Us with our class of little ones and 3 adult helpers.

Dan's night class of teen girls. They are a bunch of gigglers! We split the teens class into 2 classes because it was a large group.

Us with the little ones again.

Sunset....paradise!

This is the common building at the hotel. This is we eat, our room is in this building, and where people lounge out in the many hammocks  around.


All is well here! Classes are great, we are very busy lesson planning, fundraising, and creating online education sources for the students and future volunteers for after we leave.
Hasta Luego!
D&J

Our class!!! This is the little kids class. That hammock in the background is our office! The lake is behind the hammock, and we can see the sun set during our night class!

The snake that fell from the ceiling and slithered into our room!!! Eewww!

The view from our balcony and our king sized hammock!!  That is the lake in background, it is hard to see here.

One of the monkeys from our Kayak trip to Monkey Island this morning.

Us in the kayak with Monkey Island behind us. There is a monkey in the tree to the left of Dans head, but it is hard to see here.

Kids fishing for their dinner tonight from a hand carved boat. These kids were using line with a hook to fish, but many kids use their hands (and are quite successful) or use nets. Many kids fish from the end of our dock, and we have learned that what they catch is dinner for the whole family. Families are very large here, they seem to average about 6 or 7 kids per family. Our students were shocked to find our Dan and I each only had 1 sister!

Our dock looking out onto Lake Nicaragua.

Dan and our friends walking back from our hike earlier this week. This shows the condition of the roads around here (this is actually a very good stretch of road) and how there are always horses, cows, pigs, chickens, and dogs just wandering in the street.

A view of the waterfall we hiked to from about half way up the Volcano.

Dan and our friends climbing down the ravine.

Us in the waterfall!

Us on the dock with the big Volcano in the back!

Class!

The last picture is of Dan on his birthday with the cake I had the kitchen make for him. I am having a lot of trouble uploading pics lately, so we will post what we can!
We have been busy creating lesson plans and talking with the owner about how we can improve the education program here. We are starting to really get to know the students, their families, and the community. Some of the situations of the kids are quite sad, and it can be hard to see and to deal with...it really puts into perspective how fortunate we are.
We went for a bike ride this afternoon, after our morning class, and saw more of the countryside. The ride was a bit rough because the roads are in such bad condition here on the island. Ohh we also an encounter with a snake this morning...we were in the common area of the hotel and a snake  fell off the ceiling, onto the reception desk, across the computer of the reception desk, and slithered its way into our room, and into our laundry! A young gentleman bravely captured it with a pair of my pants and set it free outside. It was a  thin, long, non-poisonous snake.
Tonight we are going to watch the sunset with some $1 beers! Tomorrow we are going kayaking to monkey island to feed the monkeys and then down a river to see some alligators and birds!
Thank you to everyone for keeping up with our blog and sending us messages!! We do get a bit homesick at times, mostly because we miss all our family, friends, and Samson soooooooo much, so it is really nice to hear from you all!
Love D&J

 

The waterfall from our hike 2 days ago.



Ughh...the computer is not working well and I can not upload any more pictures right now, but I will try again later.

Our classes are awesome!!  We have two classes: one at 2pm with about 15 kids ages 2-9 and another at 5pm with 20 kids ages 10-25. Both classes are great in their own respects.  Our classroom is a large room with two open ends, one of which looks out to the lake so we can watch the sun set during our night class and it is covered so we do not get wet when it rains! We sang Happy Birthday to Dan Wednesday, and the kitchen made Dan a birthday cake that was shared with everyone here at the hotel. We had to move out of our sweet balcony room with our own bathroom to a smaller room with a shared bathroom, but we were spoiled with our balcony room. Dan had become quite fond of a gecko that lived in our balcony room-he named it T-Rex Gex, T-Gex for short!
All of the friends we had made have left, but more will come. We have made friends from all around the world!
Well, off to class!
Love D&J

Us with Volcan Maderas in the background.

The view from a quarter of the way up the Volcano.

...two hours later, after climbing steep ravines up the volcano we made it to these amazing falls! They were so incredibly tall, I could not fit the whole falls into one frame on the camera. This pictuure kind of puts the size into perspective.

More pics to come!

