A Very, Very, Very full day!

We woke up a bit earlier today to check out the local market.  It was what I expected as far as markets go, but I was surprised by the vehicle traffic.  Not only that, but how close the drivers get to pedestrians.  It is mainly because of the limited room.  Several times I found myself walking right next to a vehicle, almost brushing against it.  I had no other place to go though.  We had fun at the market.  Amos changed pants right on the street behind a piece of cloth.  James had a 60 year old lady lament about not being young so she could date him.  All good fun!  We went to do backpacks around 10:30a. 

We arrived at the office to stuff 318 backpacks, where they informed us that schools are closed for that afternoon.  The word had just come down that morning around 9a.  There is some sort of government issue that is making schools be closed tomorrow, that has now effected today.  She told us that it is very common to have situations like this occur.  Even the break between semesters can be changed up to a couple days beforehand.  I can just imagine the chaos and anger that would happen if that was the case in the USA.  Even snow days can become pretty hot topics.  My hometown school district will not call snow days period.  If you live in a bus route area, and the bus cannot come, then you are excused.  This came about because they were expecting a big storm, and at 6a that day it had been pretty nasty.  The storm ended up blowing over and it was a glorious 60 degree day with the sun shining.  Parents were livid since they still had to work, but their kids were off.  To me that just goes to show how much people rely on schools as babysitters in the US.  Granted we want to know that our kids are safe, but doesn’t that lead to a dependency on others?  If we can’t leave our kids alone, are we making it so that they don’t know how to function alone?  These kids function well, and they are really quite responsible.  I wonder if our kids could be like that?  Can our parents be like that and let their kids have more free reign?  Would it open up the possibilities of more kidnappings and other assorted negative things that we try to keep our kids from? 

We ended up stuffing all 318 backpacks in about an hour.  They expected it to take us around 2 – 2.5 hours.  We are sooo good!!!  lol   We get to finish up tomorrow since some supplies were not delivered yet.  That led to a nice sandwich for lunch at a beautiful little cafe, and some free time to take a nap.  The heat is sucking out my energy.  We are dealing with heat in the upper 90’s with humidity.  Apparently this is actually the hot time of year here.  We have been told that March and April are the worst for heat… YAY!  We took a little time to chill in the pool and cool down.  While there, another guest came up with his son to swim.  Turns out they are from Kingwood too!  It is such a small world!  In the evening we went to the craft market.  That was pretty interesting.  We were followed by a group of young boys trying to sell us grass origami and honey.  They were pretty helpful in finding items with the merchants.  It was definitely a tourist market though, since they spoke really good English and all the merchants would tell you dollars unless you asked the price in cordobas.  We followed that up with an evening hike in the Masaya National Park.  

It is an old volcano that erupted 238 years ago on March 16^th… that’s right, today was the 238^th anniversary!!!  Then we went down to a couple bat caves.  We went into one, and then stood at the entrance of another.  When we were standing at the entrance, we actually got to see a Boa hang from the ceiling and catch a bat for dinner!  It was sweet!  Then we turned off our flashlights and let the bats swarm out of the cave around us.  It was very awesome!  We ended the night with some live music and the best desert ever: Mango Bread with Ice cream and Chocolate Syrup!!!  YUMMY!!!