Ya’ll ready for Crazy, scary, hilarious moments from Nicaragua? I hope so cuz we seriously had some good ones!!
- Nicole and Bree trying to both sit in the hammock hung in our living room? Pretty sure the rafters were about to collapse.
- Let’s go see a volcano…aka let’s hike for 8 miles in the sunshine until we get to the top. It’s ok… the volcano and view of Nicaragua was well worth it!
- We like afternoon adventures to Catarina to see pretty lagoons and volcano views. We bartered the price of our meal, the price of our motto taxi, and we made it there and back with no spanish speakers. Yeah… bosses!
- O it’s so nice when you randomly find yourself amongst a group of elderly “gringos”. You can finally creep on the conversations around you. Possibly my favorite (said by an old woman lecturing her husband) “Tommm, take the picture. You just gotta push the button, Tommm.”
- Massive maze markets that are basically saunas filled with lots of people yelling at you to buy their stuff. Seriously, I’m glad I made it out alive.
- Sometimes I like to walk into a metal post… and then also a tree less than 30 seconds later. Walking and texting dude… dangerous business.
- Painting lawn gnomes. Talk about artists at heart. Never thought I’d be in Nicaragua, sitting in a small art shop, and painting lawn gnomes to be sold for peoples homes. Check that off the “To Do” list.
- Bree grabs my water bottle from the table and hands it to me with a lecturing look of “Jasmine, I can’t believe you almost left your water bottle in the restaurant”, just as Nicole follows her out of the restaurant grabbing Bree’s water bottle from the table. Major fail, Bree. Major fail.
- Movie night with Eva, Milton, and Nathan sometimes turns out to be shoving your face with popcorn and Nutella and watching Nathan cover everyone’s eyes during “inappropriate” scenes… aka people kissing.
- 3 bags of oreos, creme cookies, and chocolate wafers + one rough food day + 5 girls = EAT LIKE RAVID ANIMALS! 10 minutes later, not a crumb in sight.
- Hey Jim… there’s a fish in my soup.
- While sitting on the floor against the wall during team time, a cute little baby mouse Tokyo drifts the corner, flies through Nicole’s shirt, and scurries into the corner behind the T.V. Nicole and her animal stories. I’m telling ya’ll… they literally happen every single month!
- Sometimes I decide I’m going to run and jump in the lake to find the dock is covered in moss. Yeah, someone shoulda gotten that one on video. Total wipe out!
- Mode of transportation this month… chillin in pink lawn chairs in the back of a pick up truck.
- Logical solution to having no sunglasses… goggles, of course.
- I love when you’re sittin in the living room and all the sudden you see a mouse scaling the wall and jumping through the window. Hardcore parkour.
- Lizards and Nicole. Every month man, every month! This time one decided to fall from the ceiling into her luggage in our room. Of all peoples luggage… of course it was hers 😉 If only the friendly fella had burrowed into her luggage and had little baby lizards, this story would be 10 times better. Sadly he didn’t (maybe another month) 😉
- Back massages, and Pictionary during team time. We know how to do things right around here 😉
- You know you’re living in Nicaragua when you randomly see a huge group of gringos who speak English and your initial reaction is “What are these white people doing here?!”
- Moises, our translator and personal tour guide this month, takes us on all sorts of fun random adventures. Like afternoon outings to random lagoons, Catarina, massive bakeries in Masatepe, Castles in Masaya, pools overlooking volcanoes, and freaken awesome smoothie bars where you have to climb into your chairs that are standing 30 feet in the air. O… and he gets to play the role of Jesus in all our dramas this month. Basically he’s our 6th teammate! He doesn’t know this yet, but we’re taking him to Honduras… and Asia… and Africa. He’s got a lot of languages to start learning.
- Family outing to lake Apollo. Had a blast swimming with Nathan and Milton. AND there was something for me to jump off of… my day was made. I finally saw a monkey… and a baby monkey at that. I’ve been searching for months! O how my heart is happy.
- We finally ventured out after dark!! Grabbed ourselves a motto taxi to the grocery store at 6pm and stacked up on loads and loads of junk food to pig out on. Yeah I know… rebels at heart 😉
- Sometimes you take Isabella and Moises out for dinner and catch a motto taxi home. I know what your thinking “that’s normal,” BUT there’s a twist. Sometimes your squad leader, Brian, while this also being his first motto taxi ride since he came to visit us, asks to drive and that crazy driver let him do it!… In the dark… with crazy Nicaraguan drivers… with 5 other people in it with him… AND without knowing where the breaks where. Quoted from Moises “I was really about to jump out!”
