Economics of Dog Food

Note: Holly and I realize that the last week of posts have really centered around our cuisine, and that this is unfair to Dora, so I hope this corrects any unfairness.

Since she was a puppy, we've fed Dora Pedigree because it was the only brand we had heard of before (the second most promising brand is called Dogui). When we took Dora home last year, we found the exact same Pedigree puppy food that we buy here, but she loved it. It took us a while to figure out that the difference is probably that the food came in a sealed package and wasn't stale like the food that we buy her from huge bags in the market here. You can find full bags of dog food here, but due to some awful economic decision it is cheaper to buy individual pounds of dog food than it is to buy a whole bag; we would end up paying 50% more if we bought a 25 lb bag instead of 25 individual pounds.  I'd like to introduce you to Nicanomics.

Though prices for Pedigree are pretty much consistent throughout Masaya, it's a little risky to buy it from unknown vendors because the less scrupulous ones mix it with lower grade foods. Dora will be shocked when we get to the US and not only is there fresh Pedigree, but there's also a much wider selection of dog food, up to and including free-range organic vegetarian human-grade prime rib-flavored tofu dog food.  I hope she'll share with us when we fall on hard times.

Then again, Dora also likes horse poop, so maybe Pedigree is all she needs.

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Hammocks

When we moved to our new neighborhood last September, we were devastated that our new house (with its drop ceilings and lack of exposed wooden beams) has nowhere to hang a hammock except outside in our garage. To pour salt in the wound, our new neighborhood is the heart of the hammock industry in Nicaragua, and I would venture to guess in all of Central America (see picture below of the souvenir "Panama" hammock). There is quite a variety of hammock styles: hammocks with a wooden beam, hammocks without the wooden beam, hammock chairs (like the Panama hammock), baby hammocks (like the neon blue one in the picture below), lazy hammock chairs, and banana hammocks (seriously, hammocks to hold literal bananas). Add to that that hammocks can be ordered in any combination of colors and materials (most hammocks are made out of colored string, manila, but others are made from fabric or plastic) and you quickly realize that the possibilities for relaxation are endless.

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Training Youth Group

One of the rites of passage to become a Peace Corps Volunteer in Nicaragua is creating a youth group and doing a project with your youth group during training. I posted a long time ago about my youth group, but never posted the pictures to prove that we got our project done. At long last, here they are!

Here was our first youth group meeting:

One of the requirements for training is that we give two charlas, or workshops, to the kids on issues relevant to them. They wanted a charla about how to prepare for a job interview. The night of the presentation, the power went out, so we did it by candlelight.

The youth group also played a lot of games like Uno.

To raise money for our sign project, we had a soup sale where we made soup, sold buckets of it to people in the town, then delivered it to them for lunch.

It was a success, but I think Shannon and I did more than our fair share of vegetable chopping.

Here's the old sign; the plan was to dig it up and put the new one in its place.

But it was quickly decided that they'd just put the new sign in front of the old sign, then remove the old sign later. As far as I know, the old sign still stands directly behind the new one.

At the end of training, we had a presentation and celebration for all the youth groups from our five training towns. Here's our group giving its presentation:

And here's our official youth group portrait:

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Repostería Castro

Repostería Castro is right next to where I wait for the bus to take me to school. Sometimes that's a long wait, so I make my way down there to get some Torta Combinada (chocolate/vanilla swirl cake). Holly is a big fan of the galletas de colores (sprinkle sugar cookies) so I'll usually pick up some of those, too. They have lots of decorated cakes and other deserts, but I haven't really had much reason to buy Sponge Bob or Rosita Fresita birthday cakes... we usually just eat pizza.

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Cashews?

Cashews, or semilla de mariñon, are grown in Nicaragua and are sold pretty much everywhere. Most of the vendors in Masaya have learned the word "cashew" and are really proud of it so they like to find gringos to practice. The cashews are unsalted and really good; I'm sure if we find something like it in the US it will be $10 a baggie, but here they're just 50 cents.

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