Indepedence Day in Nicaragua

It's Independence Day weekend again in Nicaragua. Friday we had our huge celebration and as always it was a fun and busy day. Below are a few of my favorite pics from the day.

Willy Wonka's cousin (a highschool presentation) explaining to the elementary students how they make chocolate from the cacao bean. Many, many years ago the cacao bean was used as money in Nicaragua.

Each class preforms a dance. Here are two of my students in action.

Students and teacher alike ready for the big performance.

The main program ends with a dance by the teachers. Here we are in our traditional costume. The Nicaraguan community loves to see the North American teachers attempting their folklore dances.

With the extra long weekend, I'm heading off to Canada. There is another very special event in my family which I feel very blessed to be able to participate in. My sister Sara and her husband were blessed with a baby girl, Anna Joy. We have awaited her arrival for many years and are celebrating this answer to prayer. I'm returning for a week to Canada to spend time with them, to attend the baptism and a baby shower.

Grilled Pizza

Recently I've discovered the richly enhanced flavour of pizza when it is cooked on the BBQ. The Nicaraguan family I visit often has asked me several times to teach them how to make pizza. Cooking them on the fire is a better way for a Nicaraguan family to make pizza since many homes do not have an oven.

We actually made two types of pizza. The normal way by mixing up the pizza dough and letting it rise and by making flour tortillas and dressing them up with toppings to bake.

These were my two rather competetive 'students' helping to make the balls for tortiallas. Both of them wanted their hands in the dough so I was surprised we did get it all mixed together. Lots of laughs (and a few elbows) and the dough was good to go.

Yolanda is a master tortilla maker but it has always been corn tortillas. Corn tortillas are a typical food in Nicaragua, while flour tortillas are more traditional to Mexico.

This is the BBQ area where we cooked the pizzas. Cooking them over the fire gives the pizza an overall better flavour and it is actually much more simple than it sounds.

GOOD EATS!

Tailless Whip Scorpian

It's not that I've abandoned my blog, it's just that starting up a school year always takes much longer than I would anticipate. This week one of my students remarked to me how fast time goes and that we had already been in school for 4 weeks. This is so true, I feel that the days just fly by and here we are in September already.

This year I have a class of 20 fourth graders. We had several new faces join our class all of whom already fit in so well. In our mix of 20 students half of them are Nicaraguan, 6 North American, 3 Korean, and 1 Canadian. I'm still getting used to the scheduling this year since a number of my students go in and out of my class to recieve Special English, Special Spanish, or Learning Assistance. All around they are a very well-natured class. In devotions one morning we were talking about people in authority over us. Somehow in the discussion one student remarked, "And we know that Miss Bootsma loves us." This took me off guard, but it was the same thoughts I had that previous day when I thought to myself, "I might just have one of the best classes in the school." (So thankful that God gives me a great group of kids each year :)

Below are some pictures of my student with their reading buddies from first grade.

Although I'm not sure why, but I was a little alarmed to see this creature (photo below) in the teacher workroom this week when I was cutting off some butcher paper. Naturally I called over a colleague to help me trap it. The next day the students in my class took a keen interest in looking at it. I heard several people say, "Look a spider", "No a crab", etc. This creature, as I discovered the first time I saw one, is a Tailless Whip Scorpian. It looks ugly and mean but is completely harmless. We put an ant in his jar one day after recess and watched him respond, but he didn't eat it. This guy is more interested in crickets.