Nicaragua

I've been in a lot of weddings, 18 actually, so I had to laugh at David's pitch when called to ask me to be in this one.  He said that he wanted to offer me a wedding first: an international wedding.  How could I say no to that?  We landed in Managua, Nicaragua on Friday, December 17th and the adventure began.  My Spanish is pretty terrible, but I have no shame and I love meeting people so I was determined to try to talk to people as much as possible.  What follows are the day-by-day adventures.

Friday

We arrived in Managua around 1pm.  The best way to arrive in a country where you don't speak the language is to see several familiar faces in the airport.  Brandon, Ashley, Hunter, Shanna, David Edwards (Edwards from here on out), Peter and Rachel were all in line with us.  Once we got through customs we met up with David Neely (hereinafter "David") and his future father-in-law, Pastor Daniel Aragon.  We gathered our luggage and boarded the bus.  The Aragons had arranged for us to have a bus with a driver to transport us for the week that we were there.  It was awesome.  The drive to the hotel was a neat glimpse into the city as the scenes flashed by.  Managua is a large relatively flat city.  It's flat geographically and architecturally.  There are definitely some hills, it ain't Texas, but by and large the city just stretches out before you.  It also does not have a lot of tall buildings because they were all knocked down by a huge earthquake in early 70's.  The stop at the hotel was very brief, we had to load back up and get to the beach wedding.

The wedding was bifurcated into two ceremonies, religious and civil, and the civil service was at the beach.  Because we were running late, mostly since we stopped along the way to pick up people they knew, the bus driver flew.  It was awesome.  We arrived just in time to have a gorgeous ceremony as the sun was setting over the Pacific ocean.  (My first time to see the world's largest body of water!)  The rest of the evening was spent dining and dancing at the beach.

Saturday

Saturday was a blast.  We spent the morning touring Managua.  We toured by bus, foot and zipline and all of it was a blast.  The highlight of the morning was packing about 25 people into a tiny pick-up (think Datsun) and driving around the streets of Managua to get from the bottom of the zipline back up to the top of the mountain.  Hilarious.  I thought we were going to cause a million wrecks because everyone was so shocked to see (a) that many white people (b) packed into one vehicle.  The afternoon was spent rehearsing the wedding which was great, but the evening was where the real fun started.  

We went to Jill's aunt's house, which is also a neighborhood market, for the rehearsal dinner.  They cooked a traditional dinner for us and it was amazing.  I could eat that food every day.  We sat around and talked forever.  I used my broken Spanish, simple English and hand gestures to talk to Jill's adopted sister Catalina.  It was great; we talked about everything from how she learned to play guitar, to how we both became Christians, to our favorite foods and what we want to do with our lives.  It was just awesome to have fellowship with someone despite a language barrier.  After that we hit a piñata and went to bed.

Sunday

Sunday morning saw us at Jill's family church.  The church is combination home, church, school and community center.  We played with all the neighborhood kids, which was a blast.  Kids are the same wherever you are.  In fact, people are people wherever you go.  Church was awesome.  Pastor Aragon told about being a solider in the Sandinista army during the revolution.  The linchpin of the sermon was his realization that although he was serving his country he was not doing any good.  "I realized that I was trying to help my country, but I had not helped a single person.  If you cannot say you have helped a single person, then what good is what you're doing?"  It really convicted me because I really get wrapped up in politics sometimes and miss the needs of people right around me.

That afternoon was the wedding.  The groomsmen spent most of it at the pastor's house waiting to go to the church.  We had a blast hanging out.  At one point JP fell asleep so we decided to sneak out and pretend like we left him behind.  We got the pastor's wife, who spoke no English, to wake up JP and tell him he was late.  So she does.  He wakes up, sees no one around and starts stumbling around the room while we're all watching.  Eventually he stumbles around the corner to where we are and we all die laughing.  The actual ceremony was really neat.  A cool blend of Nicaraguan and American tradition.

Yet once again, the real fun started in the evening.  We went to the Hotel Contempo for the reception.  It was unreal.  We danced for hours before they even served dinner.  Then we had a slide show, a private concert by a big pop singer in Nicaragua, still not sure how he showed up, and then went back to dancing for a few more hours.  I danced with so many people.  It was a blast.  Everyone from 8 year-olds to grandmothers could dance and they loved to do it.  We had a blast.

