Saturday, April 18, 2009

Life Continues.....




Sorry today has to be short. Gary & Nikki are waiting for me to head off from the cafe. Not having the internet at the Villa is tough! The Spanish family arrived last night for a visit. We'd given up on them. They said they were going to come at 6.....they arrived at 7. Guess we have to get used to Nicaragua time :) We had a lovely time and they provided us with a great deal of insight into the area and the Nicaragua culture.
Gary made contact with a local missionary couple yesterday.....and the next thing we knew, he was scheduled to give the talk on Sunday in the English Hall! We look forward to making that solid contact with the Brothers. It’s interesting, it is SO hot here but no air in the hall, so instead of the second congregation meeting in the afternoon, when it is hottest, they meet on Saturday morning at 10. Makes sense.
We made our first trip to the bank today. That was an adventure that we weren’t prepared for, starting with the security guard at the front door with a machine gun who stopped us and used metal detector wand on Gary to check for a gun (I must have looked safer as he just grinned and waved me through!) Inside were other guards....and the line up was horrendous. What were presumably rich Nicaraguan kept coming in and jumping to the front of the cue! We waited for at least half an hour and when we finally made it to the front of the time, were told that to change money into local currency we needed our passports!!! Drat! The teller eventually took pity on us when we protested and changed it with our Driver Licences. Thanks goodness! On the way out we chatted (in Spanish I am proud to say) with a street money changer. We will use him next time as it seems quite alright and no line up. The books all say it is safe to do so.
And before I forget, as we were leaving the bank we meet up with ANOTHER set of witnesses who were in doing some banking for the local congregation. One of them was a brother from Florida who has been living here for 7 years (just had a baby 25 days ago...well his wife did but he took the credit :D) who speaks English...hooray! He offered to help us in any way he can to. I think he is going to pop around to the villa with his wife some time soon. It’s so hard to give directions to him as there are no street numbers and barely any names!!
Anyway, this was supposed to be short. Must be off! We had moments of homesickness the last couple of days, everything here takes so much longer to do and you question yourself all the time. No food related illness yet, so we must be doing something right. I think it will grow on us!
Love to all!!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Jo,

I just got a tip from a Nicaraguan living here in Dalton. (We met him in Price Rite, Lauren was conversing with him in "Spanish." He said: to play a joke on the guards at the bank, have Gary go in with his first two fingers on his right hand over his chest inside his jacket, or shirt, since it is hot there. The outcome will be really funny!

Julie

Let me know how it turns out.

Brooks' family said...

Yeah, we'll get right on that.....Thanks!!

Hugs

P.S.Tell Lauren we've tried her Spanish down here and for some reason people don't seem to understand us :)