Good Friday

I may have mentioned to you before that it is kind of hot here.  Last night, Sam and I had a hilariously bad sleep experience.  Our sheets seemed to have this will to not be on the bed and every time either of us moved an inch we found ourselves in direct contact with the mattress.  It was too hot to sleep and we kept getting up, adjusting the sheets and spraying ourselves with more bug spray.  Oh the romance!  In the end, the solution we came to was to sleep with our faces about five inches from the fan, upside down on the bed.  As a result we were able to sleep for several minutes at a time.

These are new sheets, we are hoping for the best

We woke up to the sound of a tuba and drums on the street.  It was the Good Friday parade!  Every time we went outside we had just missed it.  Here is a picture of one of the times we missed it.

If you squint you can see Jesus in the distance

After that, we hired an Abuela (I'm not exactly sure whose grandma she was) to teach us how to make a traditional Nicaraguan meal of tamales and rice and beans.  This experience brings a smile to my face even as I write about it.  First off we went to the market to buy ingredients.  This is the market.

While I know that you guys are jealous of all these adventures, let me assure you that there are benefits to seeing the pictorial version of the market.  In person, the piles of raw chicken and fish and the crowds of people can be almost too rich of a cultural experience.  I get overwhelmed on the strip in Nashville, so a very narrow walkway through big crowds in foreign lands is challenging for this chica.

This picture was not taken from the top of a hill.  I'm just a giantess.

Unfortunately for us there were no banana leaves to be had (blame it on Easter) and so the tamales were a no go.  The beans and rice just plain got lost in translation--I'm still not sure what happened to them.  In the end, we went with the traditional yucca, salad and pork skins dinner.  I knew when I heard "chicharrón" it struck a bad chord with me, but I didn't know why until it was too late.  I think that our cooking team must truly have thought we were crazy that we hired them so we could watch them boil yucca, cut up tomatoes and cabbage, and put pig skins on a plate.

Grandma gives the yucca a rough chop and they are good to go

Luckily this led to the best quote of the trip so far:

Sam's culinary fearlessness is one of his best qualities

Me: "Sam, how do you like the pig skin?"

Sam (without a trace of sarcasm): "I'm not sure, the hairs are a little disconcerting..."

We paid Grandma, thanked her profusely, and then went out for an old school hobbit tradition we like to call second lunch.

Chicken Fajita Nachos (not pictured here--air conditioning!)

And we lived happily ever after.