My Palace

Well things are looking up. I finally moved out of my host family's house into my own little apartment in the center of town.  It's going to be great having my own place and also not having to walk so far all the time. Now I'm only a little way down the road from the soccer field, community center and school. The bus also passes right in front of my house which is a huge plus. Its going to feel great having some privacy, cooking for myself and being able to come and go as I please without constantly being judged and scrutinize by my host family. Basically, I'm gonna finally feel like a big boy again. 

The place is nothing fancy.  The left hand side of the building used to be the little town store, which is now closed up. The right hand side is my little two room apartment.  My neighbor, the single 30 year old former store owner is my land lord. I am paying a little less than $60 a month which isn't a lot but is a significant amount when you consider that I only get about $350 a month from the Peace Corps. 

Here are some pictures I took.  Hopefully they will give you a good idea what it's like. It looks kind of empty I think but that's because I don't really own that much stuff.  Anyways, enjoy.

This is what my house looks like from the road.

My house from the back. My neighbor/landlord's house on the left, mine on the right. I only live in the closest half of the building the farther half used to be the town store but now it's closed. The wooden thing sticking out of the side of the house is where the sink is.

Where I do my cooking

My front door, which interestingly enough also doubles as the bathroom door when it's open.
My bathroom. The shower is behind the toilet.

My little refrigerator. The bedroom is through the doorway to the right. and the bathroom is directly to the left.

The view of the kitchen standing by the refrigerator.

The beds...from standing in front of the desk.

My desk and clothes shelf...from standing between the beds.

This is the view from my front window. Basically just the main road that runs through my town. Now I only have to walk about 5 steps to get the bus instead of 30 minutes up a steep hill. 

This is the view from my doorway. You can see the school, community center, and soccer field about 300 meters down the road 

More Pictures

A Costa Rican traffic jam. 
A guy selling pottery on the beach

Grammy with a cocktail 
Me waiting for the bus. 
The supermarket I do most of my shopping at. 

Me dreaming

Pollo Campero....my favorite Nicaraguan fastfood restaurant.

Me not getting any mail

The fancy wiring job at the local market. 

Visit from home.

Here are some new pictures, most are from when my grandmother and dad came to visit. Enjoy.



Sailboating

The inside of the sailboat.... what you see here plus 3 bedrooms, bathroom, and control station. Pretty impressive

Scuba diving off Coco Beach


My dad getting a quick pep talk.

Going on an all day horse riding adventure with Alejandro

The old church in Nicoya. It was built in the 1500s by spanish settlers... making it the oldest building on this side of the country.

Some more sugar related photos.

The big male howler monkey that tried to pee on my dad.

Walking around my town

Coffee beans drying

Me picking oranges

This is how most people get aound my town. Walking up and down steep little dirt trails.

A typical little diner in Santa Cruz where we just had lunch.

A normal bus ride...stannding room only.

Martín pealing rice the old-fasion way

Alejandro and is team of oxen ready to work.

Bringing the oxen to the sugar cane field.

Cutting sugar cane.
Loading the oxcart

unloading the cane. this is the machine that squeezes the juice out. The oxen are attached to one end of the wooden beam and walk in circles for hours while the cane is fed through the machine and the juice draines out into a big plastic bucket.

Boiling down the cain juice in a cauldron held in place by dry mud and rocks

Cleaning up from a morning of juice making. You can see the it boiling in the background.

My friend Matt who lives by the beach is friends with a really nice german woman named Erica who owns a horse riding tour company directly on Junquillal Beach. She generously invited us over for dinner and to go riding last week.

Notice how dry and brown everything is this time of year. A lot of the trees have even lose their leaves due to a lack of water.

Me trying to look like a cowboy.

Matt and Erica staging some photos in a mangrove swamp.

Matt and Erica running down the beach.

Sunset on the beach.

This was a little tornado traveling right down the main road in my town. It started out a lot bigger but by the time I got my camera out it had pretty much gone away. I think the horse was getting ready to run if it got any closer.