Nicaragua Trip

Kelley and I were in Nicaragua last week. We had a super time and learned a lot. One thing we didn't realize is that Nicaragua is the 2nd poorest country in the western hemisphere (only Haiti is poorer).

We spent the first 2 days in a city called Granada which was the first Latin American city established by the Spanish Conquistadors in the 1500's. We spent a few hours sitting at this table near the main plaza while Kelley painted the yellow Cathedral in the background.

We took a fun boat ride through some small islands on a grand lake near Granada. We wished our nephews could have been with us as we had a visitor during our boat trip. He was very interested in the bananas we brought along.

During the drive from Granada to San Juan del Sur (our primary destination) we made a few short stops. One stop was at an active Volcano in a town called Masaya. (Yes, that is smoke rising out of the volcano...pretty crazy). Masaya was where we had lunch and did some shopping for Nicaraguan crafts.

We then visited a town called Catarina where we took in the beautiful views of the the lake and surround areas. You can see Granada off in the distance.

We arrived on Sunday afternoon to San Juan del Sur and had the chance to catch the sunset.

We started our morning Spanish lessons on Monday morning. Below is a photo of Kelley and here instructor, Christian. Not a bad location to study Spanish...maybe 50 yards from the Pacific Ocean!

Wednesday morning we got up early to hike up to the top of one of the cliffs surrounding San Juan del Sur and we saw that a cruise ship had arrived. Here you can see the cruise ship in the background...behind our friend Jose Rodulfo.

This is the view from the end of our hike. You can see all of San Juan del Sur.

Our last event before departing was to take a horseback ride. We saw some more monkeys during this activity.

This is the family we stayed with in San Juan del Sur. We stayed in a room on the 2nd floor of their home. Our room consisted of a bed and a fan. We took cold showers in a bathroom without a light, we washed our hands and brushed our teeth in the utility sink where they washed clothes. Every afternoon the power would go out for between 3-6 hours as the country does not have adequate power generation capacity. We really enjoyed getting to know the family and just about all of their neighbors.

High Tea at the Dushanbe Tea House

My friend Juliet and I shared wonderful outing to the Dushanbe Tea House. This amazing building was donated by Boulder's sister city in Tajikistan. The outside walls are covered with beautiful hand made tile.

The inside is also very ornate, with hand carved columns and ceiling. The lovely building was the perfect setting for such a fun event. We each had our own tea pot to in which to brew our tea. That was complemented with a tower of fresh pastries, fruit, deserts and creations from the farmer's market.Anyone planning to come and visit, mark this on your list of special Boulder activities.

Halloween Fun

Some of my foreign classmates got together to carve jack-o-lanterns a few weeks ago. I was the official instructor.

In this photo are: Lulu (Kuwait), Trent (USA), Craig (Taiwan), May (Thailand), Pui (Thailand) and Tim (Taiwan).

Our Final Game of the Season

Kelley is sad to say goodbye to her CU football games until next year. She has really enjoyed going. The Buff's had a tough game today. We are going to miss the final home game against Nebraska because we will be out of time.

Big win for UM today. I think I'm going to watch the UM vs Wisconsin game next week with some of my classmates from Michigan and Wisconsin.