Sheep Guarding Llama

We had to finally rule out the Costa Rica trip, the high cost and the massive border issues going on just made it far too impractical.  The last thing that we want is to get stuck on the south side of the border and have issues getting back home.  And that could easily happen.

It was really hot and muggy today.  I had to sit on the far side of the dining room table to be able to write.

One of the more surprising and upsetting things in Granada is the beggars, and I don’t mean the ones out on the street, those you would see anywhere and I cannot say that I see any more here than I would anywhere else in the world.  I guess if I really think about it there are fewer here than I have seen in Europe and fewer than I have seen in other Nicaraguan cities but no fewer than I would see in the US and not nearly as many as I am used to from Texas or California cities.  So that seems normal.  No, what I mean is the beggars that come to your home and forcibly beg from you while you are in your home in your own space!

This has to be the worst aspect of Granada.  And it is not an occasional thing, if we keep the front door open to let the breeze through, as everyone in town does, we must get an average of five beggars a day.  It could be someone visibly poor – we have learned to recognize the regulars and most do indeed seem pretty poor, or it might just be someone random walking by who sees you and decides to beg.  I kid you not, normal people walking by will just stop and beg opportunistically as if it is the most normal thing in the world.  Imagine commuting to work and seeing someone through their front window eating breakfast and if you catch their eye calling out “can I have a few dollars?”  Then going on your way.  It is surreal.  And then there are the kids.  Affluent private school kids or just any kids will walk up and randomly beg through your windows and doors.  They are just bored kids around town doing this instead of playing, in many cases.  Sure the city is loaded with the poverty stricken, it is disheartening, but these are not the ones that we find coming to our door.  It’s kids in fancy clothes that we know live in expensive houses who attend private schools that just stop by and ask for money when they get bored.  And people don’t just beg, they won’t stop.  You tell them to go away, they will stay.  They will camp out.  They will return.  They will interrupt you while you are working, even when you are on the phone.  They will act like they need water or food or directions, then start saying “one or two” meaning dollars.  Some will even bang on the door and make you come outside to see who it is.  Someone will try to push their way into your home or block the door.

The begging alone is enough to not recommend Granada as a city for long term stays. It is a great city but the high density of expats and tourists has turned it into a beggar’s paradise.  One of the local restaurants has a full page explaining the begging situation, how bad it is and why you can’t give money to the kids and where to give money to help through charitable foundations.  It is becoming an epidemic in Granada because there is so much money to be made by harassing the tourists that people are quitting jobs and kids are dropping out of school because it is better to beg.  The problem is is that it is kids who earn the most money so are often exploited and it leads to the problem that they earn their money when young and by the time that they are teens no one wants to give them money anymore but they have already given up their chances to go to school and have no job prospects anymore – by choice.  There are even rising healthy issues caused by tourists giving away leftover food.  It is the danger of too many rich tourists in a rather poor area.  The disparity causes some serious issues.  It is sad because giving money isn’t the answer, but there are real people needing help, too.  But the ones begging are not likely them.

It’s sad and it is frustrating.  If you visit for a weekend the tendency is to just give them money in the hopes that they go away.  It’s just a day or two, right?  But this is what fuels it.  Then for the people who live here, it never ends.  And it starts to shape the economy.  The kinds of people you need to move into the city to change things start to avoid living there.   The people who actually need to beg and need help cannot be identified and saved.  The money and the assistance moves out.  The poverty increases.  There is no good answer.

This evening the rain came.  It was quite a surprise when we had a massive thunderclap with no warning.  It scared everyone.

The rain stopped for half an hour.  During that time I went to the Quick Stop and stocked up on some items.  They really are getting to know me there.  The manager always laughs and says hello and pats me on the shoulder.  I assume that I am their best customer.

I hit Taco Stop and got us all dinner.  They know me too, even by name.  I don’t have to give them my name when I order!

I got home and tonight we ate dinner and watched The Nanny for a bit.  The girls were overly tired and we sent them to bed early.  We were in bed at a good time too, but after some interruptions I ended up having insomnia for a while again.

Pretty much a normal Wednesday around the Miller household in Granada.  Writing, posting and calls all day.  There seem to be a lot of calls these days.

