Mariposa Means Butterfly

There have been so many mariposas around lately, and it has been such a welcomed sight. After a tough class I start walking to the teacher's lounge all hot, sweaty, and frustrated and then a little (or big) butterfly crosses my path and makes everything all better. Sometimes they fly into my classroom or hover around the many flowers on campus. They come in all colors and sizes. I like the black and blue ones the best. I wish I could carry around a little camera to capture their beauty, unfortunately I always seem to see them at school and therefore don't get pictures.

Dragon Fruit Fun and Other Fruit Smoothies!

Its dragon fruit season (or pitahaya season as its known as here)and I am enjoying experimenting with its deliciousness! Dragon fruit either has a white flesh or red flesh (red is the type we have here) and is the fruit of a cactus. Its flower is lovely and of the midnight blooming variety, I wish I would see one here. It has a mild and delicate flavor, and is often compared to a kiwi although I dont think it is as strong or sour.

As you can imagine by its color, it is loaded with antioxidants, vitamin C and lots of other good stuff. Here in Nicaragua it is commonly enjoyed as a refresco (or fresh juice) like everything else! Although I thoroughly enjoy all the delicious "frescos" I can get here, sometimes I wonder if that is the only thing people know what to do with fruit here! I use Sabine as my inspiration, when faced with too many mangoes to eat, dropping each day in her back yard, she made mango pie, mango salsa, mango sorbet, mango smoothies.



First I made the pitahaya refresco, which was delicious. The seeds kinda get ground up in the juice and gives it a flavor like oily but not bad, kinda like omega-3, avocado type taste. When I was in Leon this past weekend, I had pitahaya juice, but the seeds were still in tact and had a little bit of the gelatinous fruit still around it. It was like the best bubble tea ever! And it didnt have the oily-ness that some people don't like. Ivan's mom said in order to make it like that you have to mash the fruit and then mix it with water instead of blending it. I will have to try it next time.



After making juice, I wanted to see what else I could do with it. I found lots of good recipes online that I am excited to try, one of which is a pitahaya jelly, which I think is more like a jello, I need to see if I can find gelatin here. The sorbet recipe seemed doable, so I tried it today, since I have a long weekend! The ingredients were simple, water, sugar, lime and the fruit from 2 pitahayas. I also added a couple of drops of tequila and triple sec. The hardest part was waiting for it to freeze and I am not sure if it will ever freeze completely with our crappy freezer. But it did get frozen enough to have as dessert and it received good reviews!



Ivan has also been up to new things in the kitchen. He is on a smoothie making kick after watching one being made on a cooking show. I have been really enjoying it. Each smoothie has had the base of papaya, which I am starting to like, if it is not too ripe. Also papaya tica (from Costa Rica) is much better than any others I have had. Added to the papaya is fresh dragon fruit juice, fresh granadilla juice (part of the passion fruit family), fresh passion fruit juice, mango, strawberries, kiwi, and lime, Yum! Today he made papaya, cantaloupe and grapefruit (which we thought was an orange until we opened it. It was also delicious!

Managua's Mayor Commits Suicide

Managua's newly "elected" mayor, Alexis Argüello committed suicide with a shot to the chest around 1:30 this morning.

He was a three-time champion boxer, only to have all his riches stolen from him in the 80s by the Sandinistas, as they did to many of the wealthy in Nicaragua at that time. He more recently joined the Sandinista Party and "won" the office of mayor in an election that most believe to have been highly fraudulent.

He is known to have a history with drug and alcohol addiction, which may be an indicator of underlying depression that could have led to his suicide. This is merely my speculation, no news has come out as to why he might have done this yet.

This is of course very sad news. Although I was not happy about his election, I saw him mostly as someone the Sandinistas could easily manipulate and felt sorry he was so easily taken advantage of. He appeared to be a soft-spoken and kind-hearted man. My thoughts and prayers are with his loved ones.


