Guess Who's Back? Back Again...

Que pasa,
Welp, not a faithful blogger. Sorry about that. I got a little discouraged about blogging when my camera got stolen, it's just not as fun to blog when I don't have any pictures to post.
Things down here are so much different than the last time I posted on this. I have boughten a motorcycle, which is great for getting around. Don't know how I ever could have not had one before. It is definitely one of the best purchases I have ever made. It's a ton of fun to ride and gets very good gas mileage. Since it is my only mode of transportation I drive it everywhere. Especially now that the rainy season has passed.
School is going well, we are three weeks away from ending the first semester. I am busy getting finals ready to go, it'll be nice to have those made; 0ne more thing to cross off the checklist. I am not looking forward to grading them, but that is all part of the experience.
Life in general is going pretty well for me down here. I am having a great time with my roommates; Bob, Mike, and Chris. We hang out at the house, play soccer, go to the beach, or go out to eat. All of which are fun and, of course, we have a good time just joking around.
A couple weeks ago was the anniversary of Leslie's plane crash. Don't have too much to say about that, but to my family, I love you and am praying daily for you.
I am looking forward to coming home for Christmas. Especially looking forward to seeing how much the little squeeker grown over the last few months. I am sure that she is quite the little person now!
This past weekend for Thanksgiving I ate bunch of different meals at many different friends houses. It was nice to really take a break and think about all that I do have to be thankful for. God has blessed my life with so many things; His grace and mercy cover me daily for which I cannot be thankful enough.
Hope that you all are doing well. God Bless!
j

A New Year

Well for the 6.2 people that read this thing, it's been too long since I have put a post up. There is too much info to cover, so much has happened over the last 3 months. So I'll give the brief recap. This summer the first week I went to Corn Island here is Nicaland, it is a beautiful island in the Carribean. Next I went home for a couple of weeks, went to WY to work for my uncle and cousin, went to Lake of the Ozarks, went to Chi-town and saw a couple Cubs games, came home for a week and took off back for Managua. I had it pretty rough this summer.

So now I'm back to teaching, we're in our third week already. Things are much easier this second time around. I have been working my butt off though trying to add meat to the math ciriculum that I used last year. It has been a lot of late days at school but it really is helping the students learn much better.

I moved out the apartment I was in last year and am now living with a couple other missionary guys, Bob and Mike. Mike is from Ohio and started a vocational school down here teaching Nicaraguans the art of blacksmithing. Bob was actually at Calvin the same time I was, we had hung out like twice but it has been getting to know him better since I have come back.

The power situation down here is freaking ridiculous. I think it has not gone off once since I returned at the end of July. It goes out everyday for about 5 hours, in the evening of course so it's pitch black in my place. Leaves me a lot of time to just sit there and think. Thank goodness I have a laptop with battery backup; otherwise I would be insane right now. Even though, the power has been driving me nuts, it's taught me how merciful our Lord is that he gives us the energy that we so often take for granted. He says that He will take care of all our needs and how true that is. I may not have power but I've been blessed with so many other things.

I am planning on buying a motorcycle within the next few weeks. Since I have been back I have driving a friends car who is in the states, but he comes back on Sept 12 so I'll have to buy my bike before then. I can't wait to spend some time just taking that cruising.

New posts will be more frequent from this point on, sorry about the long delay.

Paz,

j

Attached is a photo I took on the plane ride home this summer. It's just a beautiful sunset, reminds me how beautiful the Lord created his earth.

A pic of me and my lil sis Britter

Random Info...winding down

So I've been slackin off on getting this lastest blog entry in, but that's mostly cause there is not much to tell. Pretty much been staying busy working and ready for the year to end. One more full week left and then three days of finals. Been playing a lot of basketball, a little bit of soccer, some frisbee, but mostly just been workin.

Couple weeks ago I was playing basketball with some Nicas, went up for a rebound got my legs swept out from under me and landed on my back. So that layed me up for a couple days, although I couldn't keep myself off the court so I just kept playing; probably not the best idea.

