Request

Hey everyone! I have a small request.

We are getting bored with the food we can make, already! It isn´t much. I was wondering if people had any good recipes that they can send us via email. I will tell you what we can always get and isn´t too expensive and you can send me recipes! Sounds fun huh?

Things we can get for cheap!

Veggies and Fruits
Tomatoes, Avacados (soon), Oranges
Onions, Potatoes, Limes
Green Peppers, Mangoes (soon and can´t wait!), Apples (kind of pricy)
Carrots, Bananas, Watermelon
Squash type veggie, Plantains, Lettuce (iceburg)

Spices-Spreads
Salt, Cilantro, Jalepeño Peppers, Soy Sauce, Chicken Boullion
Italian Seasoning, Peppe, Garlic, Oil (veggie oil), Suger
Ginger, Sour Cream, Milk, Butter, Peanut Butter
Jelly

Grains and Meat and other
Rice, Red Beans, Ketchup, Oatmeal, Coffee
Pasta, Chicken (on the bone), Tomato Paste, Bread

Things we cannot get

• Cheese! Well we can get Nica cheese, pero NO ME GUSTA, okay actually we can get Mozzarella but its kinda pricey
• a oven! don´t have one!
• I´m thinking of buying garlic oil though its kinda expensive
• We have one pot for cooking pasta, rice, sauces and a frying pan for stir frys, cooking chicken, sauces

So we know how to make spaghetti sauce, salsa, rice and beans, and ghetto stir fry with only soy sauce for the sauce. So send us recipes!!!!! Even if it has an ingredient that you don´t see here because we can get more, it may just not be on the list or its expensive. Thanks!

Rants

So...I was in the middle of typing an amazing blog when the lights when out. Only for a second! Just enough to lose my blog. This is not the first, but the second time today that I have been using the internet when the electricity has gone out.

Anyways...Jeff forget to tell the most amazing part of the emergency room visit. We hailed a cab on the way there and told the guy we were going to the hospital. Usually someone would think, hospital, quick something must be wrong with somebody. But not our cab driver. Just a normal drive for him. After we got in, he started backing up and yelling on the window to his friend. His friend was having problems hearing him so this went on for quite some time. Carrie, our sitemate, finally mentioned that maybe we should get going because we were going to the HOSPITAL at 10 at night. So we drive, slowly. About 50 yards away he turns on the interior light and starts shuffling through his CDs. Apparently it is best to pull up to the emergency room with just the right music playing. Of course one cannot shuffle and drive at the same time, so again, this took some time. Luckily the perfect music turned out to be Guns N Roses November Rain, thank god. I don´t know what would have happaned if we had driven up to the door with Reggaeton playing. Disaster avoided.

So we´ve been here for 5 months and somethings are becoming all too normal. Sometimes, we think, would we do this in the US? Will our parents and or friends be embarrassed when they come to visit? For instance, now when standing in line, if a line exists, I stand right up on the person in front of me. Don´t want any distance between us or 12 people could sneak in front of us. Also we now drink out of the same glass, soda can what have you, and share forks and spoons with our sitemates. I point with my lips instead of my finger. My feet are always always dirty and I continue to wear flip flops. I don´t shave my legs for long periods of time. We drink soda with every meal. And we don´t do this, but our friend Kat eats everything with her hands. I think she has forgotten how to use a fork. I think that this is maybe going a little too far. (just kidding Kat)

So school has officially started. My school has decided to put off making a permanent schedule for the teachers, so we are going by last years schedule for the next 2 to 3 weeks until we get that. However Jeff´s school seems to be on top of it and is starting classes. That makes sense on the first week of school, huh. So far I have just been observing English classes and going around helping groups. I also help with pronunciation.

Other than that, things are going well! And remember all of you who were going to send me tampons...that would be nice right about now.

Thanks to BJ for a rockin´ package. Frisbee has already been used, and food eaten.

New experiences

As Joel pointed in his email to me everyday there are new experiences for us and this week was definitely no exception. Saturday night started out with an exciting trip to the emerency room of the local hospital. I was having pains in my stomach so the PC doctor thought it was best that I go and get it checked out to make sure it wasn´t an appendicitis, which it luckily wasn´t. The PC doctor told me, "dont let them put any IVs in you, just have them check your appendix", which doesnt make a person nervous about what is going to happen to them when they get there at all... So they said my appendix was fine, but then they wanted to keep me overnight and give me fluids and/or the equivalent of Zantac in liquid form, which I objected to very strongly. So they let me go home and gave me a prescription for the pills. I bought 10 of them for the equivalent of a $1.50 total! When we were at the emergency room we didnt see anything too exciting, only one head injury and she came out all wrapped up so barely any blood. But the total cost of the of the visit equaled 0 dollars, which was nice. Plus, they had A/C in the examining room! Other firsts this week include, Jenny and I celebrating our 1st anniversary on Sunday. We went to Rostipollo (equivalent to Applebee´s in the US) for dinner, not the fancy dining experience you expect for your anniversary, but very expensive here and I knew I could eat the food without upsetting my stomach. Also, today is the first day of classes! Jenny is at her school right now, she teaches in the AM mostly, and I am going to my school in the afternoon. From what we have been told not much teaching goes on the first week of classes, its most organization (syllabus day, im sure...) and we will probably get to go home early. It is officially the time to earn our Peace Corps stipend!!

