Nica Eric: A Photo Comparison

So here is the picture of Eric and Nica-Eric. My Eric is on the left. This isn't exactly the picture I wanted but I think they look very similar still.

Picture Update: Last Saturday's Canopy Tour

Here is a picture of one of Nicaragua's many volcanos.


This is the pig that was hanging out near us when we were looking at the volcano.


The guys leading the canopy tour through the trees let us go down the zip line with them so we could do stunts and they could prevent us from hitting a tree. This is the Superman position.

A Tip-Top Night on the Town

Last night Dr. B, Dr. A, Lisa and I had a very, very Nica experience. First, we had an exceptional dinner at the local Tip-Top. Tip-Top is like Nicaragua's version of KFC/Chick-fil-a. If you want to eat the food there though, they treat it like a regular restaurant. The dine-in menu is extensive, except that just about everything is chicken. We were served by a waitress in a "restaurant" with a children's play area.

After dinner, we rushed to the Ruben Dario National Theatre for El Homenaje a Los Beatles, which I thought was a tribute to the Beatles performed by the symphony of Managua. The theatre was in a bad part of town, in the area where the earthquake of 1972 destroyed what was once downtown. Apparently the theatre survived the earthquake. Nearby is a protest of treatment in banana plantations. The people live in makeshift tents during the protest, but, of course, the national theatre, with a dress code, is across the way. You can't wear flip-flops, shorts, capri pants, or anything somewhat revealing. It is the only building in Managua with central air conditioning.

After walking in the theatre, my guess is that it hasn't actually be remodeled since its creation the 1970s. Everything was blood red. When I say everything I mean EVERYTHING. The walls were red. The seats were red. The floors were red. Even the handrails were covered in red velvet. Just my luck...I happened to be wearing a red shirt. I never expected to be camouflaged while wearing red!

We sit down in our red seats and a rock band (!) comes out shortly after with two guys and a girl as singers. I think they must have belted out the choruses of somewhere between 30 and 50 songs without taking a break. The show continued on for about 2 hours combing the stylings of the rock band, Las Vegas lounge singers with a Nica twist, part of an orchestra, part of a gospel(ish) choir, and a keyboardist.

Highlights from the show:
1. the cheesy head-bobbing
2. the lazy air guitar
3. "SomeTIIIING in the way she moves...."
4. What Dr. A called "interpretive dancing" of the Beatles' songs
5. the seizure-inducing light show

But the best part.....
6. When Dr. A jumped up and started dancing like crazy to "Love Me Do"

All in all, it was a great cultural experience. I never expected to watch a homage concert for the Beatles in Managua, but now it's one more thing I can check off my list.

I Guess Everyone Was Right After All...

Today was an interesting day for realizations. There's this one woman at Tesoros de Dios that seemed so fascinating and familiar to me. Then I realized why. She looks just like my aunt. Mom, please verify.

And then, I saw a little boy who looks just like my brother did when he was little. Mom, please verify again.

So Nica-Eric made me realize that after all these years, everyone was right. Apparently my family and I do look hispanic and can easily be misjudged. No wonder I'm always offered the Spanish menu in the US.

Baby Stealing

First of all, I want to say that the title refers to two different things. The last couple of days have been very, very busy as we are all getting used to our centers. We've officially been in Managua for a week now and so much has happened. My legs have been completely eaten alive. It takes all the strength I have to fight itching them.
So far, working at Tesoros de Dios has been very interesting. It is a center for children with disabilities. It's a great community for the mothers because disabilities are frowned upon in Nicaragua. They are looked at as a punishment to the parents for something they've done. You can see how strong the ties are between the mothers at the center. They share the responsibilities of cooking and cleaning the entire place. Each mother brings a different item and they make a meal with all the items. It's a great system. There are some absolutely adorable children there. I've decided that I'm going to steal one of them. I've picked Ramon.

Here he is within Jonathan, another adorable child.

All of us that are working with children have kids picked out that we would steal. I could also take one of the babies at the orphanage that I fed the other day. Her name is Maria and she's three months old. For now, I'll stick with practicing my Spanish with Ramon.
Last Saturday, we went to La Laguna de Apollo and spent time hanging out in the crater-built basin filled with water. While we were there, Chris ran into the owner of his gym, Zack. Zack told us about friends of his who work for Feed the Children. He said they were coming to his home soon and invited us to his house to meet them. On Wednesday night, we went to his house. We were admiring all the beautiful houses and all decided this one yellow one was the most beautiful. Chris said he was planning to model the new Wake house after it. Then he realized he had no clue which house was Zack's, so he called him. Low and behold, the beautiful house was his! So we went in and talked for a long time. Here's the view from his driveway of the city of Managua.


Here's the side of the house by the pool.


Here's the view from his balcony at night.

