Nosotoros Regresamos!

We're back! (well, we have been for about two weeks now)

After Lindsey graduated we drove up to Minnesota for Christmas, stopping in Chicago along the way to visit our buddies Mat, Karen, and baby Amina. Then we drove back to New Orleans, stopping in Chicago again to visit our other Peace Corps buddy Amanda. After spending one day in New Orleans packing, we started our three week trip through Nicaragua and just returned home on January 18th. Lindsey just started her new job, I'm back in school, and things are getting back to normal down here...unless you count the fact that Mardi Gras starts in a week and The Saints are going to the Superbowl.

Can't wait to watch the Super Bowl in two weeks!!! Go Saints!

If you want to look at the 5 bagillion photos that we took in Nicaragua...here is the link to Lindsey's Picasa page where the photos are sitting.

We spent a lot of time outdoors on the pond. Lindsey bought some skates, I had mine sharpened, and Joey got a real hockey stick. Joey was having a blast out on the ice, he even started checking me!


Lets just say that getting full body pajamas with feet and going out of the town is a bad idea.

Lindsey and Joey mercilessly protecting their fort.

Lindsey and some of her college friends on a quick trip that we took down to...'The Cities'.

Derek attempting to make the kids stop thinking about the snack booth and focus on the game.

Stopped in Amanda's hometown for two nights before she ran back to Burma.


So, here is our Nicaragua trip in a few photos...if you want to look at more...check out the Picasa link

Surfing! We went on one day and boy do you get tired quick. We took lessons with some Nicaraguan surfers (basically being pushed into the waves so you don't have to use all of your energy).

This was a mural from a small mountain town called Jinotega. The country is a really safe place to travel and live, but there are still reminders everywhere of the recent history and politics. The election next year will be fascinating to follow with Ortega attempting to change the constitution and run again.

When we were up in the north in the city called Matagalpa, we went on a tour of a chocolate factory. This little place called Castillo de Cacao make 100% local organic chocolate with only two ingredients: sugar and cocoa. It was a really neat tour showing how everything there is done by hand. We then got to taste their chocolate and drank some local coffee.

Again, here's the beach we stayed at.

The food was good, but man did we miss a little diversity. Every meal is either steak or chicken, with a cabbage salad, plantains, and rice. The steak was really good, but you can only eat so much steak. The breakfasts were also good, but the same every day with: rice and beans, two eggs, a tortilla, and maybe some fruit.

This is from the top of the cathedral in Leon, the other large colonial city in Nicaragua. This city is the historically liberal counter-point to more conservative Granada. Many a battle fought between the two.

Just a shot of some typical storefronts throughout Nicaragua, this was in a town up in the north, a city called Matagalpa in a region famous for coffee.


We stayed three nights at this beach, Playa Coco, one of the most pristine in the country. An older canadian rents out the top floor of his house for 25$/night. There were only about 10 other people on the whole stretch of beach the whole time we were there. It was nice to just stop moving and relax for a couple of days.

This is a shot from the balcony of an organic coffee farm that we stayed at for two nights. The island is called Ometepe and it consists of two volcanoes (we were staying at the base of the dormant one) in the middle of a large freshwater lake. We went on a hike looking at petroglyphs and walked around the farm.

One of the reasons for the trip is my exuberant excitement relating to volcanoes. We went on a night hike of one volcano and this was one of the neatest parts of our trip. The hike took us up to the rim of the crater to see glowing lava, we went and saw a cave with hundreds of bats flying out, and also walked through an old lava tube. The volcano is quite active and there were a lot of fumes coming out that made you cough and feel kinda sick...pretty cool. If you want to see a little eruption from 2008, search for: masaya volcano, it should be the first hit.

This was one of the many festivals that we drove through and saw. This one was on New Year's Day in this small town that we were passing through on the way to the Masaya Volcano National Park.

This is just some of the many street food stalls. We only ate street food one and it was on the last day of our trip...good thing because our bellies were a little off for a while after.

This is a picture of Granada, the first 'nice' city we were in. We flew into Managua and stayed there for our first night and were happy to leave the capital for places that felt a little safer. Granada was really nice with big old churches, lots of good food, and we stayed at a place with a pool.

Lindsey Graduated!!!

Lindsey graduated tonight with a Masters degree in Social Work after a long and stressful year and a half. I am so proud of how much hard work she into the program and her internship, she's a natural Social Worker. It was just so nice to watch her grab that degree, so proud! It was hard for her to say goodbye to all of the incredible people she met in her program, as many of them will be leaving over the next weeks. But, we're off to Minnesota tomorrow morning, stopping in Chicago to see friends for a bit.