Word spread quickly that the new teachers were here, and we had 7 eager students come to meet us last night, so we held a small class. We have our lessons planned for the rest of this week, and we begin classes officially tomorrow(Wed.). Although we told the students there would be no class tonight, 2 showed up and wanted to learn, so we taught! In this community, and many places around Nicaragua, people are eager to create tourism that will sustain their way of life and culture, which would allow them to better the quality of their life. It is very undeveloped here, and impovershed in places, and creating sustainable tourism without allowing colonization and Westernized companies to take over, is very appealing to many people here. Many of our students wish to become tour guides, and want to learn English, while others wish to attend University where English is the primary language. We will be teaching English while incorporating the importance of sustaining their Nicaraguan culture, way of life, and the Spanish language. It is important to us that we do both these things. We are so excited to start teaching tomorrow!
Today we hiked 8.7 miles to a waterfall on Volcan Maderas. It was a really tough hike but so worth it! The waterfall was easily the longest falls we've ever seen! We stood under the cold refreshing falls as our reward when we finally reached it. Two people we met last night came with us and they are really cool. We will post pics soon.
Tomorrow is DANS BIRTHDAY!!!!! I am having the kitchen make him a birthday cake for our dessert! We will also celebrate with the kids. Dan is excited because one of our students invited him to go fishing with him and his father who is a fisherman this weekend.
Love D&J

Dan kayaking in the lake at Laguna de Apoyo.

Dan swimming at Laguna de Apoyo. The tallest mountain behind Dan is Volcano Mombacho, the volcano we saw from Lake Nicaragua. We kayaked all the way to the other side of this lake!

This is one of the monkeys who would disturb our Spanish classes at Laguna de Apoyo. Our classes were help outside in the jungle, and these monkeys would always be fighting. This monkey is lounging after a heated dispute.

This is a shot of Isla de Ometepe taken from our ferry ride volcanoes look so small from here but actually they are so big this is the only picture I could get of them both fitting in the same shot. The one on the left is called Volcan Conception and the one on the right is called Volcan Maderas. We are staying on the right side of the island in a small village called Merida. Volcan Maderas is in our backyard!

There are butterflies and beautiful flowers everywhere here!

This is Volcan Conception. This is taken from our dock. This picture does the view no justice, this volcano is so gigantic!

Swimming off our dock at sunset.

We have a lot more pictures we want to share of here, but we will lots of time to add more at a later time. 

Today we had a nice breakfast at a restaurant down the road, and then got a bunch of things together and prepared to start teaching on Wednesday. 

Love and miss you all!

D&J

 

Eric J. Masters! Send us an e-mail let us know how things are going down in the Holler! How is our garden doing? How is work? We would love to hear from you! 

j.l.lasda@hotmail.com

Ah our hotel stay at Hacienda Merida keeps getting better and better! Last night we toured around some more and found another bar down the way where we can watch the world cup final today. Go Espana!! We went for a lovely swim, the water here is actually cool and refreshing unlike at Laguna where it was warm bath water. We have a really nice dock here where we can jump off from pretty high. We made some really nice friends! Two couples, both around our age and all teachers too! One couple is from Portland Oregon and the other from England. Their accents are bloody fantastic! We share a balcony with the couple from England and shared some cocktails last night. Beers are only $1 here! We all had a delicious breakfast together and are watching the game together later.
A tropical storm came through so it will be rainy all day but we don't mind spending our morning laying in hammocks under our balcony reading and watching it rain! A tropical storm here is equivilant to a thunderstorm home, not a big deal. When the rain clears we have our choice of a variety of activities- many hiking options to volcanoes and waterfalls, kayaking to monkey island, biking, horseback riding, sailing...
We love it here!
We were unable to find a new card reader but we are sure we can borrow one from someone to upload more pics soon.
Love D&J

Arrived at our hotel in Ometepe! It is GORGEOUS here! I don't think we are going to mind spending a month living and teaching in this paradise!!

Hola,
So we are all packed up and ready to leave Laguna de Apoyo early Saturday morning. We are off to Isla de Ometepe. Today was our last day of classes. Dan went to the city Masaya today and went to the artisans market, an old political prison where people were tortured and killed (this freaked him out), and to a pollution site. He says it was more interesting than it sounds! Haha!
Yesterday we went kayaking on the lake and we learned the hard way that this lake is a million times bigger than it looks! We were determined to get to the other side and an hour and a half later we made it! It was worth it! It was an experience we will never forget! The water was clear, blue- green, and the thick green jungle covered the seemingly endless mountains. The best part was the loud Howler monkeys echoeing down through the jungle and over the water! We saw huge red winged grasshoppers. It was an amazing jungle experience and totally worth the blisters and three hour trek!
We hope to buy a card reader on our travels tomorrow so we can share the pictures.
Have a good weekend all!
Love D&J

Our friend Becca loaned us her card reader so we could upload some pics! Most are from Granada, and we will post more of Laguna de Apoyo tomorrow. I am feeling all better today! Classes were good today. We watched the soccer game with our teachers after class, yay Espana!, then we helped weed the garden, and went for a nice refreshing swim after!
Buenas Noches!
D&J

















This is in our hotel in Granada, Nicaragua, in one of the many gardens.

