¡Beinvinido al centro d Nicaragua, al centro del continente americano!

I am going to go ahead and apologize yet again for the lack of a post in about a month. Things have been pretty busy down here, and a lot has happened. I'll try to remember at least 2/3 of it.

-Most importantly I figured out where I am going to live for the next two years: Matiguás, Matagalpa.  It is a decent sized town of about 8,000 people or so and another 40,000+ living around the main urban center. Much to my happiness, it is in the mountains. I have some amazing views of the Darien Mountain Range and the weather is much cooler than where I am now. I was actually really cold at nights when I visited, something I thought wasn't going to happen for the next 24 months. The town is also much more "cowboy-ish" than Masatepe, where I am now. Cowboy hats, boots, plaid shirts, mustaches, and cows are much more common sights in Matiguás. I found this GIF below on the internet (http://www.quirraguabrand.es.tl/) that actually does a decent job of showing what the town looks like, even though they are a little blurry.

I got a chance to go visit my future site a couple weeks ago for 4 days or so and absolutely loved it. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures, but they will come I promise. With amazing timing I also contracted dengue - a wonderful, mosquito-transmitted tropical disease - a couple days before going to visit my new family and meet all the new professors that I will be working with. So for the entire trip I had horrible headaches and body aches and was incredibly tired. But I still managed to meet some great people and get to know the two schools that I will be working at and a little bit of the town. On the way back, I was also able to eat an amazing hamburger from Burger King in Managua that was truly incredible.

-Now that the big news is out of the way, I finally got a chance to go down and actually swim in the Laguna de Apoyo, which I have only been able to take pictures of from above until then. It was pretty amazing and I have put some pictures up in the Picasa album.

-A lady around the corner must have just started selling balloons, because for the past 4 nights or so all of the kids on my street have been playing with balloons. Last night I finally went with them to buy some and it ended up being more interesting than i though. For one cordoba you get to peel off a sticker from a sheet of paper that has a number underneath it. You then get to have the corresponding balloon that is on another sheet of paper. The balloons range from giant to small and ones for animal balloons and normal ones. It is a pretty genius way to sell balloons because it keeps the kids coming back to try to get the one giant balloon.

-Our garden is continuing to grow nicely. I had a radish salad the other night from some of the radishes, and we have some tiny cucumbers growing that should be ready in a few weeks.

Other than these things, my life here in Nicaragua is pretty much the same. I ate cow's tongue the other night, danced a traditional Nicaraguan dance- "El viejo y el viaja"- with a cane and a person with balloons shoved in their shirt and down their pants, I've watched a lot of soccer games, and was finally able to watch an Alabama football game but unfortunately it was the one this weekend.

That is all for now. I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving. I will be spending mine with all of the other trainees in the group at a staff persons house in Managua. I am pretty excited to eat some turkey and dressing. The day after Thanksgiving is the Swearing-In Ceremony when we all will officially become Peace Corps Volunteers and the next day move off to our sites. Pretty exciting.

nos vemos