- Family outing numero dos to Grenada! Enjoyed a lovely day swimming in Lake Nicaragua, lunch at some Mexican restaurant in town, and delicious gelato afterwards. I was mainly super pumped about the gelato!! Ice cream is for sure my weakness…
- That moment when you’re at a restaurant and you have to use the restroom. On your way to the restroom you awkwardly find yourself in someones house. I guess the restaurant WAS someones house? Idk, I don’t think it’s normal to have some elderly lady watching her afternoon TV shows with a bunch of family pictures hanging on the walls around her, pointing people in the direction of the bathroom that’s in some mysterious closest in the corner. Definitely slightly confused…
- Another logistics story with Bree. “Let’s just research these bus companies real quick and reserve tickets for November 30th for 38 people. Bree can you translate for me?” *What really happens* Call Tica Bus. Find they only have one bus going from Managua to Tegucigalpa that’s stopping in Leon. Find it only has 33 seats available. Initially we need 38 seats so I call a team and arrange a few things with them. Tell man we’re going to call back in an hour to reserve tickets. Call back an hour later with no answer. Call next morning… man finally answers after 3 tries. Puts Bree on hold about 4 times. Finally when man who can actually help us gets on the line phone runs out of minutes. Try to call with another phone, other phone won’t call. Instead of going to ministry we change plans and have to head into town for internet. Buy more minutes and call bus station back to finish reservations. They then say there’s now only 27 seats available. We now need at least 32. Begin researching other bus companies. No others are traveling to Tegucigalpa on that day, they aren’t in our price range, or there aren’t enough seats. Decide to call Tica bus back and ask if they’d reroute a bus for us. Find that there’s now 38 seats available on the initial bus we asked to be on (idk how that magically happened… PTL). Tell them we want to reserve 32 of those seats. (Side note* I came prepared with a list of full names, passport numbers, and nationalities) They decide they ALSO want passport expiration dates AND birthday or absolutely NO reservation of seats. So I quickly begin texting team leaders and treasurers to get said information from all of our teams who are dispersed throughout all of Nicaragua. After one text, phone stops working. Ooo phone ran out of minutes again. Go to pay for more minutes. Come back and finish texting people. Only get a few teams information before I had to leave for lunch. After lunch I head back thinking this should be easy… “Let’s email them the info, call them back with credit card info, ask a few last minute questions, and be on our way.” False. We get there at 1pm. Call bus station… no answer. Call again. Lady who has no idea what’s going on and who talks really fast answers the phone. She says she’ll talk to us on the internet (idk I guess that means email? How you just gonna hang up the phone on us like that). No response to the email we just sent which included all the information they requested. Call back again and we finally get Alvaro back. He says he’s going to look at the email and call back in 10 minutes. 10 minutes pass and still no call. We call again asking for Alvaro… says he’s not available. So we wait (meanwhile watching ridiculous youtube videos because there’s no longer anything we can do) and about 20 minutes later he finally calls again. Now he needs a copy of my passport, my AIM credit card info, and a declaration stating that I allow him to use this card. Reservations finally kinda made. Only 48098239048203982 exhausting hours later. Lo siento Bree!!
- Sometimes we like to take Moises’ family out for dinner and afterwards smash all 5 teammates into the backseat of a 3 wheeled motto taxi with red strobe lights and some gangster beats playin. Best part is breaking down while struggling to make it up a hill, bottoming out, and finally making it home with permanent imprints on my hip and an extremely numb left leg/butt. Well worth the ride! (Apparently that was also super illegal)
- When you’re traveling to Leon via yellow school bus and your driver decides to have a little road rage with a semi truck while carrying 45 passengers. At one point there were 2 semis passing us at the same time, we almost ran another yellow school bus off the road, and we were traveling at what felt like 90mph. All you could do was sit, close your eyes, and pray that sweet baby Jesus got you there alive.
- Thanksgiving dinner on the World Race looks a little like… meet your entire squad in Leon, overlook the mountains and volcanoes at a beautiful 30 acre ministry site, have the electricity go out so you have a candle lit Thanksgiving dinner with your awesome iSquad family. A Thanksgiving to remember forever.
- Random adventures often look like spontaneously deciding to get your nose pierced with some of your teammates. #worldraceadventures
- One time in Nicaragua we decided to go volcano ash boarding with our squad. I may or may not have flipped head first down a volcano going 70 kph (Yes, they clocked me… that’s 43mph). With a nose ring sticking out of my face that I had just gotten pierced the day before, a possible concussion, and a pinched nerve in my back, I kinda successfully checked CNN’s #2 thrill seeking adventure off the bucket list… Nbd! And I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Let’s be real, who else can say they went sledding down a volcano at speeds a vehicle would go on the road?
This month was literally an incredible month of spiritual growth, unexpected challenges, adventurous off days, and intentional relationship building. All things I was desperately needing.Here’s a short highlight video of our month in Nicaragua… hope ya’ll enjoy!! (P.s. my apologies for the weird quality of it right now… I’m still workin on that).
Until next month,
Jazy J
