Russell Creamery

Well, we started our own little ice cream business. Last year, Chase bought me an ice cream maker for my birthday. We’ve experimented with different flavors in the last several months, and somewhere along the way, the idea hatched that we should start a business. This, in large part, is due to the fact that good ice cream is hard to find in Nicaragua. I can’t count the times the  Nica Russells have sat around talking about how much we miss Blue Bell. So we started with Vanilla, Peanut Butter, and Coffee flavored ice creams. This week we are going to add Strawberry in the mix and I have plans to make Mint Chocolate Chip as well. Maybe we’ll venture into the Sherbet or Sorbet realms eventually. Chase made the creative labels pictured above and so far, we are really enjoying our little business venture.

the cats strike back

When we first got our cats, our vet told us that healthy weight gain for kittens should be about a quarter pound per week. We own a Wii Fit Plus, and one of its features is the ability to weigh your pets, and it keeps track of their progress. This is fun for us, but Ralph and Remington kind of hate it.

After several months, we asked our vet when this process should stop. He said that a healthy cat should weigh no more than eight pounds. Anything over that, and our cats would one day be diabetic. Oops. Ours had faithfully gained their quarter pound until they weighed eleven pounds! From the way they always acted like they hadn’t eaten in days each time I fed them, I (Chase) had felt bad and continued to increase the amount of food I gave them. Turns out I was feeding them more than double what they needed. I quickly reduced their food amounts to the correct level.

It’s been war even since. The cats now loudly complain every time they feel it’s mealtime and suddenly become very affectionate whenever a can of Pringles is open. Ralph even ran off with Joanna’s bag of chips while she wasn’t looking.

With regards to destroying things in the home, they’ve really gotten a lot better, so we don’t always lock them in the bathroom anymore when we leave the house. Yesterday for the first time in a few months, we left them out for the entire time we were at work. We returned to find their response to their new diet:

This is a picture of one of the two special cat treat bags they dug out (from deep inside our cat stuff bucket), chewed through, and ate the entire contents of. This afternoon snack was worth about a day or two’s worth of healthy eating. I guess even cats have binge days when on a diet.

But they look fatter to me already.

5 years

A few weeks ago, on April 15th, Chase and I celebrated our 5 year anniversary. In our pre-marital counseling with Bill Brewer, one thing he recommended to us was taking a day or two to go away and celebrate our anniversary every year. In the States, we began this tradition by visiting a different Bed & Breakfast each year, but since moving here, we’ve changed it up a little bit. This year, we went to the Holiday Inn. I know in the States that the Holiday Inn is no big deal, but here, it’s actually a really big deal. Not only are the rooms air-conditioned, but they also have bath tubs, cable TV, and carpeting, all of which are luxuries to us these days. Anyway, we stayed for two nights and had a great time (except for that Chase was having intense back pain the whole time!) We went out for a Steak dinner one night at one of our favorite restaurants here and generally enjoyed celebrating our last 5 years of married life together.

the sweaty walk to fluency (and the non-arrival at said place)

For those of you who have never had the need to communicate well in another language, let me offer a friendly word of discouragement: it’s harder than you think.

When I first arrived in Nicaragua, I had more or less mastered what I considered “Level 1 Spanish.” In other words, on a scale of 1 to 10, with fluency being 10, I considered myself about a 3. Roughly 20,000 hours later (counting a few hundred of intensive language study, time spent sleeping, time spent in the States, time spent complaining about things, etc.), my Spanish is probably 50 times better than it was, yet I would consider myself about a 5. Turns out, when I arrived, I was more of a 0.1.

Fluency is like the time you had the bright idea to walk to a destination several miles away that you’ve driven to a hundred times. You begin your journey with three thoughts:

1. This is saving gas and giving me great exercise!
2. I could really see myself doing this all the time. Everyone should!
3. The drive takes about 15 minutes, so walking should take about an hour, right?

WRONG! You arrive many hours later smelling like you’ve been mowing the lawn and with three new thoughts:

1. I will never do that again.
2. The city should really have better sidewalks.
3. Who can I call to give me a ride home?

This is to say that at first glance, fluency seems like it only consists in being able to understand and be understood. But once you get close to mutual understanding, you realize that fluency is farther away than you thought because you realize that you still can’t do with it what you can do with English. You can’t bend it to your will. You can’t be verbally clever so you revert to slapstick. Your descriptions of things are colorless and boring. Your explanations are so full of word substitutions and explain-arounds (the word I learned for this in college is circumlocution) as to be rendered nearly useless. You don’t know the nuances of meaning in all the synonyms for give, try, or talk. Heck, you don’t even know the synonyms themselves. But even bigger than increasing your vocabulary are the issues of identity and meaning. In other words: what is my personality translated in Nicaraguan Spanish, and how can I tweak my actions and speech to have a similar effect on Spanish speakers that I have in English?

For example, in American English, I’m the kind of person who says things like, “Yeah, man!” But am I the kind of person who says things like “¡Sí, hombre!”? I use movie quotes in everyday life, and I love to speak in stupid accents, but is there a Nica equivalent to this? How do I make a bad pun to get people to laugh against their will?

Also, a lot of Nicaraguans call others by their physical characteristics: fatty, shorty, skin problem, big-head, etc., and it seems that no one gets offended by this. Does that mean this is okay? Is my personality such that I should do this too? Is it weird if I insist on not doing it?

Who are my friends going to be? Should I choose to imitate the way they speak? Would that be “me”? If I work hard to “be myself” is this applauded and respected or considered pretentious and rude? How do I explain things to people who think on an entirely different wavelength?

 

All this is to explain to you why I may guffaw if you ask me if I’m getting “pretty fluent.” The answer is a discouraged “no.” If I ever get there years from now, can I call you for a ride home?

 

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Bonus material:

Ironically, I’m not even sure how to say “fluent” in Spanish. The following conversation has happened to me more than once (traducido por tu beneficio):

“I’m not very…fluente.”

“What?”

(now with less confidence) “I’m not very fluente. That no is a word?”

“MmmmNo.”

“How says one ‘fluente’ then?”

“Fluente.’” (accompanied by nose scrunch which communicates non-understandment)

“Yes.”

(another nose scrunch. long pause.)

“What I want to say is that I don’t talk good. What’s opposite of talk good?”

“Bad?”

“No…well yes. But no. Uhhhh…I talk bad, so I’m trying to—I’m testing to—I want to say that I’m not very…”

“Aw, you’ve learned a lot of Spanish.”

“Uh, thanks. I want to know how to say that I’m not…Doesn’t matter. I’m sorry.”

empty-nesters at 27

Many of you may know Joanna, but in case you don’t, I’ll fill you in. Joanna is Chase’s 18 year old sister. We invited her to come live in Nicaragua and attend high school here (at Nicaragua Christian Academy, where Chase’s brother, David teaches) for the first semester of her junior year. That semester turned into a year and that year turned into 2 years. And this June, Joanna will graduate from NCA and go back to the States for college. Joanna has been living with us for the last 2 years, so I think we will feel a little like empty-nesters when she leaves! We’ve really enjoyed having her here and getting to know her better and are really sad to see her go! Here are a few of her Senior Pictures that I stole from facebook. Enjoy!