Took a couple pics of some students in one of my classes I'll put below, one of them is Gerson who is one of the guys I wrote about in my last blog, he's the one with the big smile. The rest is just some random pics that I tried to take without the students noticing but that didn't work very well, they of course are trying to hide from the camera, so I just put the couple decent ones that I had below. I'll definitely get more before the summer to show you.

This past week was supposed to be my sister and brother-in-law's anniversary, so that was a rough couple days. Usually doin alright, but spent a couple days bummin' around thinking about it.

So...sorry to say, that's about it. Looking forward to seeing many of you in a few weeks. I pray that you all are doing well and enjoying the spring weather back home, or where ever you may be. Hopefully shooting a couple rounds of golf, which I am looking forward to, or just kickin it with your friends. See y'all soon.

j

Making Progress

Well one more week of school gone by, I've got to say that I am ready for the school year to be over. I don't want to say that I haven't been enjoying teaching this year, it's just been a challenge and I am ready for a break. This has been a long school year, I've definitely been through quite a bit and I am ready to "relax," although I won't really be relaxing this summer. Maybe relax my brain is a better way to say it. This past week was a pretty routine week, classes went well and students are just as ready for the summer too.
Two of my students, brothers, have been talking to me about a youth group that they run every Sunday afternoon; this past Sunday I went to check it out. Their father is the pastor at a church and they run the youth group. They hang out with some kids from the neighborhood, play games, sports, and break dance. This was really cool, I went down there and they just chilled, did some break dancing and just chatted with the kids. It was a real low key way to witness to the neighborhood kids, they weren't pushy they just shared the love of God. I was very impressed with these two guys. Their names are Gerson and Denis. Gerson is a sophmore and is in my Algebra II class, Denis is a junior and is in my PreCalc class. Gerson is a good break dancer and he was hanging out 'battling' with the guys, and Denis just chills and chit-chats with those who don't dance. Afterwords they take the guys to a Sunday night youth service at their church. It's a tight way to reach kids that probably wouldn't have been reached. So if you think about it, you could pray for those two guys and the ministry that they are doing down here.

On a different note, progress reports are due today. Which means that there is light at the end of the tunnel. We are halfway through the fourth quarter, with only 5 weeks left. I have a friend, Josh, coming down here in June to hang out with for a few days before I head back to the states for the summer. Gives me an event to look forward to. That's about it for the week. I hope each of you is doing well and I thank God for all your prayers.
j

'nother week

This is just going to be a pretty brief entry, there is not much new to report. Last week Thursday through Saturday I was a chaperon on the senior class trip. We went to Montelimar, there is a beach resort there called Barcelo which is a pretty nice place. It has a sweet beach and a nice pool, some mini-golf, tennis courts, clubs, casino, and a ton of food. I was worried going into the trip that I was going to have to bust some seniors for drinking, smoking, gambling, or trying to sneak out and hook-up but everyone was well behaved. We got there on Thursday afternoon, checked in and I played a round of mini golf with some of the seniors and a couple other chaperons. Then we ate and went swimming in the pool for pretty much the rest of the afternoon. Went to a huge dinner and then had devotions for the evening. By this time it was about 8, and I went back to the room to rest a little before we headed out for the night. These senior love to dance (we of course had a talk with them about appropriate behavior before we left) and we went to the dance club around 11. I gotta tell you, being on the responsible end of a trip is a lot more work than being on the partying end. I was playing dad all night, the students were fine but there are men anywhere from teens to 50's that I had to keep an eye on, didn't want them to try anything. Wasn't too eventful thankfully. Friday was more of the same, just chillin around the pool or beach and eating. Then Saturday night we went to the dance club again, they got me and the other chaperons out on the floor for a couple dances and I shook my moneymaker. They got a kick out of it, and I had a good time so it was pretty fun. We left on Saturday at about 2, all in all a pretty fun trip.

Once I got back I had about 15 minutes to get ready for my soccer game, we we played down 8 to 11. We got slaughtered. I had to play goalie for a half and that is not fun, we were eliminated from the tourney after that game. I'm not too depressed, the season was starting to wear on me...it's been going on since September.

