Return of the milkman

I have been back in Nicaragua for weeks and haven’t put my figurative pen to the (also figurative) paper.  I don’t have any good excuses.  Stories have been built up and been sorted in my mind but I just haven’t managed to restart the blog.  So here goes…

We arrived back in Nicaragua in the wee hours of New Year’s Eve Day. We slept in, had an unexpectedly wonderful (at least to me) time walking around Managua and then spent the night watching fireworks from the tower at our hotel.  It was a modest hotel but the mirador made it worth it on the 31^st.  We had fireworks going off everywhere we looked. 

The next day we set off to meet our friend Gretchen who was spending a week at a resort (I use that loosely) to learn to surf outside of a city called León.  We swam in the ocean, played on the beach and got to help release baby turtles in the sand and watch them make their way back to the ocean. The resort, Surfing Turtle Lodge, buys turtle eggs from poachers and then keeps them safe until they start to hatch.  It was pretty cool.

Wait.  

I tempted you with the return of the milkman and he hasn’t shown up yet in this blog.  Well, our very first morning in San Juan del Sur I woke up earlier than the rest of my family.  I decided to take a jog.  I ran up the hill first but quickly ran into dogs. They were friendly but insisted that they accompany me so I went back to the house, hid for a few minutes until they lost interest and then went back out to walk DOWN to town.  That is also how I deal with unwanted advances from men.  I hide for a few minutes until they go away. ANYWAY, I walked into town, went to market, found I was RIGHT ON TIME to order milk for the next day, bought some delicious pineapple (mango is out of season currently L) and ran into two familiar faces on the walk back. It was a happy return to life here.

I should also note that I have learned of and have purchased milk from a lechero (milkman) who passes through the adjacent neighborhood at about 8:30.  The upside is that you can get the milk without ordering ahead and that it is not as far to walk with a bag of milk in the heat.  The downside is that it costs 20 cents more per liter, he is not stationary, and that you are expected to bring your own container. 

But with two excellent options for milk we are much happier.  Ari is particularly thankful.  Around Thanksgiving at Ari’s school in Minnesota, her class wrote things they were grateful for on colored paper turkey feathers. One of Ari’s feathers read, “I am thankful for milk in cartons instead of in bags.”  I think she might be changing her mind.