settling in

So here we are in Granada, Nicaragua. It is the morning of our second day here, and we are still trying to get the hang of things. Granada turns out to be a pretty little town. There are plenty of travelers here, but tourism is a fairly new thing in Nicaragua, so it has a nice feeling to it. Sure, there are expat sports bars and Irish pubs (I think there are Irish pubs everywhere in the world!!), but the town is an old Colonial city, and has a look and feel I've never seen before.

As you walk around town, the buildings are classic colonial style, meaning huge doors with iron bars on them which open into big tall front rooms (often 17 ft high) leading into open courtyards within. It's fun to walk around and look into people's houses, because the courtyards always look like mysterious secret gardens inside. Houses are concrete cinder block, painted all kinds of lively tropical colors. Our own house color would fit in quite well!

Below is one lovely garden we peeked into. Fancier than some, but they are all pretty nice.

Yesterday evening we walked to the town square, a big open park near the cathedral. Here is a picture of the park and cathedral both, with the volcanic mountains looming up behind. It is very pretty here.
We are staying in a lovely, family owned guest house. The couple that own it are very friendly and we're enjoying chatting with them quite a bit. We are on one of the rooms up on the second floor that they have turned into hotel rooms, and have a little outdoor kitchen to cook in. Our room isn't fancy, but nice enough and the view from the table on the balcony is nice. There's a lime tree growing in the courtyard and I see sun-soaked roof tiles and a big blue sky. Bits of coconut trees are sticking up over the roofline.


I haven't yet mentioned the single most challenging thing about being here. It is hot. Really hot and humid. The weather report this week is for temperatures from 95-100 all week, and I don't know the humidity, but it is high enough to feel fairly sticky. The thing that is different about being here, though, is that we haven't seen an air conditioner yet. In all of our other travels to hot places, (Thailand, India, Taiwan) a/c is really common, in almost every shop and definitely in people's homes. Here we have fans. Fans are better than nothing, but we are feeling pretty melty and the heat makes it hard to sleep. I am not complaining, but it is certainly making us consider heading up into the mountains for much of our trip here. So far we are pretty groggy, headachy and just kind of feel gross. I'm sure we'll adjust, but we weren't expecting it to be this hot. We've already booked the place we're staying for the next couple weeks, so we're kind of stuck here, but after that, we are looking for someplace cooler.

Alright, enough whining. We are probably going to head up to a lake not far from here for the day tomorrow for some swimming, then Monday we are going to start language school. I am pretty intimidated about speaking spanish with folks, although Fritz is just jumping right in. His blog post about our Spanish being a competition cracked me up, since his Spanish is so much better than mine. He has been chatting people up left and right, while I have to practice sentences in my head before I am brave enough to spit them out. I am sure I'll get better as we practice and study, but I am feeling very rusty. French would come a lot easier right now.

We love that you are reading along with our adventures and would love to hear from you!! We miss all our friends and family, and hope you keep us in your prayers and thoughts!

-Shannon