Body Movin'

What up party people,
Hey, it's been a few days. Well let me update you on the last post about flag football. Turns out that gringo's tend to be better at American football than Nicaraguans. Shocker! Anyway we have had 6 games or so and we have won all of them. Of course now that I say that we will lose tonight. Pride cometh before the fall. We had a game a couple weeks ago and I was trying to catch a tipped pass and dislocated my pinkie finger. It was nasty looking, the top half of the finger slid on top of the bottom half of the finger.
This week our landlord has finally decided to repair the roof on our house. I don't know if many of you know this or not, but last rainy season whenever it would rain heavily, my bedroom would get flooded. It would drip water all over my bed and my floor. Not fun.
Anyway, after many months of trying to get the landlord to repair the roof. He waits until the next rainy season is almost upon us to repair the roof. Smart. The good news is that he is finally getting around to it. The bad news is that, for this week, I moved my into Bob and Robbie's room. In their room they already have a queen size bed, a twin bed, and now my single. Needless to say there isn't any room for walking around. I had to move out of my room because there isn't a roof over my room and all kinds of crap that has been in our roof, for who knows how long, is falling all over my bedroom. Oh, and by the way, our 'attic' has been home to hundreds of bats, rats, and iguanas over the years. Lots of fun stuff in our attic.
This week is just a regular school week. Only 5 and 1/2 more weeks left of school, not that I am counting down.
Sorry, not too much to report this week. Talk to you soon.
j

Standard Week

Hola,

This week there is not too much to report. We had Standardized Testing this week at school, which was cool to be on the other side of. I always hated Standardized Tests when I was in school, but being on the other side of it I actually enjoyed it. It was a really easy week, I didn't really have to prepare too much for classes, so I don't really mind the tests.

My roommates and I have joined a flag-football league here in Managua, our team name is Los Bigotones aka...The Mustaches. Our team symbol is the hair and mustache of none other than...Magnum PI, Tom Selleck. That's right Mr. 80's sex symbol himself has returned to a Nicaraguan Flag Football Team. We played our first game this past Tuesday night and we won something like 51-8, I believe. Granted it was against probably the worst team in the league, but it was still pretty fun. We have another game tonight.

It's time for me to give a shout out to a special lady in my life that is having a birthday tomorrow. Happy Birthday Ellie! The day has finally come! No more of this "I be 3," you made it. Now it's "I be 4." Hope your birthday is full of love and fun.
Not too much else. Hope you all have a great weekend!
j

Surfin

This past week the waves have been huge!! My roommates and I have had quite a few chances to head out to the beach on the weekends. Bob and Chris, two of my roommates, and myself have been going out and having a good time together in the ocean. Here are just a few pics of us.

Pic 1: Me

Pic 2: Bob

Pic 3: Chris

Pic 4: Myself paddling into the sunset

Pic 5: uh...

nos vemos,

j

Semana Santa II

Hello,

Semana Santa passed about two weeks ago. My friend Eric Krauss came down for 10 days to visit. I hadn't seen Eric in 4 years, so it was really good to hang out with him again. Eric was a friend and roommate of mine in college. We had a lot of fun together joking and had some great conversations.

Eric came the week before Semana Santa. He spent a few days working, hanging out, and coming to school. We went on a short motorcycle trip to Volcan Mombacho with Joel and Lora Kleinsasser and some of their friends that came down to visit them.

The next day my roommates, Eric, some other friends, and myself all left for Costa Rica. My roommate Robbie lives half the time in Costa Rica and half the time in Managua. We stayed at Robbie's family cabin in the mountains just outside San Jose. It was cold up in the mountains, we were wearing jackets and started a fire every night. The view down on the city was beautiful.

We also did a lot of hiking and trail walking, as you can see from the pic above of Eric in the forest. We stayed up in the mountains until Tuesday evening.

Wednesday morning Eric left to head back to the states. The rest of us went white water rafting. It was a lot of fun. We split up into two rafts and went down the river for six hours or so. Thursday we headed up to Arenal, which is a volcano in Costa Rica where there is also a beautiful lake. The volcano is one of the most active in the world, at night we could see the lava running down the side.

Friday we went to some hot springs. They were OK, a little bit too touristy but they were still alright. Saturday we went horseback riding and canopy touring. We had quite a bit of fun. Horseback riding was a blast! Because we are in Central America they actually let you ride the horses instead of just trotting along. Saturday afternoon we headed back to Managua on our eight hour trek.

It

was a fun Semana Santa and definitely a needed vacation from school. Now we are up to the 4th quarter and I feel a little bit more mentally ready to tackle the last 9 weeks of school.

Nos vemos,

j