Alexis Argüello 1952-2009

Coup in Honduras

I bet you didn't know there was a coup d'etat (golpe de estado) in Honduras today! That's because the US media is barely covering it. Here is the New York Times coverage, and the coverage was much better on CNN.com, but you really had to look for it and finally it was a headline on Fox News

So basically this is what is going on, from my understanding: The President of Honduras, Mr. Zelaya, wants to be able to be elected for another term, but the constitutional law in Honduras only allows for one 4 year term. There was supposed referendum held today in Honduras to measure the popular support for this change. The Supreme Court of Honduras ruled that the referendum was illegal. Last week President Zelaya fired the head of the military because he refused to aid in conducting the vote. There was some unrest and the airport was shut down for a day.

This morning the military kidnapped the Zelaya and sent him to Costa Rica. Supposedly the ambassadors of Nicaragua and Venezuela were also kidnapped, but that is unconfirmed at this moment. The coup was a drastic way for the judiciary branch to enforce their ruling that the vote was illegal and Zelaya was breaking the law by going forward with the vote. From what I can understand from the press conference that is on right now, Zelaya will be coming to Managua tomorrow with President Arias to meet, GREAT!

The Congress in Honduras just read a bogus letter of resignation from Zelaya and it seemed that the majority of the Congress voted to accept it. This is yet to be confirmed.

I have been meaning to write about the political situation in Central America for a couple days now and share my thoughts and then this happens! I will write more soon about the dangerous bedfellows here in CA and how it connects with Iran.

I just found a video on CNN, it looks like they are finally picking up the story! (We will forgive the former ambassador for mispronouncing coup)

Avocado Update

So I mentioned in a previous post that I was so excited to have spotted an avocado tree in a neighbor's yard. Now imagine my reaction when the landlord pointed out that their was an avocado tree in our front yard! I cant believe we never noticed it, it is directly to the left as you walk out the gate, but up on a higher piece of land. There was even a huge, huge avocado hanging low.

Ivan and I kept our eyes on it, and no one seemed to be picking any off the tree. So one lazy sunday Ivan and I went out to harvest some avocados. Ivan was armed with a very long piece of lumber with a bent nail at the end (to pull the avocados down) and I, with a basket with a pillow inside covered by a towel (to pad the landing of the sweet, sweet avocados).

Well, things did not go very well at the beginning, as it turns out I am only a natural-born avocado eater, and not a NB avocado picker! The avocados are huge, hard and fast falling and I was afraid they were going to break my glasses :( I mean it is a very vulnerable position to be in, looking up, trying to catch a big, heavy object falling through leafy branches and you have about .002 seconds to make sure it will land in the basket that is only inches from your face! So anyway, I missed many falling avocados, I think I caught only one! We took video of the event, unfortunately I missed capturing my big "catch", but I did however capture something much more entertaining! Please be advised that Ivan takes the sport of avocado catching very seriously and he was not very happy with my performance, however, I have not yet been traded for a more talented avocado catcher (which he could probably grab any guy off the street).



Despite the slow start, we ended up with many of the creamy, mild and delicious fruit we call avocados and enjoyed sharing them with friends and family. I hope avocado season never ends, as I could easily get used to having one with every meal!



It has been close to a year since I moved here, so I have experienced almost all the fruit seasons. Here is a list of the ones I have in my yard:
1) limes (always seem to be ready to pick)
2) nancite (not one of my favorites, smells like old cheese)
3) marañon (which is the fruit of cashews and the nut actually grows on the outside)
4) mangoes
5) avocados

Life is pretty good as far as fresh fruit goes. Speaking of which, I had a dream the other night about picking strawberries. My subconscious knows it is almost time, too bad I will be visiting home just a little too late for it.

Fixing the Problems that Need Fixing -or- Money, in Every Color of the Rainbow (you pick the title)

As we all know there are many sad problems here in Nicaragua: extreme poverty, high unemployment, hunger, clean water, pollution, education, basic plumbing and electricity, poor infrastructure, flooding issues, tropical diseases, corrupt police force, I could go on and on. With so many problems, choosing one to begin with is like trying to find out what came first, the chicken or the egg? How can you have clean water without first stopping pollution? How can you stop pollution without educating the people? How can you educate people when they are starving? How can you feed people without clean water? It is a vicious cycle. Families can't afford to sent their children to school, instead they are put to work selling gum in the street and therefore they will not get an education and the same thing will happen in the next generation.

