move into SJDS (at the moment they live about half an hour away by bus) and they have decided that they want to become Jehovah's Witnesses - them and all their family.  I don't know if their family knows about this yet lol but it was lovely to hear that the brothers and sisters had welcomed them so warmly and that they had appreciated the Bible based information so much that that was how they felt.

This week saw Kieran back at the dentists getting his second wisdom tooth pulled out, such fun :)

He wasn't too keen on the papparazi recording the event for posterity so the best I could do was take a picture of the dental "clinic" jeje.

Chase and I had a nice day out doing one or six studies.  Porl lent Chase his bike which was great as we go from one end of San Juan to the other.

Chase did great with his Spanish but I think I tired him out because when we walked in the door that night he just fell straight into bed without dinner or anything and fell straight to sleep.   Reappearing a few hours later with hat hair and red eyes, poor wee thing. 

Here's one of the creatures that we came across during the day.  This one and its mate were racing around the tree above us while we were studying with a young lady called Vanessa - not very distracting (well for me anyway) lol. 

As usual Tuesday saw us in Rivas and here's Porl and Joel Diliegros (visiting from Mexico).

... and a few of us girls, a mix of Americans, Aussies and a Kiwi with another Aussie and a Mexican in the background.

Porl was dying for an apple so splurged on a Granny Smith that we came across in the market for $1.50 - it was a goodie though, crunchy and delicious.

This month has been crazy in SJDS being the month of the patron saint, John the Baptist.  

A few times a day they have parades where everyone follows the music and there are a few people bearing a statue of Jesus that they make dance around to the beat of the music.  The procession often passes right by our front door.

This week was Vanitas last week :(  -  we'll miss her a lot, she's a lovely young lady who has worked really hard in the ministry here in Nicaragua.  She's the beauty in the centre.  We often used to spend all Thursday together and had great fun riding our bicycles around from Bible student to Bible student - we sure clocked up some miles! 

Of course when someone leaves that's a great opportunity for a partaaaay so that was what we did.  Shayla and Scott put on a farewell at their place ...

Joel didn't seem too impressed by some of the dance moves that the Aussies brought to the floor.

but they told him not to knock it until he'd tried it ...

We made the most of having Jonathon visiting from New York and Joel from Mexico by getting them to give us a few Meringue and Salsa lessons.  

It was a great night, we finished up by putting together a harlem shake featuring Vanita which turned out pretty good :)  If I can get a copy I'll post it later.

Until next time .... adióooooooos

Photos from Rivas

Just a few random photos that I took during the week :)

Cuteness!

Carambolas (star fruit) growing by the side of the road.

Shoeing time.

Washing day.

A live half plucked rooster.

Taking a rest. (1)

Taking a rest. (2)

Market Day (1)

Market Day (2a)

Market Day (2b)

Lots of Rain, Sore Ears & Teeth Extractions & The Surf Comp Comes to Town

This week saw some rugby action down at the beach, thanks to Chase arranging for Ant to bring us back a rugby ball when he did his flying trip back to the States.  The boys took Jovani down and taught him the basics and boy was he a quick learner.  

I passed by on the way home from some studies and although I wasn't really dressed for rugby coudn't help but have a wee run around too, good times, good times.

Porl didn't get by me by the way, jeje ;)

We've had some torrential rain lately which has washed out the very polluted river that runs along the side of the town, which is I guess good for the river but not so good for the beach.  

(Paul being artistic with his photography, lol)

Normally the river doesn't flow out to the sea but it just broke through this week and where once you could drive, you no longer can, rather obvious one would have thought given that wet sand looks quite different from dry sand.

With the rain have come the crabs and the locals were out catching them to make soup.

I really love crab but having seen how much rubbish was filling this river I think I'll pass on the soup this time.

Here some cheery sellers of avocados pass by :)

As an update on how we're doing healthwise I'm happy to report that my foot is pretty good now, thank goodness, two weeks of hobbling around was plenty for me.  But this week Porl has been down with an ear infection.  Sam gave him an ear candle to see if he had something in there that he shouldn't which was pretty exciting.  I always wanted to see how one of those works - I'm not sure that the flame is meant to be that massive but it did clear some wax out (unless the put some in there to make you feel like it was worth doing jeje) We did cut it open afterwards to check but there were no beetles, bugs or anything else interesting as I was hoping to see.  

Here's Porl with the ear candle and making good use of the $4 universal remote I bought from a street vendor - sooo worth it!  Not that we watch much tele but it's amazing what a pain it is to change the channel if you actually have to physically get up and do it.