I have introduced Dominica to modern hidden object games. Somehow, after having played them years ago, she was very unaware of what they were like now with voice acting, detailed stories and such more like other kinds of adventure games.  She has been getting more and more into the hidden object genre the more that she investigates it.

This evening Dominica sent me out to find the Tika Bus station in Granada so that we could figure out how and if we are going to go to Costa Rica to hang out with Paul and Karen this week.  The week is going by quickly and we have not managed to figure anything out yet.

It was about an hour of me walking around and searching before I found the place.  I went in and got the scoop from the guy working there.  Going to be about $250 and we could leave at either 7am or 1pm.

I checked in at the bakery on the way home but they were out of what we wanted.

I got home and we discussed the bus and other travel options.  We are considering taking a taxi to the border.

We went to do some quick research because Dominica wanted me to be versed as to all of the details necessary for crossing the border as Costa Rica does not make this particularly easy and then we saw the news….

Just our luck that on the very day that we want to go to Costa Rica from Nicaragua that there is a humanitarian crisis going on and thousands of Cuban refugees attempting to make their way from Ecuador and Panama, through Costa Rica and up through Nicaragua would be trapped at the border blocking the roads.

Apparently something like two thousands refugees had made it to Nicaragua and had been turned around and sent back over the border and are now causing issues in Costa Rica and the border is essentially closed.  So if we make any plans or take the bus we might get stuck too.  So we had to rule things out for tonight.  We are going to reevaluate the situation in the morning.  But we are not going to attempt the seven in the morning bus no matter what.  So holding tight until then.

These are the kinds of travel surprises that you are a bit more likely to run into in Central America.  We would never have guessed that something like this would affect us going to visit friends this week.

Everyone got showered and dressed and tonight we are going out for dinner at a nice hotel that I have been wanting the family to go to for a month – Hotel La Merced Real by the ancient church right down the street from our corner to the south.  Dominica and the girls have actually never been there and don’t even know where it is!  I had stopped by last night and checked the menu and felt confident that they would have food that we would like and that the girls would eat.

We got to the hotel restaurant around six, about forty five minutes earlier than the main dinner crowd in Granada, from what we can tell.  We were the only table there, which was a little surprising.  The view was nice, they open everything up and you are basically sitting outside looking at the old church across the street, La Merced.

This turned out to be one of our best meals yet in Nicaragua yet!  The service was absolutely excellent, for starters, and the food was all amazing too.  We ordered mozzarella sticks for the girls (they translate them as mozzarella fingers here) and he recommended chicken fingers as a meal instead and we asked about fish fingers and he said that they did not have them but ran into the kitchen and the chef said that he would make them for the girls special!

Liesl just LOVED the fish fingers!  She devoured them and skipped eating everything else so that she could have room for them.  Luciana loved the mozzarella sticks too.  Both girls ate really well tonight.  I had a good salmon fillet.  Dominica was the big winner this evening, though.  She had a tropical fish dinner that was completely amazing, some of the best fish ever.  It was something like sole covered in plantains and fried with a tropical fruit sauce over it.  Amazing.  So delicious.

It was just an awesome meal.  Everyone’s food was awesome and the service was great and the venue was great.  No one came in to eat the entire time that we were there, it was our restaurant for the evening.

After dinner we came home, which was a short walk straight up the street, and then set up in the bedroom and played Octodad for quite a while.  The girls love this game.  It is incredibly challenging for them because of the controls which actually makes it really good for them.

After the girls were done and went to bed, Dominica and I played Episode Four of Law & Order Legacies.

We lost power for just a few seconds this morning, enough that I figured that I would just get up.  That was just after six.  Dominica got up early today, too.  She made coffee hours earlier than we normally have it and by nine this morning we had polished off a twelve cup pot already!

It was very hot and bright today.  Although we are noticeably adjusting to the heat.  We are not suffering from it anywhere near as much as we were a month ago.  Our month in Panama and our first month in Nicaragua are conditioning us.

I did a bit of writing and posting today and was on the phone for several hours.  It felt like I was on the phone nearly all day, in fact.  Mostly with Art and Danielle.

