Gringa en Nica: I Love a Parade!

What a busy week I’ve had! Hence none of you received return emails from me for some time and there has been no new blog post! On top of that, yesterday when I tried to get on my email at the Somoto Oratorio the new internet monitoring system had gone into effect. To give you all an idea, one might compare this “system” to being just as bad as Communist China! I couldn’t get into Gmail at all and then when our computer guy Julian came he set my computer so I could get on it, but after that I had to enter a username and password about 5 times for every click I made! Ohhhhh, needless to say Katie was not in the mood to deal with that. After scolding Julian for putting this entire system in effect, and him telling me it was the higher up’s fault, we came to an agreement that he needed to fix it ASAP so everyone could actually use the internet effectively. Like I told him, we don’t live in China and the people on the street will probably not steal free Wi-fi…why? Because no one in the 1 mile radius could even afford a computer, let alone a wireless card. Hopefully the situation will be taken care of in the very near future.

Next week we should be moving houses! The current house has been leaking rain water into the rooms and it just hasn’t been the most fun to leave my fan on all day to dry out the back wall of my room. It could be worst, but it is definitely getting better! We’re even getting a maid for the new house! Not even my idea, our Administrator’s idea. I get a much bigger room and we have a good space outside to put some chairs out or hang a hammock to relax. It’s 2 blocks away from our current place, which makes it 3 blocks away from the Oratorio. If only the Instituto was closer! The public school is still about a 20 min. walk or a 5 min. taxi ride away. Most times I just take a taxi so I’m not all sweaty when I arrive to class. A taxi costs C$8.00 cordobas, about 40 cents…I can afford that two days a week to just at least get there on time and sweat-free. So yay for a new place that nicer and cleaner! I will sure miss our neighbor’s dogs and cat though, they are just really cute and the big dog (who is too big to fit through the bars) is really soft. I miss having an animal around sometimes.

So, for the story behind the title today before I talk about the regional competition, I actually think this story is more fun. Last weekend we celebrated Callie’s birthday on Friday and Saturday up in Cusmapa. She requested that we cook a grand feast both nights, so of course we did. We all love to cook in Cusmapa because there is a real oven there and a nice gas cooktop to go along with it. Two weekends ago we were looking through the cookbook and we came across Chicken Pot Pie…ohhhhh ho ho….yummy goodness! We all agreed the last Pot Pie we ate probably came out of a freezer with the name Stoffers or Marie Calenders on the box. It sounded so yummy that we decided to make homemade CPP. I was in charge of the filling and Mike was in charge of the pie crust. I have yet to match Mike’s bread/cookie/crust making, he is quite good! We had a can of green peas, a couple carrots, celery, onions, and garlic to mix with a cream of mushroom and a chicken stock soup. With the help of various spices and some flour to thicken it up, it became a creamy filling bubbling away on the stove. I cooked the 2 lb. chicken breast separately on the fry pan to make it all juicy and then Mike and I forked the chicken in the partially baked crust on the bottom, then we poured the filling over the chicken and mixed it up a bit. Mike then added the final touch by placing the cover crust on top to make our Cusmapa CPP. Surprisingly the margarine here makes a great substitute for Crisco and makes amazingly good crust! So that was Feast Night #1.

Hanna enjoys her veggie pot pie, made especially for her!

Homemade chicken and veggie pot pies!

The second night, after Mike had made us fresh bagels with a pesto sauce for lunch, I made veggie lasagna per Callie’s request. Turns out, if you take cuajada (the sometimes nasty, very salty cheese here) and mix it with some sour cream (or crema acida) it takes a ricotta-type texture. We also had some mozzarella brought in from the city, but you can’t have lasagna without the ricotta. I made the tomato sauce from scratch and I baked some eggplant in the oven so it could be added in as another layer. As you can see from the photo my lasagna turned out pretty amazing if I must say! We ate that entire thing, plus another one even bigger than the one I am holding…between 8 of us we had probably 3 servings a piece. Eat your heart out Peace Corps! Who would have known I’d be eating so well here right?

The 1/4 Italian in me finally comes out with the creation of a homemade lasanga!

Oh yeah, the parade part! Usually the Callie and Lauren try to do something special for the kids on their birthdays, for example we made a piñata for Lauren’s birthday in August so the kids had something fun to do. This time for Callie’s birthday she decided that a parade would be a lot more fun than a piñata…and less drama to say the least. The girls have done 2 parades before with the kids and they love it! This time we had over 60 kids in the backyard getting their faces painted and making instruments to bang around during the “marcha”. I painted a couple kids faces and took lots of pictures. Did I mention the kids LOVE having their pictures taken, way more than any other kids I’ve met before! I even bit the bullet and let them paint my face, course that meant I had about 10 different artists working on me…it didn’t turn out too bad. The little boys liked how I painted one kid like a clown, so then the rest of them wanted to be clowns. After an hour of getting the kids ready, Mike gave out the signs we made to a horde that reminded me of Children of the Corn and off we went around the town of Cusmapa with 60 kids. The boys became the band and marched in front beating a tune with sticks on their plastic bottles and I was surprised they could keep the beat with each other. We would yell out “Viva Cusmapa”, “Arriba Callie”, “Arriba los niños del mundo” (“Go Kids of the World”) and everyone would chant back “Viva” or “Arriba”. All of Cusmapa came out of their houses to see the parade of children, some who walked 45 minutes to an hour just to participate! We paraded around for 20 minutes and sang the Nica version of “Happy Birthday” to a little boy whose birthday was the same day. Then we proceeded back to the house where the noise continued and we were definitely exhausted and ready for a 3pm nap! After another song and more photos we slowly got the kids to leave…that’s the hardest part, getting them to go home! The kids who are always at the house thought they were excluded from this rule, but alas they were subjected to the child-herding as well. Finally we got them all out of the backyard and 15 minutes later it started to rain. What timing we had! It actually had been raining all week and then for the parade the sun decided to peak through the clouds for those couple hours we had. I love it when luck smiles down upon those moments when you need it. It was great fun for all of us and the kids had such a great time, hell they didn’t want to leave so of course they had a good time.

A festive artistic creation by Mike...the Cusmapa artist in residence

Mike doesn't like paint on his face, he barely let the kids put a mushtache on...or whatever it is

Me painting one of the clowns

Lauren paints Tony's face...I have at least 10 pictures of him! He always wants his photo taken and he's definately a favorite kid at the Cusmapa house.

Hanna rocks a real woman's mustache!