Work It Out

So Monday night was the second time of a successfully completed work out dvd. Woo! This time, my host sister, Caridad did the work out with me. She was wanting to work out, but we never found a good time, until Monday night! My host cousin joined in and the little kids too. It was hilarious! I feel wonderful from working out and I want to get back in the routine. I haven’t really been working out here because it’s so hot that I sweat when I’m sitting on the couch, so there’s not much motivation to get hotter… We did the work out dvd in the evening which was nice because it wasn’t very warm. I hope we can keep it up!

Here are some things I forgot to mention last time…


Our “Standfast” is over, which means that we are allowed to travel outside of our training towns and the road conditions have improved since the hurricane weather.


I fed the dog. I usually would be against feeding scraps to the dogs here, because nobody wants the dogs in their houses, but they keep coming back because there’s food. However, I was eating what I think was beef and it was cooked a little weird so it tasted funny, and my only option was to toss it to the dog out the door, besides eating it but I definitely couldn’t do that. Maybe I started a bad habit because for dinner that night I had a large chunk of fried cheese and I couldn’t make myself eat the whole thing and the dog was just lying on the floor so nicely so, he got some cheese too. I felt like a kid getting rid of veggies underneath the table, which I never did when I was little ;) I think this dog might just become my friend while I’m here, although I’m never gonna touch him because he probably has fleas or some disease. I feel horrible for all the dogs here. I want to be back in a place where I don’t fear touching dogs because of what they might pass on to me.


New professor! Our new profesora is Blanca, and she happens to be my host brother’s mom. I guess he would technically be my host “brother-in-law” because he’s my host sister’s husband, and his mom isn’t my host mom. Gosh, it sounds like I’m describing a soap opera, but really it’s not that dramatic. Anyway, she is wonderful and such a difference from our last profe. I’m not going to spend more time comparing them, but I want to say that she is a great language teacher and really focuses on communication and teaching us new, relevant vocabulary to practice. Our classes have been great so far and I feel more confident in practicing my Spanish. She also came to our youth group last night to check it out and I felt it went well. We did a lesson on asking and giving prices because our town has a lot of shops, and about 80% of the people who live here are artisans—let me know if you want some pottery ;) I really want to buy some because it’s so great, but it’s not a good idea now because then I would have to carry them all over Nicaragua with me… Anyway, things are great and we’re very happy with our class.

Also, I tried bag drinks for the first time and I’m still ok :)  I don’t know why everything comes in bags here, but they do and that’s how we have to do it.  So, you bite off the corner and drink.  We tried chocolate, then went back the next day and got chocolate and strawberry (different bags).