New Home Pics

Pictures of our House!

Our sitting area complete with bookshelves! And of course a beautiful painting that came with the us, lucky us (so did the rocking chairs!)
Jeff caught in his natural state of cleaning. Here is our hammock where we spend many hours, and of course our plastic table and chairs.

It´s sort of an indoor outdoor plan with the bathroom area being more outdoor than indoor.
Here is the spider that we found in our sink. It was gross. Luckily, almost every time that we find a really big spider, tarantulas, our friend and spider killer Lucian happens to be there to take care of the problem. Yes, he has killed more than one for us. Isn´t it gross?

Us! Happy to be in our new house. We even bought speakers so we have music. And a place for you to stay when you come visit! This was on Christmas, with our bottle of wine to celebrate the holiday!

laaa gelatina la gelatina la gel-a-TINA!

So we have gone to our fair share of baseball games to cheer on our Chinandega team! We went yesterday after a large break in the action because of several different reasons. As we were sitting there, I realized that I not only enjoy going to the games to watch baseball, but also for several other reasons.

First, there´s the baseball hat that we wear and we get to feel part of something. As we walk to the stadium, Carrie and I sporting our hats, we get a LOT of comments. Some cheering on the team, some rooting against them, others sexual harassment, but it feels like game day when it happens. Next we get to the stadium, Carrie talks to random guy who works there. Sometimes we even talk to some of the American players before we go in. When we finally get in, we wait to see the cast of usual characters. We have the quesillo lady who sells her quesillo and always gives Carrie the ¨hola chela¨and the look that says, you know you´ll be buying some quesillo from me later on. We also have Mr. Pasteles who sells pastries out of a garbage bin. He usually shoves them in your face, but the sales tactic must be working because he was totally wearing a new hat the last game. It was even a fitted, nice baseball hat. Also we have the band. They always succeed in getting us pumped up, even if we sing the same 3 or 4 songs throughout the entire 3 to 4 hour baseball game. They have a guy who is sort of like the conductor who stands in front and leads them. He is always really excited to be there. Every game we also see a guy about our age who looks like he might, might be Asian. There aren´t too many different ethnic groups in Nicaragua, so we usually spend about 10 minutes discussing if he is mixed, completely Asian or completely Nica. We have the mani con chile boy who sells peanuts (with chile! they´re good) and we always comment on how cute he is. One of my favorite parts is watching all of the necio chavalos in the front, who are always fairly dirty, playing and being really really annoying and loud. Here, we always wonder how they got in, and why someone doesn´t kick them out, but the crowd ends up throwing their eaten orange rinds at them, or sometimes plastic bottles which I think is hilarious. We also have the vigaron girl who sells her vigaron in a voice that says, save me from my misery. We have Mr. Gelatina selling jello in the familiar voice that we have missed because he wasn´t there last game (WTF?) not that I would ever buy jello in a plastic cup to eat. And our favorite Steve. Oh Steve. Hes about 10 years old and collects beer cans. We call him Steve because the first time we saw him he was wearing a shirt that had his name on the back, obviously Steve, obviously not originally his t-shirt. Then next time, he was basically wearing the same outfit as Jeff AND they have the same haircut, totally long lost brothers. But Steve was wearing nicer shoes than Jeff. Yesterday we noticed that Steve had on some new sandals, so business must be good in the can crushing industry.

Lately, we have been wondering if we are in somebody elses cast of characters. Do people look around to see if we are there every game? We hope so, but who knows!

Grapes

Bueno. So Jeff and I have been teaching some English classes. He has an advanced group, we share a youth group, and I have a basic group. My basic group is a group of ladies who work at an NGO or have a friend who does. I never thought I would enjoy teaching English like I do with the youth group and my basic group. My ladies are the best. They range in age from 13 to in their 40s. There is 9 of them. We laugh a lot, they learn a little, I hope, and I learn a lot...about teaching. I am hoping to continue this class for 2 years because I always leave feeling really happy to be here. Our youth group happans on the same day before my class, and today we had 15 kids! They are from ages 6 to 13. The class starts at 3.30 and I get there at 3.20. The kids are always sitting in their seats, looking at the board ready to LEARN. It´s refreshing, but it also throws off my game a little. I get so flustered that they´re all there...waiting for me. Today we learned the song Head Shoulders Knees and Toes, and the people working at the NGO commented the rest of the day about the song. Good times. Who actually ever thought I would be standing at the head of a class singing? I would NEVER do that in the US. That is for elementary school teachers! But here I am...singing. When we were learning about fruit, the kids had a really really hard time saying grapes. It was acutally pretty funny. And super cute. It really sounded nothing like grapes...probably how I sound when speaking spanish! Anyways, thanks for everyone for writing and keeping in touch. Hope everyone had a great holiday or 6 (as we have in my family)! Va pues.

new mailing address

Here is our new mailing address

Jenny and Jeff Pilon
Apartado Postal 115
Chinandega
Nicaragua
America Central


Please use this if you are going to send anything to us because then we dont have to go to Managua to get it. Also if you want to have a better chance of not getting search draw crosses on the envelope or write ¨ Dios te bendiga ¨.