Halloween

Ivan and I were invited to a Halloween party. Ivan doesn't like how Halloween is celebrated here, because it is not a Nicaraguan holiday and people don't know what it is about, they just like to get dressed up. So he has never dressed up for Halloween before. He agreed to go since gringos were hosting the party.

The hosts were Sabine and Matt, a newly wed couple who are about my age. Sabine is a high school science teacher at Lincoln and we share grievances about teaching there. Matt works for an NGO out of their apartment, which is not too far away from us!

I had the terrific idea that Ivan and I should be Lucy and Ricky, from I Love Lucy, but Ivan had never seen it! We watched some clips on youtube and Ivan was cracking up. Unfortunately we could not watch full episodes online because the websites only allow you to access the episodes if you are using the internet within the United States! A horrifying discovery! The world wide web is truly not world wide if you limit certain parts of it from being accessed from different parts of the world!

Although our costumes were limited to what we had in the closet, I think our natural attributes made us a pretty good Lucy and Ricky! We had a lot of fun at the party. We brought our neighbors along, Raina (who is from Virginia and works at the World Bank here) and her boyfriend Agusto (who is from Managua). Everyone got along really well. There was a great mix of gringo and Nicaraguan teachers there, with lots of good food and good costumes: a bat, a German tourist, Tiger Woods, a tiger, a Muslim, a pirate and his booty, among others.

We made tentative plans with Raina, Agusto, Sabine and Matt to go to Laguna de Apoyo for the day and pack a picnic and some beers. We also are thinking of planning a weekly game night. I think that would be a great way for us all to improve our language skills. Agusto speaks a little English and Sabine and I both need to improve our Spanish. Raina and Matt are both fluent in Spanish and Ivan is fluent in English. So it is a good mix of language speakers at different levels!