Woohoo! Now we need to buy a big frame!

One of Linsey's favorite professors

This was the only shot I could get of her on the stage and she literally broke into a sprint to get off

Harry Shearer delivered the commencement, he was great (voice of many Simpsons characters and also in Spinal Tap)

The Dean

Here are all the graduates


Lindsey with some of her friends before the ceremony

Lindsey and Mandy


Lindsey, Ida, and Karen

Lindsey, Brooke, and Hailey

Lindsey and Calley

Week before Graduation!

This is my professional project group. We have been working for a year on a project in bibliotherapy-which is basically writing books and having discussion as a form of therapy. This form of therapy is only effective if you combine it with other therapy....but the idea began when we noticed that there was a lack of books addressing Posttraumatic Stress Syndrome (highly prevalent with kids here post Hurricane Katrina) and a lack of books that address bullying -from the bully's perspective and trying to understand the bully. For Save the Children, we would go in the schools and lead therapy groups with kids addressing these topics, which usually involved a story-since there was a lack of these books-we decided to write them, have focus groups critiquing them, and then and have them illustrated. Here's us last minute throwing our post together in 2 hours to present our project :)
our cheesy poster (very Science Fairy-like)
Friends Brooke-(she just got back from living in BElize for 3 months with the international social work program) Molly, Mandy and ME
Here's us at the science and fair and with our completed projects. Our professors were THRILLED with our books and they are looking at getting us funding to pursue self-publishing.
Brian helped put the illustrations and writing into a software program before we brought them to the printing press...so he even had a part in the project!
Here's us celebrating at Lisa's family restaurant, which is an Italian restaurant from the 1950's (it was a restaurant originally in Chicago and they moved here in the 50's!)
Sooo good.... chicken, breaded oysters, shrimp, crab salad....yum!
My friend got married and the marriage didn't turn out so well and she's getting a divorce. She was never able to have a bachelorette party-so her sister threw her a Divorce Party-a Back on the Market party and we decided to go out and buy tacky dresses. here are 2 we tried on. Hideous..but I didn't settle on this one....


This is Shea my friend from the program-we ended up buying the SAME dresses in different colors! (don't we look like those fundamentalist mormans?)
This is the group--we had a bag and had people contribute to a Divorce fund. We walked in a Christmas parade in the Quarter-and everyone loved our idea!
I think Mandy had 20 bows on her dress. d

Bri and I have been taking Chinese classes on the weekend--here's our class eating hot pot tonight! So good cause it was cold outside!
Our teacher dishing up!
I graduate this Friday so more pictures soon to come! Then Chicago/Minnesota here we come!

Po-boy fest + Turkey Day

Bri getting crafty w/his guitar.
School of Social Work Boys + Brian on Turkey Day.
My friend Haley, a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer from Paraguay and also a Social Worker, put on the meal.

Char-broiled oysters at the Po-boy festival. YUUMMMMMM

Cochon Delai Po-boy.... Which is a pork po-boy that is super awesome. All of our pictures seem to have to do with eating in NEw Orleans, but the food is so good!!!!

November in N'awlins

We may not be vegan, but this is one of our favorite recipes, Vegan Enchiladas!

Lindsey had a Tulane Graduate School party the other night, so we had the chance to get all dressed up and go out for the night.


Here's Lindsey and all her social work buddies!

Here's the two of us! It was a fun night of dancing.


What you don't see in these pictures is my stellar move I made at the beginning of the night. I was wearing heels (which the binzer does about once a year) and I was trying to fix the heel of my shoe. My ring somehow got caught in the spike of the shoe and I was thrown completely off balance and landed face first on the carpet. It was kinda a long fall and I have carpet burns on both knees to prove it. IT was hilarious in the sense that I was not drinking and just being a clutzy Aysta (which Shelley can attest to) . This only a few days after I attended a conference inBaton Rouge and spilled an entire cup of sweet tea on the white tablecloth at my table. I spent about 10 minutes cleaning it up ...ahhhh jeez.

Happy Fall!

It finally dipped down into the 70's this past week with nice clear skies and a crisp breeze. It was Lindsey's first trip out of the house for awhile so we took the time to go over to the Lake near my school. The fall semester is starting to wind down as well. Lindsey will be graduating in a few weeks and then we'll be driving up to Minnesota for Christmas, with stops in Chicago to visit Peace Corps friends, and then it's off to Nicaragua for a vacation before I settle in to finish my last semester. We are also so excited for our niece who's on the way!

Happy Fall!