Land of Lakes and Volcanoes

So, in the past month, I have had oddly swollen feet / ankles for no apparent reasons. See exhibits 1 and 2 below. This isn't even a bad day. After running urine and blood tests and having everything come out normal, Peace Corps sent me to an orthopedist, who looked at my ankles and said they're fine. I also told him about the odd knee pain I have had after strenuous bike-riding or hiking. After he looked at my knees, I was informed that my kneecaps don't line up correctly with the rest of my knee, resulting in pain, which usually worsens in the mid to late 20s. Great. As a result, I got an ultrasound of my leg veins, so see if the swelling was a circulatory problem, and knee X-rays to check out my kneecaps. Luckily my veins all appear normal, as that would be pretty scary, but still leaves us ankle swelling clueless. I find out the results of my X-ray analysis in April when I go back to the doctor. I am a little worried about that visit, as he said that if it was ...

Happy Easter!! Can I just reiterate how much I love my site sometimes? Semana Santa is the week leading up to Easter here, and it’s a big holiday. There’s no school all week long (so we work on side projects of course), no buses on Thursday or Friday, and many fiestas. It’s also a tradition all over Nicaragua to go to the beach for Semana Santa, and the island is no exception. It’s interesting because if you go to the beach here normally, there’s almost no one there – just people washing clothes or taking a bath, but this week, people were swimming, kayaking, chicken-fighting (but they do it standing up on each other’s shoulders), or just hanging out. One family also set up a fritanga (place to buy fried foods) on the beach. They also had ripe, delicious mangoes. One of my friends gave me one, which I promptly chowed down on. Two hours later I learned yet another valuable lesson in humility when another of my friends informed me that I had orange mango stuff all around my mouth....

Hola to all. I know, for the past month I’ve been plenty slack about posting. First there was vacation, and now there was a Spanish workshop. So, a few random things, and then an activity update. Rain o’ plenty… I have recently been introduced to jocote, which is a bright red fruit when ripe, and a dark olive green before that. There is a jocote tree in the front yard of my house, along with a mango tree. The little grape looking things are jocote and the darker green leaves with still green fruit are mangoes that aren’t ripe yet. Well, there are so many jocote falling off the tree, I can’t walk across my yard without getting sticky fruit-juice feet. Here’s a pic of my jocote wealth. For reference, if you make a circle with your pointer finger and your thumb, tips touching, that’s roughly the size of a jocote. Yes, they’re edible and sweet, but there are so many that I can’t possibly eat them all. They have big pits and orange, squishy fruit like a m...

This is Ojo de Agua, or at least part of it. Trevor wouldn't send me that picture, unless I promised to post this one of the crazy rooster. Also, I have a couple more small posts with cool pics, etc., but I can't post them until I debug my camera which has been infected with an icky virus.

Please note that pictures have been added to the vacation blog, and here are some amazing pics of animals that TJ took. He clearly took more time on this than I usually take, but the pictures are beautiful, so it's cool. A fish from Laguna de Apoyo that Trevor didn't identify for me. A truly amazing grasshopper pic. A lizard (id anyone?) ***Lauren has corrected us, this is a damselfly. You can tell because when perched, it's wings are together. Good job, non-biologist. Shame, shame, biologists. Millipede (2 sets of legs per segment) Enormous toad with a tick on his head.

Sorry for the lack of recent blog posts, but I just returned home Friday from my 1 st VACATION and it was a lot of fun. Me boarding island transportation with TJ's pack and my canasta. So we spent 5 days here in Merida at my site and I worked Wednesday through Friday, but each day we also managed to do some sort of fun thing. The first day we hiked to the San Ramon waterfall in the morning and in the afternoon I went to work. It is supposed to be a 3K hike, but I think that’s a gross underestimation. I saw some monkeys, but TJ didn’t. The waterfall wasn’t as big as it is during the rainy season, but it was quite beautiful nevertheless. It also comes out of the lake at the top and so if was nice and cold, which was great after hiking all that way. Unfortunately, there were no fish. Us at the waterfall. Not the time we ate dinner, but the place where we ate dinner. Thursday I worked here in Merida, and TJ worked on a grant. In the evening, we went to my family’s...