December is here.. and yes they are playing christmas music..

Well, here we are back in Nicaragua. I know I already said that, but we are back in action as it were and as expected we feel very refreshed and ready to work. We are not so annoyed by all the things that were driving us crazy which are too numerous to mention. Kory is enjoying having a harmonica and practicing every day as well as his whistle of course. We are FULLY enjoying having our computer and so I am able to type this at my leisure instead of in a super hot internet café racking up costs by the minute.

We are excited to celebrate Christmas here in Nicaragua and curious as to what that actually means. We have heard that the 24^th is a huge party and there is lots of drinking and then everyone is passed out on the 25^th. Hmmmm? I hope there is more than that. If not we will have to find something special to do. We are thinking of staying with our host families but we will have to see. We put up our decorations, which were left here by the former volunteers. It consists, as you can see of two miniature trees (one is the bedroom and lights up), two stockings, some tinsel and one string of lights, which are lovingly hung on the mosquito net above our bed. We hope they don’t catch on fire.

We had our meeting in Matagalpa today, but since I’m writing this yesterday, I cannot say how it went. It was for our project called “Charlitas Listas”, which translates to ready made discussions. This is the project we are trying to do for all of Nicaragua and consists of making readymade charlas for all the casas maternas in the country. Right now they either are not being done, or are using various materials which aren’t terrible but they are not complete or the peace corps volunteer is making them with large sheets of paper which become very ugly after a certain amount of time. We meet with a group of doctors and leaders in healthcare to design them and now that we have the computer we will be getting to work designing them. We are quite excited to make this happen. Anyway, that’s that.

I wanted to mention the “Molino” or mill in English. I have had some wheat berries that I found at the market in Matagalpa, in the fridge for quite some time. Today I took them to the Molino, which we haven’t used for some time because we had purchased our own grinder. However, it doesn’t grind very finely so I thought I would give this wheat a try. But another aversion we have had to the Molino is that the one near our house is very dirty. Let me explain; a Molino is a big grinder that people put in their house and neighbors bring their corn, or curdled milk or coco beans etc to be ground every day. So there are many molinos in ones neighborhood but ours was quite stomach churning. It was very dirty and it was also someone’s bedroom, complete with mice and all sorts of whathaveyou. So I found another Molino near and today I tried it out. I took the wheat and some peanuts and my neighbor boy Brian. They always think the things I bring the Molino are strange because they are not corn, but its fun anyway. They “clean” the machine out with a preliminary cup or so of water and then they pour your stuff in and you are their waiting at the end and scooping it into your bucket if its wet, or banging the thing if its dry. Anyway. I like this new Molino, they only had chickens in there and they were watching Shakira so it was super fun. Anyway I feel pretty “Mother Hen” for having ground my own wheat and maybe I will make some bread soon. Well. That is all for the week! Chow!