Monday

David and Jill graciously delayed their honeymoon to show us around the country on Monday so the whole wedding crew, family and all, loaded up onto our bus and embarked on our adventure.  We saw old colonial cities with glorious cathedrals, majestic volcanoes, breathtaking panoramas, and a coffee plantation.  We spent the travel time in song.  Yep, we were belting out tunes at the top of our lungs.  It got started when we passed a round-about decorated for Christmas.  Someone started singing a Christmas carol and the next thing you know, a bus full of white people are belting out tunes as we cruise through the city.  We got some awesome looks from the locals.  It was just such a surreal experience to be thinking about Christmas when it was 90 degrees and sunny.

Tuesday

The honeymoon officially commenced, the wedding party was left to our own devices.  We went to another volcano, this one active and spewing clouds of sulfur and ash into the air.  Then we went back to the beach.  I took surfing lessons while most everyone else played in the sand, which had a mud-like texture and color.  There's a pretty great video of JP covered in it.  While everyone was playing Katie napped, and she may have had the best idea of all of us.  Being out in the sun was exhausting and I often wished for a nap.  Anyways, I was feeling quite good about how well I was doing on the surfboard.  In fact, when we finished the instructor told everyone that I was the best he had ever seen.  For a fat guy.  No lie.  Those were his exact words.  Then, maybe when he realized fat is not cool, he clarified that I was "kind of chubby."  *sigh* Thanks for the reminder pal.  It was pretty hilarious if I do say so myself.  As we wrapped up our time at the beach some of the groomsmen discovered that the bathroom, an unfinished hotel room, had perfect acoustics so the three All State Chorus groomsman put on an impromptu show.  It was great. For dinner we stopped at Pizza Jehova Jireh.  Just cuz the name was awesome.  (And the food was as well.)

Wednesday

Most of the group left on Wednesday, and by most, I mean everyone but me and John.  John has an incredible sense of adventure and a confidence that I lack when it comes to exploring.  So he convinced me to embark with him on our own adventure.  A Brit we met at our hotel shared his advice and that was a God-send.  We took taxis around Managua and then a public bus to Leon, the former capital city.  We walked around the city and saw some absolutely magnificent cathedrals.  John stole the heart of every Nica girl that walked by.  That boy got more free stuff...  Oh well.  I'll always just be the older brother haha.  The highlight of the trip was the bus ride back.  The buses were point-to-point express buses.  We weren't able to find the exact bus we had taken to get to Leon but after much discussion in barely passable Spanish we were finally able to find a bus that was going to "pass by" where we had originated.  During the trip back John is asleep and I'm engrossed in my phrasebook when the bus pulls over to side of the road.  Some things are said in Spanish.  More things are said in Spanish.  Finally I realize that everyone is looking at us.  Turns out when they said passing by, they meant they were literally going to be passing somewhat nearby and they would drop us off on the side of the highway.  Haha.  It was no big deal.  We walked to the nearest market and caught a cab to a good restaurant we knew for dinner.  Then it was back to the hotel to pack and sleep.

Thursday

It was really bittersweet to leave.  On the one hand, we were headed back to our family, and Christmas presents, but we were finally starting to get to know our way around.  Our Spanish had improved enough for us to have about a 10 or 15 minute conversation with our cab driver on the way to the airport about every thing we had done and all the things we would do on la próxima visita (our next trip).  We even translated for a lady trying to order hot tea at the airport bar (té caliente).  OOOOH!  I almost forgot, during our bus ride to Leon, two girls that were probably about 17 got on the bus and sat in front of us.  They kept turning around to check John out.  (Big surprise.)  Anyways, about an hour into the ride we stopped for road work on the highway.  The bus immediately got hot since there was no A/C.  John will say that I'm overly sensitive to heat, but whatever. Anyways, I told John in Spanish that I was hot.  (estoy caliente)  Apparently, according to John anyways, in some countries that can also be translated as "I am horny."  Which was NOT what I wanted to be communicating to the girls sitting in front of us.  We have no idea of that slang is popular in Nica, or if they even heard us but it made for some mortification after John explained that to me. 

Anyways, our flights back were mostly uneventful.  We wound up next to the Brit from our hotel which was cool, missed our connection but got the last two seats on the next flight and wound up home for Christmas, which turned out to be my first ever real White Christmas.