Now for Kieran, no he has not become a vampire but he had a really bad infection from his wisdom teeth and spent a week in bed with a grapefruit sized gland in his throat and very high fevers.  So high one night in fact that I made him sit outside in the rain for a bit to cool him down - he was burning up.  Anyways turned out it was all from infected gums around his wisdom teeth so today he had his first one pulled out.  This was his reaction when I suggested taking a photo as he arrived home from the dentist.  Nice!  I really wanted to go to the dentist and take photos of the proceedure but Porl didn't think that was a good idea so I didn't go.  Kieran is however having another one out on Friday so there is still a photo opportunity in the wings jeje

We found one English speaking dentist who first treated Kieran, did a clean and got him on antibiotics and wanted to pull the teeth out for $200 a pop.  Kieran's budget is already in bad shape so that wasn't looking like a very good option so thankfully we found another dentist, she doesn't speak English but she charges $20 per extraction.  A slight difference!  And as you can see, she got the first one out.

This weekend there was an International Surf Competition that had its opening ceremony in San Juan.  The surfers will be competing at some of the northern beaches in the area but there was a lot of excitement in town for the ceremony.

There were teams from all over the world ..

We missed a lot of the goings on as it started at the same time as the meeting, apparently the Kiwis did a haka in the main street etc.  

We didn't get down there until around sunset.

The giant dolls were there in full force ...

There was even a giant head!

The kids in their beautiful outfits were lovely ...

After a wander along the waterfront we had a lovely dinner out with Dio which he kindly shouted us all, I cant remember if I've told you all about him, he was, shall we, say a bit of a 'high flyer' back at home and although he liked the idea of serving where the need was great as he says himself, he didn't really want to come.  

Let's just say that that he relates perfectly well to Jonah lol.   Anyway turns out that his company was downsizing and he was being 'let go' and after first digging his toes in,  he finally decided to take the plunge and come to Nica.  He's now wrapped that he did but then out of the blue he was offered his old awesome job back with all the perks you can imagine.  The catch was, that he'd have to go straight back to the States and he had committed himself to at least 6 months here.  You can imagine the dilema, but the job is so good, but I'm committed to 6 months, but the perks are awesome, but no, backwards and forwards.  And so it went, but after a couple of days of thinking about it he decided no, he'd stick to his word and worry about his finances when the time was up.  So he let his boss know and whaddya know, two days later he got an unexpected check for a goodly amount in forgotten commissions.  So when it came time to pay the bill Dio kindly shared some of the greenback goodness with us, aw nice!

The dinner was yummy and best of all I discovered the delicious chocolate mousse that's on the menu for just 50 cords (about $2.50 NZ)  guess who's going to be popping in when she needs a chocolate fix?

We even managed to finish off with icecreams from Eskimo when we'd finished.

Then we had a bit of a sad occasion last night.  Our friend Jovani is leaving us to head back to the States.  He's an awesome guy and we're going to miss him.  He's a real people person and lovely to work along with in the ministry.  As well as surfing he loves speaking to people about the Bible and he's a lovely example for the young ones.

But we've brought in his replacement, it's Edwin!  From Tijuana, Mexico.

Although I think he's not quite sure exactly what he's gotten himself into jeje.

We had a farewell for Jovani at the Scotts which was lovely, one thing happend that really cracked me up there.   We have here at the moment our friends Joel & Zaira from Vera Cruz, Mexico (below) and at the party when I went into the kitchen there was this lovely big chocolate cake still in its tin but iced sitting on the stove top.  But right in the middle of the cake was a big hole, as if someone had taken a big spoon and dug right into the middle of it.  And that was exactly what had happened lol.   Because most meals in Mexico apparently include frijoles in one form or another (beans) Zaira had thought it was a big dish of refried beans so she took a big spoonful to put with her main meal, jajaja poor thing, what a crack up!!

Party at the Scotts.

On the way to the party I heard what I thought was a procession coming up one of the streets but it turned out was just a few kids near the town square with a couple of drums so while Porl popped into the shop to buy something I took a wee video and a couple of pics.

After the party Jovani and some of the boys came back to our house.  Rommel came too and carried on with his artwork that he was doing on Jovani's board.  

It was about 1.30 am when he finished as Jovani was flying out the next day but it ended up  being awesome, Rommel did a great job!

So that's the end of another chapter in San Juan del Sur but as often happens when someone leaves we hear that there are some new faces headed our way soon :)