I've been playing basketball with some teachers from another school and US Marines from the embassy on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so that has been quite a bit of fun.

Like I said not a ton to report this time, hopefully I'll have more for you next time. I'll put a couple more pics from the hike just to keep it looking nice, peace.

j

Volcan Masaya

Well my roommate Jake is leaving on Wednesday, leaving the place to myself for the last few months of this school year; so we decided to go on a night tour of Volcan Masaya. Jake had not been to Volcan Masaya and really wanted to do the famous night tour before he left. We went on Saturday night, it's about 40 minutes from my apartment, and it was well worth the drive. This is the best guided tour I have ever been on. We got there at about 4:45 and met up with our guide on the top of the mountain at about 5. Our guide Carlos was a great story teller and very knowledgeable about the mountain.

Volcan Masaya is what the native used to refer to as the mouth of hell. Which is easy to see why they would think that, as you can see on some of the pictures. To keep the evil spirits at bay they used to sacrifice some men and children, but their favorite sacrifice was young virgins. They would prepare them, not really sure what that consisted of, but then they would drink their blood before they would throw them into the volcano. Pretty interesting history.

I'm not sure when the catholics came and blessed the mountain and "Christianized" it, but at some point they did (that part got lost in translation), they made a huge monument on the top of the mountain; a giant cross. So...that was the brief history behind the mountain.

Anyway...we looked down into the mountain and all we could see was smoke rising. You could really smell the sulfur, it was almost too much. We went to the cross monument took a couple pictures and then we hopped into the micro bus and went down to the bat caves. By this time it was dark. Oh and the sunsets there are b-e-a-u-tiful Clark, the gases set off the sunlight. Awesome.

The bat caves are sweet, they continue to descend into the earth for a number of kilometers, and there are bats everywhere. They fly around you, but rarely bump into you as they have a great sonar sense that keeps them from flying into other objects. It was pretty cool.

After the bat caves we went to a different vantage point of the volcano, and they gave us some gas masks because you can damage your lungs or pass out from the fumes coming out of the crater. You could literally see the lava flowing in the volcano, one of the coolest things I have ever seen. I could see why the natives thought

that it was the mouth of hell. It was amazing.

So Jake is leaving on Wednesday, I'll miss hanging out with him, but

it was good while it lasted, but life goes on. Hope you like the pics, I still have some more to steal from other people, I'll post those when I get them.

peace,

j

Semana Santa

Just got back from Costa Rica on Thursday. We had a full week off for Semana Santa, also known as Holy Week. Myself and 8 other teachers headed down to Costa Rica for a 6 day, 5 night trip to Monte Verde. Monte Verde is a mountain (monte) lush with rain forest, technically a cloud forest which I still need to find out what the difference between the two is. Anyway, we arrived on Saturday evening after an 11 hour ride in the microbus, well actually not all in the microbus, some of it was spent at the border in lines waiting for passport stamps and van certification, but most of it was in the van. The last 2 hours of which was spent on a 35 km trek up the rocky mountain road, it takes that long to get up the mountain (they said it couldn't be done in less than 3, but if you know me that was just a challenge). Awwright! Anyway, so we made it up and spent the night just getting acclimated to actually being in a climate where jackets are needed, which was a welcome respit from blazing Managua. The next day we went on a hike up the mountain, which I thought would be easy; however, that was not the case. By the time I got to the top my calves felt like they were split down the middle, but the view was beautiful. That afternoon we just took some naps, and then we thought maybe another small hike and then we went out for dinner; so we just spent the first day on hikes and eating. The next few days we much more of the same, lots of hikes and lots of eating. We went on some canopy tours and went ATVing one afternoon. Saw some of the tourist stuff, but the best part of the trip was a night tour through the forest, where we saw some sloths, poisonous vipers, terantulas as big as footballs (no joke), scorpions, and lost of various birds and mammals. All in all it was a pretty sweet trip and pretty affordable. I would recomend it to anyone that has a chance to go. Alright, as this is my maiden blog voyage, and I'm tired I'm gonna leave it at that for now, but might edit it later-if you can do that. peace.

j