Double Post!

Double post! Don´t forget to see the previous post. We haven´t been able to update for a while, however with the convenience of having a computer in the house we have updated at home. So we just loaded the last two entries. How exciting for you!

Purisima
Has anyone heard of the “Purisima”? Well, it’s a tradition here of which we are quite fond. It reminds me of caroling. Someone (inconspicuously a catholic) makes a little shrine to the Virgin Mary outside their house, complete with lights and flowers and invites friends and family to come and celebrate. Now when all the people are gathered around after dark, these guys show up with some awesome guitars and play all these Mary songs while the people sing. In between they shout, “¿Quien causa tanta alegría?” “¡La concepción de Maria!” In english… “Who causes so much joy?” “The conception of Mary!” But that isn’t the most exciting part. Besides that I actually like the music and everyone is so jovial, at the end the host passes out all manner of goodies and treats including, but not limited to: little tiny baskets with candies in them, bags of candy, fruits like oranges or bananas, drinks in bags, toy whistles and so much more! It’s cool because we can’t imagine that people who are normally so poor, get so much money to give away. Anyway, here are a few pictures of our first Purisma, which was at our neighbor’s house. We got invited to a second one but didn’t bring our camera. Anyway, it’s pretty exciting. We are still unsure about our Christmas plans. I think we will be here in our site. We invited any other volunteers to come be with us, but we are probably not cool enough to have such luck. So it might be us and our Nicaraguan friends… which isn’t so bad.

¿Quién causa tanta alegría? It´s the statue of María that you can´t see in this photo that sits on a highly decorated table just below the cluster of lights on the window. This house is just down the street from us. Nice folks.It looks like a rock. It´s not. It is some kind of homemade candy. We have a similar stuff in the United States. We call it sheetrock and we build houses with it. We saved the baskets to use for Easter.

I was trying to upload a video clip of the purisima but we are still making our videos too big. Next time. It even showed a firework in the background, the smoldering remains of which land a mere 2 inches from Heather´s head.

In other news, we have a friend who just moved out of his house so he can rent it out. He told us last night, during our discussion group/movie night, that the guy who is renting it is from Matagalpa and is going to open a Ciber in it. This means we will have affordable internet access in our site and won´t have to wait until we go to Matagalpa to use it! Woo Hoo!