Hermana Oliphant in Nicaragua: Semana 2

This week wasn´t terribly exciting, unfortunately. Well, a little. We moved rooms. The place we live has two little rooms side by side, and we moved to the one next door, which is much prettier, and that bathroom´s a tiny bit bigger. So that´s a plus. And we have shelves and a spot for hangers. YES. That´s fantastic. And I don´t have any pictures of our old room, and I forgot my cord to show you all my pictures from this week :( Sad day. But next week! And my companion is awesome and has pictures that I will be sending ;) So I won´t leave you without anything again.
We also super cleaned our room for our room inspection/interview with the mission president. Those went well, and Hna Collado (the mission president's wife) said our casa was "¡Que linda! pero pequeña." Haha. I´ll take it.

We also were supposed to have three baptisms this week, but all of them fell through...ay. No bueno. But Hna Miza and I are working hard on our current investigators and on the baptisms that fell through to make sure they all get baptized :) Hna Miza loves her baptisms. But for a good reason. We´re not trying to get numbers up; we´re inviting children of God to change their lives for the better and come unto Him to receive all the blessings waiting for them. I love it. We actually placed our first baptismal fecha since I got here! That was a super neat experience, and I´m excited for him. He´s related to one of our recent converts who´s super strong in the church, so hopefully all goes well with him.

To answer questions:

I haven´t had to cook yet! We always have lunch and dinner citas. I eat cereal and granola bars for breakfast, so we´re good there x3 We also don´t have a stove anymore...so yeah. Shelves and a fridge is what we´ve got to work with.

We have supermarkets where we can buy normal American food, but only on P-day. For the most part, we buy little snacks and water and drinks from pulperias during the day if we need to. There´s lots of street food. Lots and lots of street food. You can buy tortillas anywhere, pollo, carne. Platanos fritos. Oh my gosh fried plantains are the best. They were a little weird at first, but now I can´t get enough. Either cooked just so their soft inside and a little caramelized on the outside, or cut thin and fried like potato chips, they´re the BOMB.

Money!
The main currency is Nicaraguan córdobas. About 27 of them is a dollar. So everything here is super cheap. Super cheap. A huge bottle of water is less than a dollar. And I got a razor here for like 30 cents. Some places actually do accept American dollars, but for the small household places like pulperias and street food, we only use córdobas. There are smaller forms of currency in coin form, but we never actually use them. I´m not sure why they exist. I´ll take pictures next week, but they have bill denominations of 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, and 500 córdobas, and then there are coins of 1 and 5 córdobas. There are ATMs in some places so occasionally we can go pull out money from our cards. And I always use currency. It´s just easier to pull out all of your money to avoid lots of fees, and then keep it on you or at the house.

Our ward is a decent size. We have about 100 in attendance every week. Everyone shows up late, though x3 Oh dear. But everyone is super nice and super cool.

We have 10 companionships in our zone, and 5 companionships in our district. We don´t work with each other that much, but Hna Miza, as Sister Training Leader, definitely does. I´ve gone on exchanges already, and we have another two set up for this week. So we work with each other a decent amount, but not plenty.

I´ll talk about the food some more. So yeah, gallo pinto. Gallo pinto, gallo pinto. I´m almost starting to get sick of it. But it´s good, so I can manage x3 We eat plantains a lot, and then ensalada, which is cabbage/lettuce, not sure which, carrots, tomatoes, and onions. I´m always grateful when they don´t put tomatoes and onions in x3 My missionary taste buds haven´t kicked in yet; I still can´t stand them. Lots of tortillas. Super thick, homemade tortillas. And they´re pretty good. Oh, we also had a cita with avocado. Yum. Me encanta. And we very very rarely drink water. It´s always juice, Coke, or the powder drink I talked about last week. I´m always grateful for water. This week we had lunch that was some kind of soup, and it was amazing. It had rice, chicken, potatoes, and some kind of spinach or lettuce, and it was a kind of red/orange oil sauce. Some kind of chili. It was fantastic, and I´m for sure going to get a recipe.