Liesl ended up having a breakdown this afternoon when it came to be time for her school.  It was so bad that she had to be put down for a nap and no school time for her today.

I went to the corner store to get us some supplies tonight.  Just a few things.  The air was really clear and there was a great view of Mombacho looming over us on my walk.

I wrote until ten thirty.  Liesl came down and pointed out that we had five lizards hanging out around the pool tonight, that was a new record for us.

Tonight Dominica and I played Episode Three of Law & Order Legacies.  It continues to be pretty good.  We were done long before midnight and ready for bed.

It is Monday after a nice, relaxing weekend at home in which we did effectively nothing.  The theory is that we are going to be heading down to Costa Rica at some point this week but we do not know what the plan is yet.  Paul and Karen are supposed to be arriving today but we did not hear any news all day so we do not know what the status is at this point.  We are just hanging loose ready to head down there whenever we get the chance.

This morning I tried to help Dominica with her laptop.  That darn Lenovo just never works no matter what we try to do with it.  We always have issues with drivers, weird hardware or something.  Now it will not allow games to go into full screen mode and she has a lot of games that I have gotten for her from Steam and GOG that she wants to try playing but she is not able to because they show up so small that she can not even see them most of the time.  I’ve gotten her a collection of hidden object games that I think that she will really like but she has not had a chance to try out at all.

The “new” thing that has arisen in the world of casual gaming and hidden object games is that they are now commonly making them more in the vein of traditional adventure games with voice acting, great graphics and a strong plot or story telling but having hidden objects as the puzzles rather than dialogue (a la Back to the Future) or inventory (a la Ankh) or puzzles (a la Myst.)  Dominica has never gotten to play one of these new styles and the hidden object genre is very heavily focused on the female audience and I am pretty sure that she will really enjoy many of these games and very often they are extremely low cost as well.  Law & Order Legacies that we are working on playing through is actually a mix of dialogue and hidden object challenges which she did not notice until I had pointed it out.

After the girls were done with school we all walked uptown to go grocery shopping as a family.  We do not do this very often because it is such a production to get everyone ready and walk all of the way up there so that everyone is hot and then we shop and have to get the girls back home while carrying all of those groceries.  It is actually easier when I do it all on my own and  have to carry everything back alone, but it is nice to get to have everyone go up there too.  It is a bit fun and the girls love to grocery shop.  It is amazing to me that Dominica used to ever be able to grocery shop without me – she does not use lists and forgets almost every item on them.  I’ve been the primary grocery getter for the family this year, at least since March, so I have my systems now.  Before Spain it was always Dominica getting the groceries, but I can not figure out how she was doing it from how she does it now.  It is a bit funny that I have become the family grocery shopper at this point.  I do at least eight perfect of it.

This evening was an early family game night, starting before seven!  Tonight it was Liesl taking the controls as we played Episode Four of Back to the Future: The Game.  We did not complete the fourth episode in the series but we did make some serious headway on it and there were plenty of challenging bits for Liesl to tackle and she did an amazing job.  This is a game that she is able to play nearly as well as we can for the most part.  She is such a good gamer and so good at game navigation.  We broadcast the game on Steam, which I have set up to do automatically, but I have no idea if anyone watched.  I did not get any feedback tonight.  Luciana snuggled and watched the game for a while but requested to be taken to bed and tucked in long before we were done playing.

I got up at seven thirty this morning.  My body is going back to its more natural rhythm now, even though we were up late gaming last night.

Luciana got up and immediately started the day by playing more of Super Panda Adventures which she had been playing last night.

Late this morning I went to the panedaria and got donuts and cupcakes.  Dominica made smoothies.  Trying to increase our fruit intake rate but it is a struggle.  There is just so much fruit to eat.

This evening we sent the kids to do their own thing and Dominica and I played through two episodes of Law & Order Legacies from Telltale Games.  It was quite good.  Not hard and not a style that I would normally want to play but Dominica has been wanting to play this one and as it is heavily story driven and there are so few games that work out like this for us I really wanted to get to watch her play it.  We played until just after eleven and we broadcasted it on Steam and even had Rob Dunn out in Chicago watching us play!  Playing a story based game like this with a broadcast is fun and adds some interest to it.  The game was good and we enjoyed getting to play.