This is the Cathedral in Parque Central in Granada. Granada is the oldest European city in the continetal Americas. This city is over 400 years old!

This is a monkey who lives on an island in Lake Nicaragua,

This is Toto the parrot! He was the pet of the owner of this bar we stopped at, on an island on Lake Nicaragua.

This is Volcano Mombacho. Notice the black volcanic rocks that this volcano shot down into Lake Nicaragua 50 million years ago! This volcano is now inactive.

This church is more than 400 years old, and was burnt down by William Walker, an American mercanary who took over the country of Nicaragua and declared himself President in the mid 1800´s. There were many very old churches in Granada, others were older than this one.

This is the main street in Granada, looking up towards Parque Central. It was so pretty here, each building was a different color.

This is Jessica doing laundry in Laguna de Aopyo. This is in the common area of where we are staying.

These are our cooks at Laguna de Apoyo, Laura and Leslie. Leslie is also Dan´s Spanish teacher. They are very nice and wonderful cooks!

Sarah thank you for the advise there are coconuts everywhere!
Christine it has been around 90 everyday with at least 95 percent humidity but it rains in the afternoons and cools things down. I heard it's been hot at home. Today we had the tail end of a tropial storm come through so it poured rain all day.
We are bummed that our card reader broke so we can't upload any pics but we can buy a new one on Saturday so we will have lots of pics to catch up on.
We heard back from the new volunteer program we start next week and dan and I will have our classroom! We are so excited about it, we will be in charge of our own lessons, schedule, and everything! We can't wait to start. We will have anywhere from 10-25 students. We are worried about the community Juquilillo where the volunteer program was shut down b/c today's storm hit there the worse :(
I am feeling ok the nausea comes and goes but it's not too bad.

Yesterday was a good day here at Laguna de Apoyo. We started our individual Spanish lessons yesterday and they are going great. We both really like our teachers. We hiked to the hot springs yesterday with our teachers and friends,but it was so hot out that we only dipped our feet in. The lake water is warm but refreshing. It gets very humid in the afternoons. We like it here a lot, it is like a family, we all eat our meals together in the dining area. There are two dogs who live here. One is racist tho and only likes white people, he bites Nicaraguans! The food has been so good! We made it thru the night without any disturbances from large tarantulas!
Today has not been as good. We had breakfast early this morning and went to class which was good but then a big storm rolled in and Jessica is sick. The owner said if she is not better soon he will get her some antibiotics. Others here have been sick too and no one knows if it is a stomach bug or bacteria from the food or water. Either way it is not serious. Kim, Jessica does not want you to worry, she will be just fine:) Luckily the rain has cooled things down.
Adiós
D&J

Aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We were just sleeping soundly and Jessica woke up to a giant Terantula on our mosquito net!! I woke Dan somehow. I was frozen with fear and speechless. We could not tell if it was on the outside or inside of the net so we slowly crept out and thankfully realized it was on the outside. We just stood in our room frozen not knowing what to do. Luckily some people were still up and they grabbed a book and a cup, but the cup was too small! Eventually we, well our new friends,caught it and let it go outside.
Yeah, I don't think Im sleeping soundly this whole week Im here!

Happy 4th of July!
Yesterday we toured the city of Granada more with a horse drawn carriage then we took a private boat tour of Lake Nicaragua and the many islands. Mombocho volcano erupted 50 million years ago and dropped hundreds of islands into the lake. All the rocks are black volcanic rocks. We stopped at a bar with our boat captain and had beers, watched the soccer game, swam in a pool, and made friends with Toto the pet parrot. We also stopped at an island and saw monkeys!
We received some really bad news. The community Jiquilillo that we had planned on volunteering at has flooded and the program we would have been working with has closed. Fortunately the hotel we will be staying at next week also runs a school and they are allowing us to volunteer at the school. They were delighted to have two teachers on board! Our thoughts go out to Jiquilillo, and we are excited to be teaching at a school.
We are now in Laguna de Apoyo. We are staying on the lake in the jungle. We are living like the locals here, where we wash our clothes in an outdoor sink, sleep under a mosquito net, and have no tv to watch. We start taking Spanish classes tomorrow. We went swimming in the crystal clear lake surrounded by mountains covered with jungle today and it started raining, but it was cool. There is an ecological research station here and everyone is really nice.
We are not sure if we will be able to upload pictures from here, but we will keep up with our posts.
Love D&J

