Today started nice and early at 7:15 AM when I got
up and took a nice cold shower. This is the shizzle here! Normally it’s nice
and warm in the mornings in the room, so a cold shower is both refreshing and
wakes me up. The reason for the early rising on Sunday (today) was because I
attended Mass with Daniel en el cathedral cerca de nuestro casa. Mass started
at 8:00 AM this morning and went until 9 AM. I’m not Catholic, so I could not
really understand anything that was going on, but I’ll try to summarize it as
much as possible. We went with Salvador (the kid) to the church and walked in
while the band was singing a song of praise. I was the tallest person in the
first like 15 or 20 rows ahead of me and I didn’t check behind me. Dan and I
were one of only a few gringos in the church. Anyways, the Nicas didn’t really
mind us being there since we are both Christian. Dan is Catholic, so that’s why
we went to Mass. During the service there were several short songs that I
couldn’t really understand; save for a few words here and there and a
“hallelujia” or an “amen” that sounds like amen. The pastor even had a time
where he spoke to the children about the bible and told the story of Jesus
Christ and how there is only one God (and that Jesus and God and probably the
virgin mother) are the same one God. There was also communion later on in the
service, but the priest was the only one to drink the wine while the
congregation could go up for communion. Dan went up to take the wafer, but I
didn’t as I am not Catholic. Luckily I wasn’t the only person who chose to not
take communion, but at the same time I think the priest saw me in the
congregation and might have looked directly at me once. In the time before
communion, a kid and an older man walked around with butterfly nets collecting
the donations in the nets (an interesting idea as opposed to the offering
bowls). The rest of Mass was nonchalant except that they were advertising this
week long festival celebrating the heart of Jesus (el Corazón de Jesus). This
week will be starting on the 29th of May I believe and will be going
until the 6th of July. On the 6th of July, there is a
day-long celebration with food, dancing, processions and prayer that starts at
5:30 AM and goes until probably like 6 PM at least. Talk about devotion!
Yesterday Alex (the OTGC (on the ground coordinator or contact (for those that
think I’m on a spy mission down here))) setup a tour where we would see the
islands scattered throughout Lake Nicaragua (the largest lake in all of Central
America). So we had to scuttle down to the school to meet the group at 10 AM to
depart for the lake. We took a bus to the lake with one of some tour guides
that seemed to be just like English “bros” but from Nicaragua. They were chill.
Anyways, we got to the tour guide base on the edge of the lake and boarded
canopy boats about 40 or 50 foot long by 10 foot wide that could hold 12
people, a tour guide and a pilot. Motoring lazily through the first lagoon
area, we could see gaunt cranes and smaller black birds. The initial lagoon
that we had to boat through was dirty water (with sediment and mud and a few
pieces of trash), but the vegetation along the sides of the lagoon were
lushiously green. When we got out on the lake, it literally seemed like the
ocean: stretching out endlessly with blue crests. We started travelling around
to several of the islands. The tour guides showed us at least 8 or more islands
in the areas and there were still more islands to visit. Some of the islands
even had dwellings on them and others were for sale. One island belongs to the
ex-Costa Rican President and another belongs to an Asian businessman. The Asian
businessman’s house is huge and has the old Japanese styling with the pitched
roofs slanted downward. The house has its own decently island despite the large
house. The house cost $8 million dollars to construct it over a span of 8
years. This house not only has internet and AC and hot showers and all the
amenities that we consider worth living for, but has its own helipad too! Dang!
At one point we went past this island that had a place called the “Pirate Bar”
located on it. Besides the restaurant and seating area on this mini island,
there’s even a 3 foot deep by 100 foot long curved swimming pool! It was cool!
