Another wonderful New Year to look forward to for me in Nicaragua. I honestly cannot be thankful often enough for following my gut and moving to Nicaragua. This is a beautiful and eye-opening place to learn and share my life.
Some people stay up to watch the ball drop at Times Square in NYC. New Year’s Eve I stayed up to watch the fireworks displays at three beaches from the friend’s house where I was staying for 12 days. It was an amazing display in the sky. One of the venues lasted for almost 10 minutes.
As I mentioned in my previous blog, I have been somewhat of a gypsy since Thanksgiving. Fortunately my condo has been rented. However, when the condo is rented, I have to move out. This presents new opportunities to organize stuff in the “personal closet” so that everything that needs to be put away will fit into a VERY small lockable space. A challenge, and enlightening. I am finding it interesting to realize what “stuff” is really important. The moving exercise is also fascinating as I learn my friends life’s routines. Once again, I ponder on how and why does one put value on stuff.
Living in this rural area in an upscale community versus the village communities surrounding Rancho Santana is enlightening to say the least. Although the stark contrasts of the early years of my life here versus the contrasts of today have diminished, stark contrasts still exist.
The villages of Limón # 1 and Limón #2 have three times as many new brick or block homes with concrete floors and painted exteriors. This has occurred because more of the people can afford to buy the materials to slowly build their homes. (That sounds like me with my Guasacate house building project–the slowly part.) There are still pigs with the triangular orcetas around their necks roaming in and crossing the roads without a care of cars, buses, or motorcycles. Horses wander where they please and cows are herded in the road from property to property. I somehow have accepted these phenomena as normal and surprise myself about this at times. Then I sit on my terrace and watch the most spectacular skies at sunset and am so grateful once again.
Life updates: I have embarked on another exciting work adventure. I am working with a Rancho Santana friend, Gail Geerling, who has a business called Success Nicaragua. We are starting a property management segment of her business and will soon have a website for the world to see. For the past two weeks I have been busy relearning Excel spreadsheet formatting and writing property management documents that can be used as “plug & play” templates. Relearning something that changed since first learned is challenging. I guess I should say unlearning old habits is challenging. I’m not perfect at the tasks yet, but certainly farther ahead than I was two weeks ago. Gail teaches time management, therefore she is trying to get me to perform laptop operations in the most expedient way. Gail has been a patient mentor for sure. I love what I/we are doing and it keeps me out of trouble and off the streets.
Many of my RS friends are returning to the Ranch this past week. Last year many of them were here for the Christmas and New Year’s holidays and vowed not to come again at that time because it was so crowded. As a result this year the Christmas “crowd” here was minimal at best. Almost all the condos were empty except for mine and three or four other condos whose owners live here full time or are owners from Managua. My renters were Managua residents who brought their Santa paraphenalia with them for their young children. I had to laugh because the five year old told her parents that Santa was “very skinny”. Santa was the mother’s brother visiting with them from CA over Christmas and is indeed tall and thin. Everyone at my condo had a good time.
I have been to the new Esmeralda Coast International airport (ECI) twice in the past two weeks picking up clients and neighbors in the condos. Since it is only a 15 minute trip, it is a piece of cake drive for me. And of course, you have to know that I have been an airplane/airport buff since I was a very young child. So seeing how our little ECI runs is a pleasure for me.
The Guasacate house has had more infra structure on the ground around the buildings to accommodate a road on the ocean side of the houses which required three big pieces of earth moving equipment onsite for about six hours one afternoon and night. The end result will make the driveway on the ocean side as solid as the rock the houses were built upon.
This coming week is the annual Roberto Clemente Clinic Board Meeting and Health Fair. Of course, I will be in attendance at the Meeting and working at the Fair. My Spanish has improved immensely over the past year as I have learned to listen in Spanish versus trying to interpret between Spanish and English as I hear words. This is not such an easy task for a visual learner–me. I hope to be more useful to the Fair attendees as a result of the improved language skills.
There is always something new and interesting to do here. So I look forward to see month by month what 2017 has in store for me.
Buen Salud y Prospero Año Nuevo to all those who follow my Life in Nicaragua.
Earth moving from my Guasacate terraces–downstairs on the left, upstairs on the lower right.
Margie Fincham in Nicaragua 