Fun Nicaragua memories

Once we settled into our new routines in Nicaragua, we really enjoyed our time. Here are some of our favorite memories:

-Walking to the main park and petting the horses lined up waiting to go on a horse/carriage ride.

-Singing the theme songs to Adele's favorite Disney Junior shows loudly while the kids danced around the condo.

-Gecko-watching while eating in restaurants.

-Swimming every day, with each swim followed by a popsicle.

-Visiting with Hyung (and buddy Brian) and David Bond (and wife Bethany), former students of ours from the QERC semester program in Costa Rica, who were traveling in Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

-Spending time each day chatting with the staff at the condos, whom Adele considers good friends now.

-Taxi rides to the grocery store - "we don't have to wear buckles in taxis mommy!"

-Visiting with Tona, the pet parrot at the condo.

-Watching Henry go on bike rides with Nelson, his favorite Nicaraguan.

-Catching up with the LASP staff who were in Granada for a few days with their current student group.

-Playing "I spy" and looking for beautifully colored houses and school buses.

-Visiting the farm that we used to take students to for Nicaraguan home stays. Letting the kids feed the goats, hold bunnies, touch the pigs' noses, and "talk" to the geese.

The last two weeks of our time in Nicaragua, David was with us almost the entire time, and his parents also visited. We got to show them around Granada, and then traveled a little bit to Ometepe Island and to the coast at Playa Gigante. Here are some of our favorite memories from that time:

-The horse and carriage ride around Granada.

-A boat tour around the islands of Lake Nicaragua.

-Visiting the artisan market in Masaya.

-Searching for monkeys - and finding several troops, one with at least 23 monkeys!

-Playing in the waves. Running from the waves.

-Digging and building in the sand.

-Catching critters - turtles, hermit crabs, geckos, anoles.

-Playing "family" and reading books before bedtime.

-Waiting ALL day for a ferry from Ometepe Island back to the mainland. Playing in the park over and over again while we waited.

-Our composting toilet in our home on Ometepe Island - and teaching Adele how to use it!

-Buying fresh seafood for dinner at the beach and letting Adele help pick it out.

-Henry's critter encounters: the time he ate a gecko tail. And when we found a scorpion in Henry's swim trunks right before putting them on him. And finding him playing with a VERY large cockroach. And then there was the time Henry stuck his finger in the rabbit cage and the rabbit tried to bit it off…