The water in the pool is essentially the same as in Lake Nicaragua (save maybe
for some minor purification if any), so I can say that I swam in Lake
Nicaragua! Anyways, for lunch I had churros con pollos (fried chicken pieces)
along with circular fried plantains. As a dipping sauce for the fried chicken,
I was provided with a bowl of ketchup with mayonnaise drizzled on the top of
it. While this sounds absolutely repulsive (and I thought the same way before
trying it), it’s actually quite good! Since our group was so large, we had to wait
close to an hour for food. In the interim time we resorted to spearing fish and
eating them like Gollum. Naw, just kidding. Yesterday Kasper and I had tried to
play ping pong and discovered that good ping pong balls do not exist in Central
America and are not sold here. So note to self, bring like 100,000 ping pong
balls down (that way I can give them out or use them to help me float in case
the plane goes down on the way). Anyways, after realizing that Kasper brough
his ping pong ball, paddles and net that he had with him. Now this is not an
ordinarily sized set of paddles and net. The paddle could entirely be fit in my
palm and the net was about 2 foot across on little suction cups and plastic
tubes. This makes it nice to play actual table tennis. So Kasper set up the
net, handed me a paddle and we started playing across the lunch table while we
were waiting for food. We actually got pretty intense, busting out some Randy
Daytona moves here and there. After getting a max volley of 29 hits, we stopped
playing. Also, I also had to demonstrate
the growing worm/straw technique for a few people who still had not heard of it
before, but sadly the worm/straw was really pathetic. Thus, we turned to
playing Go Fish with 8 people, which is actually quite the feat (as each person
only has like 6 cards). After a few rounds we were done with that too. Then
food started arriving like a gradual downpour. It came. We ate. Some didn’t.
Alex didn’t get his food until wicked late after the rest of us. The food was
also pretty expensive (250 cordobas or about $10). After lunch we went swimming
in the pool/lake hybrid. I was the first one to jump into the pool and it was
actually nicer than I had anticipated, although I underestimated the depth of
the pool and my feet felt the bump. The water was probably 60 or 65 degrees and
it was quite refreshing. Most of the group tried the pool. After swimming we
had to pay and then headed back to the shore. Not before we were able to feed
the monkeys though! We were able to stop by monkey island (not the Tell Tale
Games version sorry) and throw fruit at the island (aw yeah getting some Fruit
Ninja sensei action in)! When we got close, one of the monkeys jumped onto our
boat and ran to the back where I was sitting. She graciously accepted the dead
ripe avocado that I gave her and sat there contentedly eating it while I took
photos and a video. After that she jumped ship for the other boat and ate some
more before being dropped off on the island. There were like 4 monkeys on the
island. After that we headed back to the shore and paid for the tour and left.
Back in Granada I went to the Euro Café with my laptop and spent some
frustrating moments fussing over the WiFi. Eventually I was able to connect to
the internet and get on the usual fare. I then came back and played 2 chess
matches with Salvador Jr. who is quite the chess player actually. He beat me
both times, but I was close on the second match where we were both down to 3 or
less pieces (him with a king, rook and queen and me with a king, bishop and
knight). I lost shortly thereafter. I might have been able to do better, but he
got a pawn across the board and trade it for a queen. Anyways for dinner it was
TACOS! with cheese and refried beans, that ketchup/mayo combo and coleslaw. I
have also been working to erase a micro SD card for Salvador, but that jawn is
messed because it won’t let anyone reformat it and erase the contents. I did a
command prompt format that checked each sector and it said it couldn’t reformat
the drive because it might have a bad sector O.o. Anyways I need to get some
sleep for the first day of classes tomorrow! Hasta luego! P.S. on the down low
as Dan is reading and then I’m going to bed. Anyways, the Spice Girl’s song “My
lover” (if you wanna be my lover, gotta get with my friends etc into annoyance)
was playing on the TV earlier (shout out to Liz as this song is still probably
one of her jamz). Also, the Pirate bar today was playing some cool radio
station that was 106.7 FM but apparently my phone is incapable of picking that
up -.- First world problems there. I’ve decided to try the radio tuner on my
iPod instead, but it has to charge a bit first. I was also listening on my
phone earlier on the station 96.5 FM and they were playing “Video Killed the
Radio Star” by the Buggles? It was cool, but I couldn’t figure out how to turn
the volume down so it was wick loud and I changed stations and 96.5 had
disappeared for some Spanish station O.o Not pirate radio, but ghost radio.
It’s pretty creepy. Then again that phone has an antenna that seems to be
about 1 mm long because all it can get is this one Mariachi station and that’s
it.
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