He lives with his wife Diana, six dogs, several chickens, and an Iguana. The iguana lives behind the waterfall in the pool. We went to dinner with him and the people from Feed the Children. All four of them were very fascinating people. Zack is from Iran originally but lived in the US for several years teaching college wrestling. He has an entire room in his house dedicated to his awards. He and Diana met while she was vacationing in California. Six years ago, they moved to Nicaragua and started a gym. Zack's stories were incredibly funny including the one about how he almost got a plane turned around after September 11 because he was crying over the death of his dog and it scared the passengers. When they asked him for his passport, he showed them his US passport which did not help since it said "born in Iran." Eventually he convinced them that he was simply crying because his dog had died and they eventually believed him. He looks like a really intimidating guy but he's actually not. He's wanted in Iran because he defected. He left decades ago and won't even go close to the country now. Lots more to say, but not enough time. More to come.

The Best $12.50 I've Ever Spent

Today was an absolutely amazing day! We did all sorts of fun things but I'm only going to talk about one since I'm tired and it's late. So we're driving to dinner tonight and we see a really long line of people along the road. Then someone in the car said "I think there's an Enrique Iglesias concert tonight." We went to dinner and tossed around the idea of going. Chris called a friend and asked him how much the tickets were. When we found out how little they cost we immediately jumped on the idea. We drove to a parking lot and walked to find tickets. We bought some from scalpers who told us they were VIP tickets. Apparently VIP tickets are general admission, but at least they were real tickets. So we were in at the Enrique concert!!! Basically it was amazing! He sang in almost all Spanish, of course, but we sang the songs in English.



After an already amazing concert, his encore was "Hero" which he sang to a little girl who he pulled from the stage. She barely let go of him and in the end he kissed her on the lips. It was so cute. Then he continued and sang another song, but I can't remember what song it was because while he was singing, he jumped onto the fence that we were standing next to. There was so much pushing, shoving, and beer spilling. Jay managed to touch his knee cap, and I just happened to be holding on to Jay. I touched Enrique by proxy!!!! This is the best pic we got of him while he was within a foot of us.

It was amazing to be within a foot of Enrique, but unfortunately Chris' wallet was stolen in all the chaos. He had a good attitude about it though. At least Jay touched Enrique's knee cap!

As Requested...

Here are some pictures of the hotel.


Outside rocking chairs.

Inside rocking chairs.

The pool!

The bottom window is my room.


Gabriella!

Blacksmiths, Monkeys, Massive Flooding...

Today was our first real day exploring Nicaragua. We started off with breakfast and class in the morning. Then we went to lunch at a buffet style restaurant, which cost a whopping three dollars. The food once again was delicious. After we ate, we drove to el Ciudad Sandino and visited a trade school that teaches blacksmithing. A guy from the US started it about two years ago. Now he has several guys that make all sorts of awesome creations. Below is a picture of the blacksmith shop.

The guys gave us a demonstration and then Kate made an S-hook of her own. The blacksmith center was in the same area as a school, so children were watching us. Here are the first two that came to observe.

Later, we went to another NGO called the Jubilee House. We looked at all the things they were doing to create sustainability in Nicaragua. They had gardens where they trained the vegetables to grow up instead of out to save space. They also had a lot of textiles. They were even constructing their own textile building.

The center also had lots of monkeys roaming around. One of the monkeys climbed around freely and was very friendly to us. The other one was on a chain because it kept breaking into houses and stealing food. They were trying to chain it to be a tree monkey not a house monkey. The first one was so friendly that it crawled all over the car.

We went to a clinic down the road to see what it looked like after touring the land near the Jubilee House. By the time we left, it was pouring rain. And by pouring rain I mean the whole area we were in was flooded. There were dirt roads and the water was up to about knee height. We started trekking through the flood in Chris's SUV, but the others were afraid to go in the water in a Toyota Corolla. We had to turn around in the flood and go back to them. The man with us from the Jubilee House jumped in the Corolla and drove through the water. There was so much muddy water that we could see it splashing higher than the roof of the Corolla and all the tires were submerged. We got to what I'm guessing was an intersection and there was a taxi stuck in the water, a bus, and a truck. All of a sudden the bus looked like it was coming right towards us. Then it started honking incessantly. Chris quickly steered out of its way and almost into the truck. He had to turn quickly the other way to make it away from the truck. All in all it was only about five seconds, but after we passed the truck the water level got lower. Now I know why there are so many SUVs in Nicaragua.

Bienvenido a Nicaragua!

Today we woke up at 4:00 am and began our journey to Nicaragua. The flights were smooth and fairly short so we made it by 2:00 Eastern, 12:00 Managua. The most hectic part of the trip was once we got off the plane and almost all the way through customs. There was a mission trip from Texas on our flight which consisted of about fifty people. They decided to cut in front of everyone, including the local Nicaraguans, and to yell at the customs officials loudly in English even though they didn't speak English. Then they decided to yell at us as well. But we made it through though and met the Wake Forest MBA student that will be our go-to guy, Chris. Dr. A rented a car and we piled all the suitcases into her and Chris' cars. I chose to go with Chris which was quite a learning experience. Cars don't really follow any rules on the road. Honking at everything, tires in the road, and people in the road selling things are all very common. Buying mangoes at stoplights is very easy to do! When we finally got to the hotel, we unloaded and rested for a little while. The picture is what is directly behind the pool. It's a coconut tree, a common sight around here. Later we went to a really great restaurant. The food was delicious. Carne asada, rice and beans, and cabbage salad. Now we have work to do for class tomorrow...