Neighbors!

Here is our esteemed neighbor Samurai. He frequently makes unannounced house visits, often making it all the way to the kitchen before he is noticed.



And his owner Debra Francesca, looking adorable as always

Birthdays!

Yesterday was our host father's birthday!
Here is a photo of him after he blew out the matches (we didn't have candles), he backed up quickly as to not have his face smashed into the cake.

And here is the birthday song that we sing here in Nicaragua, called Las Mañanitas

Estas son las mañanitas que cantaba el rey David
Hoy por ser día de tu santo te las cantamos aquí.
Despierta mi bien despierta
Mira que ya amaneció
Ya los pajaritos cantan
La luna ya se metió.

¡Qué linda está la mañana en que vengo a saludarte
Venimos todos con gusto y placer a felicitarte!
El día en que tú naciste, nacieron todas las flores
Ya viene amaneciendo ya la luz del dia nos dió.
Levantarte de la mañana, mira que ya amaneció.
Y En la pila del bautismo cantaron los ruiseñores.
Ya viene amaneciendo ya la luz del dia nos dió.
Levantarte de la mañana, mira que ya amaneció.

Wacky good times

I just rediscovered these photos from when Sara visited. We found some shells on the beach, brought them back to our house, and then Sara discovered you could attach them to various face parts. Enjoy the hilarity.

Sara first discovering the eye placement


Us doing the nose modelling together


Dylan looking especially indifferent

Scary Monsters!

Due to the warm climate of this region, bugs have had the ability to grow large, sometimes too large...
This post is just a short trip into our buggy experience.
We don't have pictures of every encounter, like when I took a shower with a cockroach (didn't notice until the end) or when Dylan got a beetle stuck between his toes, but we do have some other good ones.

Many things we didn't notice about the natural setting here until the North Branch Nature Center brigade came and just pointed so much out. This Rhinoceros beetle was on a fence that we walk by every day. It was huuuuge. Our bus drivers decided to pick it up and let it crawl on their hands, then pass it around before replacing it on the fence. Wacky.


This chichara (cicada) somehow made its way into our room and on one of our walls. They too are huge here! With this upgrade in size comes an upgrade in their grating volume. When more than one chicharas are sounding off it can feel almost deafening, our host father tells us its his music in the countryside – and it drives him crazy.



The most frightening bug we have encountered was this rather large spider at the library. Dylan was just mopping up after our cooking class, when he discovered that he had disturbed this monster. It looks like she is carrying a sack of eggs (at least I hope so...), she also looks like she is some weird mix between spider and turtle... By the way, she was really huge.




P.S. The Nicaraguans call this spider Pica Caballo, which means Horse Biter...

Buñuelos

Remember when we ate buñuelos as an Ash Wednesday food? Well, when our most recent brigades came, we had a buñuelo making workshop.
The process:
1. Peel like A TON of yucca
2. Now shred that shit.
3. Mix in egg, cuajada, maizena, and salt
4. Now mush that stuff together!
5. Form into balls and drop into hot oil
6. Wait until evenly browned
7. Eat your tasty creation

Note: They are even tastier when soaked in this sweet sugary syrup, which is sugar cane juice mixed with bright pink dye. YUM.

Here is it being mixed together (se fue la luz, entonces, una candela)


Here they are being thrown into the hot oil.


Here they are frying away


Look at 'em go!

Nac nac, nacatamales!

While my good friend Sara was here visiting us, she was set on trying Nacatamales (apparently Wikipedia informed her that they were delicious). I told Doña Aracely about Sara's dream, and she set out to find us some nacatamales para probando. Well, she ran into a couple of problems, one being that she couldn't find any that didn't use pork lard (she is convinced it is like the worse thing for your heart), and number two, no one was making them because they were all vacationing (in was Semana Santa). So what is the only solution? Making them ourselves! Thus the nacatamale tutorial began!

Nacatamales consist of maiza, which is like corn flour mixed with water, a piece of chicken, a red sauce made from achote, tomatoes, potatoes, and rice. After all of these ingredients are combined, the banana leave that you made it on is rolled up with tin foil, then tied all together. After that, they are put into boiling water for two hours. Then, when morning comes, you warm them up again and eat them, because believe it or not, nacatamales are a breakfast food!

Here are Dylan and Sara adding various ingredients to their Nacatamales




Doña Aracely showing us how to wrap them up


All of the completed and wrapped nacatamales

Something Bird Watchers Do Sometimes

Something bird watchers do sometimes is put little metal bands around birds' legs. They use them to track migratory patterns, among other things, and maybe you already knew that, but did you know how they do it?
They trap the them. In nets. The birds.
If you're just finding out for the first time, as I was a few weeks ago, you might be thinking something like 'huh' or 'LOL WUT', but apparently it's totally okay. They catch the birds in nets, and then put them in bags, and then take a bunch of measurements, and then set them free. And it's fine with the birds- well, if not with the caught birds, with the bird population as a whole, I guess.

Anyway, the nets are these long ones, called 'mist nets', that they set up in a few different places wherever they are tagging birds. In El Jaguar they were mostly set up on the edge of the cloud forest.

After removing the birds from the mist nets, bird-banders take them to their base-camp table and take a slew of measurements that tell them all kinds of things. They record everything, and send all of their data to some database somewhere. If a bird bander catches a bird that has already been banded the 2 sets of data can confirm and suggest theories about migration patterns.

One of the things that's cool about the process is how well you actually get to see (and photograph) the birds. You can even hold them, and set them free (somebody has to).