Almost time...

To come home! And I can't wait.  Unfortunately, I lost my camera including the last 2 weeks worth of photos :( But in a way it may help me enjoy the moment more, to focus on remembering it and enjoying it now instead of capturing it for later.  That's my optimism speaking.  I was pretty bummed.  I'm over it though. I still have tons of photos to organize and catch up on posting when I get back.  See you all soon!

Como te llamas?

A couple weeks ago we taught Max to answer the questions ´´como te llamas´´ and ´´Que es tu nombre?´´ and he got so that when he wasn´t being shy and he was asked by a stranger he would answer the question without any prompting from us ´´Macsh´´ (that´s how he says it) He still does pretty well but a week ago when we introduced ´´Quantos años tienes?´´  He started to confuse the which questions to answer with ´´dos´´ and which with ´´Max´´.

Anyway, so this morning he was playing with a little boy of 6 or 7 and I told him to ask the boy ´´Como te llamas?´´  And he did, and the boy answered ´´Bello´´ Max was so excited at his new conversation skills that he ran inside and asked us each ´´Como to llamas?´´  To which I replied ´´´Mommy´´ and Ivan replied ´´Daddy´´ and he went back and forth asking us about a dozen times and then he ran outside and very seriously, and intently asked his new friend ´´Como te llamas?´´ about 20 more times.  And the sweet boy just smiled and answered ´´Bello´´ each time he asked.  I thought it was pretty darn cute. :)   

Granada

I can´t believe I didn´t really see this place before. It is lovely and quite charming.  So far we have been really pleased with Nicaragua (besides a couple things I will tough on later) It´s filled with beautiful cathedrals, old buildings and lots of great restaurants and shops. I will have to do a post exclusively about the cemetary, because it is amazing.

This is a chicken tied to a peg in the ally, they were like 6 of them, poor things.

Once you leave the center and head toward the mercado and bus station area, it gets a little crazy. You get a better glimpse of everyday Nica life. Ivan calls it ´the jungle´ because it gets pretty wild.  This is more what I remeber Managua being like. Not for the faint of heart!

EDIT: okay that is not the video I meant to post, I will try to post the real one soon :P

It´s my birthday, I can jump in mud if I want to...

Aside from one dirty mishap, we spent a fabulous day celebrating Max´s second birthday.

It´s hard to tell from the hasty photo I took but he was covered in mud from his knees to his eyebrows.  There was a puddle in the middle of this thrift store we were checking out (many buildings here have sections with open cielings) and he was running around and tripped falling face down right in the puddle. Exasperated, I scooped him up, threw him in the stroller and raced the 2 blocks to our hotel to throw him in the shower before he could touch anything. By the time we got back to the store not even 25 minutes later it was closed, bummer, since we had aleady picked out some stuff we wanted.

But like I said other than that we had a wonderful day.  After breakfast we took the ´microbus´ to La Laguna de Apollo.  I have nostalgic memories of a beautiful restaurant on the shore of crystal clear lake formed inside a crater.  While the hotel restaurant has lost some of the luster and quality of former days, the laguna is still as magical as ever with clear warm water surrounded by lush forest and volcanic rock

Then we headed back to Granada, the lovely city we are staying in (much more about that later) walked around a little, and had previously mentioned mud mishap.  Eventually it was time to stuff ourselves with helado, and let me tell you, the icecream here is GOOD. And like most things in Nicaragua it is also cheap $.50 for a cone of the best coconut icecream you ever tasted (as well as many other tasty flavors) After finishing off 2 sundays with much help from mom and dad, max said ´mas helado´ and we couldn´t argue with that logic so we ordered 2 more cones!

We finished off the night with a horse carriage ride around the town.  Max loved it! He yelled ´caballos!´ the entire time, kept randomly turning to us and saying ´fun!´ with a huge grin on his face, and was very disappointed when we had to say goodbye to his new 4-legged friends.  I don´t know that I´ve seen him enjoy himself qiute so thoroughly.  A perfect ending to a lovely day.

Fun!

Caribbean Surprise

On our way out of San Jose we found this little Caribbean restaurant.

It´s just a couple miles from the airport.

It smelled so good in there I couldn´t wait to try the food.

I ordered the sea food and rice dish I forget what it was called.

The should have called it sea food surprise.

Because it was full of all sorts of surprises.

The biggest being an ENTIRE crab broken into pieces hiding in my rice, SURPRISE! : S

Swimming

I know, another Max blog, I can´t help it.  I was so freaked out when Ivan wanted to let Max learn how to swim with ´muscles´ But turns out Max loves it! He gets scared sometimes and wants to stop but then he wants to get right back in.  He definately does not know how to put his face under water for a second without getting water up his nose, I think you have to teach them that when they´re babies.  But he´ll figure it out soon enough.  It is a little scary though because he doesn´t really realize that he can only float WITH the floaties on.  When they´re off he still tries to jump right in.  He´s a total water baby though, he´d play in the pool or ocean all day if we let him.  He has NO fear of the ocean, unlike mommy.  

Well...

Once again I'm going to have to throw chronology out the window and just bring things to current.  There was the week of touring with Karina and Erik I havent even touched on. We saw a lot of cool stuff, some new places we'd never seen and it was so great being with family especially for Max who adores his tios.  Then the 2 weeks at Tilawa which was quite beautiful, educational and fun, I still have so much to tell about it.  Then a Ana came and spoiled us with a little 4 star goodness.

 

 We went from that to where we are now.

Now we are in Rivas, Nicaragua and it is a whole other world down here. It's my third time here. Es el pais de mi Padre. Es mi gente. Not sure I feel my native roots tugging yet, but we will be here for a couple weeks so we will see.

 
Back to budget traveling, this is how we roll in Nicarague. This is the sweet accomodations $15 a night will buy you ;)

 We happened to arrive on el dia de los niños. Complete with a parade and clowns and baloons, what a welcome!

Blog

Okay yea, this blog, which is supposed to be about living in Costa Rica has lately turned into a Max blog.  Can I help it if I'm obsessed with this kid?  No worries though, have patience and someday I will catch up with Costa Rica posts. Still no computer though : ( so it may be a while.

Abuelita

We are so happy that Grandma Ana is here to visit!

An Ant Story

The ants our here are EVERYWHERE.  There are these teeny tiny ants that just live in your house (or all the ones I've been to anyway) in random places.  You can't leave any food or crubms out anywhere or they will find it. As long as they are not in the food I don't mind them, I just let them be, I usually don't even notice them. 

There is another type, I belive they are called cutter ants and they are crazy.  We saw a trail of them in the park.  They were carrying leaves from this tree clear across the way to their hole.




They carried little pieces of leaf from the branches, down the trunck and accross the grass.

 



They've actually worn (or created) a path all the way from the tree to their hole.



Making friends

Little girls love Max.  I think most little boys are too cool to play with babies or play too rough, but little girls love to help him down the slide or push him in the swing or whatever.  It's cute.  This was at a park in Tilaran.

Hitchhiker thumb

One day we tried to hitchhike to town from Tilawa (unsuccessfully, we ended up taking the bus) and ever since then Max doesn this whenever he sees a truck drive by