18 for the 18th

(Just some things I've been up to lately. Actually, this is how you summarize 4 days when you're feeling lazy.)

...

1. went swimming in a pool with my coworkers at an end-of-the-year party

2. walked around for 3 hours in Masaya for no reason

3. baked 2 pumpkin breads with spices brought here by Andrea's friend Sas

4. killed 4 cockroaches (in someone else's house)

5. listened to new music by an old college friend Phillip Morrow

6. made spaghetti with my own special meat sauce recipe for dinner

6. read The Jaguar Smile

7. received 2 Christmas/birthday packages and 3 cards [fun!]
8. cleaned my kitchen and living room floor

9. hung a strand of white Christmas lights on our front porch

10. talked to an unemployed Guatemalan man

11. visited Managua's smoky and dusty city dump (where people actually live)

12. discovered that there is plastic recycling here

13. took 7 taxi rides

14. met a woman who left the dump (la Chureca) and now has a better life

15. bought 2 red cinnamon scented candles (now the house smells like Christmas!)

16. got hit on by a young taxi driver with a pimped out yellow pontiac

17. discovered a place where I can buy fair trade artesania

18. saw some 6 thousand-year-old preserved footprints of indigenous Nicaraguans