Hola!
So yesterday was a very long day of traveling. We got up at 4 am to get on the bus to Granada, Nicaragua and did not arrive in Granada until 3pm. We drove North through the mountains of Costa Rica and through the country side which was beautiful. We saw a lot of small, impoverished villages and it was sad. We knew we would be experiencing that, but nothing can really prepare you for seeing it for the first time. That is why we are here though, to help.
Entering Nicaragua took a couple hours, going through border patrol and customs. We drove up past Lake Nicaragua and Isla de Ometepe, and we were astonished by the size of the two inactive volcanoes on the island. We will be visiting there in 2 weeks! I (Jessica) got motion sickness, so I did not see much more of the Nicaraguan country side. The city of Granada is absolutley gorgeous! Every building is painted another bright color, the mountains touch the clouds as you look down the streets out of the city, the Parque Central (every city here has a central park) is vibrabt with color and decoration, and Latin music can be heard everywhere. We saw a 300 year old church, and we hope to see more when we walk around today.
Last night we ate at a local Nicaraguan restraurant and met another Ameican couple who were really nice. We knew the food was authentic because we were the only Gringos in the place! Both our meals and 4 beers only cost us $8! Our hotel is wonderful. It is decorated with indigenous art. There are gardens throughout our hotel lined with hammocks and tables where we have enjoyed some beverages while taking in the sights of butterflies, birds, flowers, and the blue sky.
We have had fruit for breakfast every morning since we arrived here and it is out of this world delicious, as well as the coffee. I am not a coffee drinker, but I have a sip or two because it is so good!
I can not get any pictures to upload right now, but hopefully later, I really want to share this city with you!
Have a great 4th of July weekend! We are sad will be missing the festivities and family and friends!
Miss everyone!
Love D&J
PS...today is our 8 year annerversary!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We made it to Granada, Nicaragua! It is absolutely gorgeous here! We are really tired, so we will post our adventures tomorrow.
Love D&J
PS...Exactly one year from today July 2, we will be getting MARRIED!!!!!!!!!!

This is the Poas Volcano steaming!
We hiked up to this Volcano and to an inactive crater that has filled up with rain water and is now a lake. We hiked through the dense forest and saw hummingbirds, other birds, a black turkey, a medium sized animal with a long tail that we forget the name of, and a very friendly squirrel! It was chilly up in the mountains.

We took a bus from Alajuela, North up into the mountains. It was a very steep and curvy bus ride. It took us 1 1/2 hours to drive up to the volcano park, and only 30 minutes to get back down. Driving through the small mountain communities was really interesting and cool. We saw a lot of small farms with cows grazing in fields, and gorgeous views as the one above!
We stopped in a small village selling souviners and I made two new friends!

We have seen a lot of street dogs, and Dan told me I can´t pet them, so I was happy to meet domesticated dogs!

Tomorrow morning we are getting up at 4am to catch a bus up to Nicaragua. It will be an 8 hour bus ride, but the busses are nice.
Hasta Luego!
D & J

This picture above is of Mercado Central

We successfully made our way into San Jose and bought our bus tickets to Nicaragua for Friday. This task went well considering we forgot our map and our guide book. San Jose is a big city, but there are many nice parks. You can see the huge, beautiful mountains surrounding the city when you look down the streets. We explored the Mercado Central (Central Market) and that was so neat. There were touristy gift shops, places to eat, flowers, meats of all kinds (testicles, cow tounge, and every part of a chicken), herbs, hammocks, and even pets! We returned to Alajuela just in time for the afternoon rainstorm...good thing we remembered our rain coats! We took shelter in a Soda, a small neighborhood restaurant, where we had the first of many rice and beans meals, and it was very good.

This picture is of the variety of meats at Mercado Central. The middle pan on the bottom is cow tounge!

This picture above is in Alajuela. You can see the storm rolling in, the soccer game and a church. This is just two blocks from our hotel.

Tonight we will go out to dinner and get to bed early because in the moring we are going North to Poas Volcano National Park where we will drive to the top of the volcano and look inside it. There is also a very nice waterfall we will hike to.
Hasta Luego,
D & J