Everything Feels Different Here…
My cooking squad.
August 25, 2024
My hope was that life would be different here in Nicaragua. I openly acknowledged that I wasn’t exactly sure how, just different. It’s not that I was unhappy before we left. I just had that itch for change. It was a feeling that needed more than a fresh outfit or a new workout routine. The good news is, there is little here that feels the same, so I got JUST what I was looking for!
Here is a glimpse into a few things that are different down here:
1. I have never before seen my husband chase frogs, in the dark, wielding tongs, wearing nothing but his underwear and a headlamp.
2. Trace is meditating with me. Sometimes. Sometimes he just sits with me and softly touches me to trick me into thinking something is crawling on me while I meditate. Either way, this doesn’t happen in Fort Collins.
3. There are 9 cans of scorpion killer in the maintenance shed here, which is weird because we haven’t seen that many scorpions….wait a second…
4. I have a goal of spending 120 days in the water learning to swim while I’m here. This goal seems reasonable out of the roughly 145 days that we’ll be living with a pool in our front yard, except that I just set the goal 3 days ago when there were only 133 days left and some of those will be spent traveling to exotic places. It’s not that I would drown before arriving, but then again, I might have if I had been asked to swim the full length of the pool more than twice (ok, fine, once). I now own and regularly wear a swim cap and goggles and genuinely enjoy being in the water. Even better, Dave and Trace have joyfully accepted the challenge to teach me how to swim a proper freestyle stroke. What could be better than that you wonder? How about an opportunity for Dave to tell me what to do and what I’m doing wrong without me getting upset at him. #winwin.
5. We now watch TV at dinner. To some this may sound like a backslide, but it’s been really great. Two or three of us usually cook dinner together, then we sit and do our breathing and Gratitudes, etc and then we hit “play” on season 9 of Alone- a show about surviving alone in the wilderness. All 3 of us are super hooked on it and actually learning some cool stuff. And the best part is that no matter how lackluster our dinner is that night, we are always eating better than the people on the show so no one dares complain! Woot Woot!!
6. Salad spinners don’t exist here. I don’t quite know why I haven’t been able to move past this. But of all the modern conveniences I have given up by moving here, this one seems to be the hardest for me to move past.
7. We have 2 people attending to our household needs 6 days a week. I thought I would not enjoy having people in my space so much, but thankfully, Juan and Yomar are lovely, know the property inside and out (literally) and are available to assist with whatever we need. As it turns out having someone clean my house daily and wash and fold my laundry every 4 days is a hardship I am able to endure.
8. Everything is bigger here. I’m convinced if I grew up here, I’d be a few inches taller. You should see the size of some of these centipedes, moths and bumble bees. The only place where this hasn’t proven true is with the bananas. This seems maladaptive to me, but the bananas are much smaller. Thank goodness they’re still delicious.
9. We now have a secret family handshake, complete with sound effects.
10. There is such a thing as too much togetherness. I love these boys. I have chosen to spend my life with them for a reason. And, distance does, in fact, make the heart grow fonder from time to time. Where I once felt like time was slipping away and we had so many things planned and pulling at us that there never seemed to be enough uninterrupted time together, we are now very well caught up on any deficiency we had been facing prior to our departure. But really, we are genuinely enjoying each other’s company most of the time and I know, as activities pick up, we will look back on these days together with fondness.
11. Our house was nearly broken into the other night. Don’t worry. We are fine. It turned out to be 2 of the farm owner’s dogs who have a reputation of high school kids out for looking for trouble at night. All of the dogs and cats here know how to open the sliding doors by slowly and loudly jostling them enough until a small gap forms. Then they skillfully stick a paw through and then a nose and then bam! They’re in! These two bandits were likely looking for food or cats, which to them are probably the same thing. In any case, we are safe and sound.
12. I have washed a cat. Actually, I tried to prevent the cat from getting a bath, but as he has taken to entering Trace’s room at night to chew on Trace’s hair and snuggle with his face, Trace really felt like a bath was in order for this wild kitten. I suggested maybe preventing the cat from entering, but I was laughed out of the room. The love is real, folks. So, I did what a good mom does and I documented the cat bath. Poor guy. Fortunately, he didn’t seem much worse for the wear, and he no longer smells like last night’s frog hunt. (Update: He stinks again. I’m shocked!)
13. We don’t have a dish washer. We’ll, actually we have 3 dishwashers. At first I thought this would be a huge inconvenience. But it’s been a call to higher responsibility for Trace and a genuinely enjoyable way for us all to spend time together after dinner.
14. I am not as clean as I thought I was. You probably aren’t either. The only way I know this, is that if we don’t clean something 110%, the quality control ants march in by morning to clean up whatever scents or residue we left behind. You can rest assured, we will be excellent dish washers before this is all over.
15. They speak Spanish here. We don’t. At least not well, YET! And people are so good natured about the attempts we make to speak to them, which I appreciate. I am learning a lot of Spanish. Much of that is thanks to our housekeeper Yomar, who I speak to daily, sometimes on my own and sometimes through google translate or charades. She’s very patient and we have a lot of good laughs- like when I tell her and her husband they can borrow our “camiseta” (shirt) if they need it, when I was trying to offer them our “camioneta” (truck). I think I’ve learned a semester’s worth of Spanish in 2 weeks and we are starting Spanish lessons as well which is incredibly helpful.
16. There is a bird here that upon first hearing it, we literally thought aliens were sending us messages. Turns out, that is the actual call of a bird that pays us frequent visits. If it is trying to send us messages, we haven’t figured them out yet, but maybe you can. It’s called the Montezuma Oropendola and it’s call sounds like very electronic radio static. Track it down if you can. It’s other worldly.
17. I am glowing. It could be sweat, or it could be elation. It’s likely both. There is something about this place that has quickly captured my heart and the hearts of Dave and Trace. Life is simple here. We spend more time at home than quite possibly ever before. We are slower. We play more together with fewer disruptions. We laugh together a lot. We explore. We are freer here than we’ve ever been.
18. The temp is a pretty consistent 80 something. Which, incidentally, is the absolute perfect temperature to want to get in the pool or the ocean or the shower and also the very perfect temperature to await you when you get out without that post swim shiver. It’s lovely just about all the time- save maybe when walking through town with armloads of groceries and dripping in sweat, or if you want to cuddle, but hey, you can’t have it all.
I coud go on and on, but I'll spare you. A friend sent a meme from the office the other day that said, “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.” There is no way to know for sure, but if I had to guess, I think we’ll look back on this time as “the good old days.”