Pizza! Pizza!

My family made pizza again last night, and this time Kellie and I helped out, which was super fun. Also, I made garlic knots to introduce to the family. Unfortunately, we did not have butter, so I used garlic and a little bit of oil. It worked well, but they just weren’t drenched in garlic and butter like I usually like :)

Earlier yesterday, we had meetings in Diriamba, which is in the department (state) of Carazo, so we got together with the environment trainees too. It was about a 45 minute ride, and the energy was low, so I decided to introduce “Deaf Karaoke” to my friends. I felt the time had arrived to share this magical experience. So, the rules are, you choose an upbeat song on your iPod/MP3 player that you know at least the majority of the words, and then turn it all the way up and sing your heart out. The catch is, your audience can’t hear your music, and you can’t hear your voice, making it difficult to see in tune. Soooo, you sound absolutely horrible which is hilarious to your audience as your voice is cracking and you’re trying to hit those high notes, but just can’t, AND, you think you sound like a rock star because the music is blasting and you just hear the real singer. Everyone wins in Deaf Karaoke. I started us off with “Bleeding Love” by Leona Lewis, and then Andrew belted one out, and Sam began his song, but we arrived at the museum, where our PC driver quickly exited. The environment trainer came and opened our bus door, but we all told him we weren’t ready, and we allowed Sam to finish. It was hilarious, as everyone eventually joined in. I hope we continue this game on other trips because it really is a good bonding experience; embarrassment certainly brings you closer to people.

After we all got back, I went shopping in Masaya with my host brother to get ingredients for the pizza and then returned to co-plan with the English profe. I brought back Snickers for Kellie and Jess so we enjoyed some of those while we were hanging out. Then, the pizza making was postponed for awhile because my host mom needed to make the bread first, so we took this opportunity to work out. I brought exercise dvds with me and Jess shared some leg and ab exercises. This girl is tough. She does yoga everyday too, so we’re gonna have to learn some of that.

Today I washed my undergarments, as these are not included in the washing clothes agreement our host families have made. It took me about an hour to wash everything outside in the pila and I am definitely missing washers and dryers. We actually do have a washing machine here, but we don’t use it that often because it’s only when we have running water. Dryers don’t exist here, so everything hangs outside to dry. Today is finally a nice, sunny day so I took advantage of that. We’ve had so much rain lately that all of the trainees have feared running out of socks and underwear… Some clothes were washed on the one nice day last week, but it then rained on all the clothes. This makes clothes smell bad because they sit in the rain forever and then take forever to dry because it’s still damp outside. On the other hand, my host mom took my clothes out of the washer and put them in a bucket for some reason. I’m really not sure why she did this because they were still wet. I finally asked her if I could hang them up in my room and she gave them to me. Two shirts were dirty at the bottom because there was dirt in the bucket. Hmmm. Well, I kind of made this obvious by leaving them out, dirty side up, while I put the other clothes away, and then my host mom gasped and said she would wash them again. I don’t understand the bucket thing. There are others’ clothes in buckets too. I’m just happy it’s sunny out and my clothes are hanging to dry.

This morning there was a parade celebrating the translation of the Bible into Spanish. There were a lot of people participating and it went in front of my house. It was pretty cute because they had Noah’s ark, complete with little kids dressed up as animals.