Aww, but the Sandinista's, they know where to start...MONEY! I would say with them its all about the GREEN, but here we have what I like to call monopoly money...it comes in shades of red (500 cord bills), blue (100 cord bills), lavender(50 cord bills), orange (20 cord bills) and the ever popular green (10 cord bills)and of course good ol' American greenbacks are always welcome! So money...no Mr. Ortega didn't just pass a bill investing more money in education, or poverty relief programs, instead he thought he would spend a bunch of money to print some new money! What do you do when you don't have money? Just print more!

So there are some new bills on the money exchange scene...don't worry, they are still the same color, but waterproof, made out of some sort of plastic-y material. The coolest feature is the circular translucent spot, seemingly made so you can see what is underneath your bill (Is that the floor or my foot? Now you can know for sure!) They also have new illustrations, no longer is Jose Santos Zelaya honored on the widely used 20 cordoba bill (who was that dude anyway?). Now the 20 honors the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua, because we all know how much the Nicaragua government loves and appreciates the Caribbean Coast, a people that are often discriminated against and an area of the country that is virtually forgotten and barely represented in the government.


Last night on the news (after they showed the bloody dead people in the street), they said there are more new bills to come!!! Not only will they start printing the fancy, new, plastic-y bills for the 100s and 500s as well, but they are also making a much needed 200 cord bill! Thank goodness! EVERY, SINGLE, DAY, I think about how handy it would be to have a 200 cord bill, and now my dream is coming true!!!

It is already very difficult to get change for a 100 cord bill (equiv. to $5), don't even think about getting into a taxi without asking if they can make change for it! Poor Cezanne, finally making it home after a long afternoon of errands, found the driver coundn't make change. After a short argument she had to get back into the cab and go to the closest gas station so she could get smaller bills. Oh yeah, and then the cabbie called her a bitch because she was upset that he didn't have change! The good news is she didn't get mugged, which you should fall on your knees and thank God for every time you get out of a cab safely.

And 500 cord bills (the red ones) don't even think about paying for anything with one of those! Most people in Nicaragua are lucky to make 500 cords a day, no a week, rather a month, so trying to pay for something with one is nearly impossible. The minute you get one in your hand, start worrying about where you can break it down into 100s. And then do the same thing once you have the 100s....but that will all change now with the 200 cord bill right???

It is clearly tax money well spent by the Sandinistas!

I wonder what color it will be? I guess, the only color left in the rainbow, YELLOW!

I felt the earth move under my feet

I have many firsts in Nicaragua and today was my first earthquake, little earthquake. I got home from work just before a thunderstorm and torrential downpour began. I was enjoying the loud booms of thunder and downloading some pics onto my computer when an especially loud boom of thunder seemed to shake the apartment and even the couch I was sitting on. At first I thought that the building had been hit by lightening, but then I realized it must be an earthquake! And I realized the loud boom of thunder must have actually been the sound of the earthquake.

I spoke to Ivan soon afterward and he confirmed it was a little quake, registering 2.5 on the Richter scale, a surface quake, that's epicenter was 4 K outside of the city. There was a pretty big quake in Honduras today and since I have been here we have often seen and heard of large earthquakes in Costa Rica and Guatemala, it is only a matter of time before a large earthquake hits here.

One of the contributing factors of Nicaragua's downfall to one of the poorest nations in the hemisphere, besides the Sandinista Revolution, was the Earthquake of '72, which hit Managua very hard and much of the "old city" was never rebuilt due to mismanagement of funds by the government. In fact, many directions here are given by prominent landmarks that were there before the earthquake, "go down to the corner where the BAC building used to be, and then go two blocks toward the lake".

Anyway, Managua is long overdue for a big earthquake. So Ivan and I have an emergency evacuation plan, "get out!" And like my dad always says, "I'll be in Idaho that weekend" referring to my worry of Mount Rainier destroying Seattle...I guess I will have to say "I'll be in the States that weekend".