Lo Que No Mata, Engorda: Nicaragua

I’m back in Leon after an awesome weekend in Masatepe!

I absolutely love being in Masatepe. My host family there is so great + the town feeling is peaceful. However, I must admit after being in the scorching hot temperatures of Leon for 1 month, I was cold! I felt like such a wuss. I’m going to freeze when I go back to Ohio.

So, I went to Masatepe to spend Christmas with my old host family. I arrived on Fri., Dec. 24th which was just in time since most celebration occurs that night. We spent most of the day wrapping presents, shopping, and preparing food. We had a big dinner around 10:20pm with all of the family. Then went to my host cousin’s new house (they’re building a restaurant around the corner from where I used to live) to hang out, listen to Christmas music, and let the kids open some of their Christmas gifts. Then at 11:50pm we returned home, got our gifts ready and at exactly midnight (just about) we all opened our gifts! I guess that’s the tradition that you wait until midnight of the 24th to open gifts.  It didn’t take very long though because everyone opened gifts at once.

Yasari loved the princess shirt I bought her + Denzel liked his Mario Bros. coloring book, stickers, and crayons. The kids were happy.

My host mom also liked her homebaked cookies (white chocolate chip!) and my host dad liked his chile… so an overall success! My mom even asked me for the recipe saying “estan muy ricos!” It was nice to give her one of my recipes… since she gave me so many Nicaraguan recipes when I lived there.

After presents, we hung out chatting until 1:30am when we were so tired we decided to head to bed. Anyways, we had plans the next day to go to my host mom’s brother’s finca (country home / farm). It was absolutely beautiful. We spent the whole day there… relaxing, walking through the garden, eating (more details to follow), taking pictures, and chatting. It was a nice, away from the busyness of city life, experience.

Okay lunch – we ate “sopa de mondongo.” I had heard a lot about this soup, since it’s a typical, traditional food here in Nicaragua but had never got the guts to try it. Mondongo is cow stomach. Gross! I know!  Hence why I never tried it. But I was there, at the finca, and that was lunch. So I politely asked for more vegetables and less mondongo so i could try it and not waste it. They gave me 2 slabs of meat and I ate 3/4 of one of them. It was interesting. Not as gross as I was expecting. A little slimy, but tasted like regular meat. I just couldn’t get over the fact of what I was eating so I couldn’t stomach more. I ate it to say I ate it and be respectful. They did invite me for lunch… And best news of all = I digested it without problems! But I won’t be ordering it on my own. lol.

My goodbye was sad. I didn’t want to leave Masatepe + my family there. But I’m planning another trip back soon!

It was a nice Christmas vacation!

Check out my pictures on facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2445955&id=20902016&l=13b8911f3a

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