A good weekend (so far)

So, following the idle week from hell, Jim and I have luckily had a pretty interesting weekend.  On Saturday, we decided to take a walk to one of the other large malls in Managua, the Plaza Inter.  We looked it up on the map, and headed out, only to get to our supposed destination and find nothing.  Long story short we ended up randomly walking through Managua for about two hours, but it wasn't a complete failure, because we got to see a good bit of the city.  After this, we stopped by the Metrocentro for lunch (Jim needs his McPollo and fries).  I went to the Nicaraguan food booth and got a random pile of delicious, mixed with rice and beans.  

We came back to Suni for a while, and I started finally working on some of the Taekwon-do testing material that I had promised myself that I would practice all summer.

Around 6:00 p.m. we finally resigned ourselves to head back to Don Juan's for the nightly ritual of eating dinner, and going to bed by 7:30.  Don Juan and his family rarely stay up past this time, and Don Juan doesn't seem to like it when we have the light on in our room and he's trying to sleep.  So, Jim and I bought booklights at Radio Shack and spend our evenings reading in our beds, until around nine.  Luckily, Douglass intercepted us on the way out and asked if we had any plans for the evening.  None, we responded, and he asked us if we wanted to go to the mall with him, because he had to go pick up a few things.  Having earlier failed in our attempt to walk to the mall, we eagerly agreed.  We ended up going to "La Galeria", which we found out is in fact the nicest one in Managua.  It's easily two or three times the size of the dayton mall, and much less boring.  Like all the buildings down here, it's integrated with the outdoors.  After Douglass picked up his goggles and swim trunks (he's starting swim lessons today) we headed back out into the mall.  We stopped in the movie theatre to see what was playing, and nearly went to see UP, when instead Douglass pulled out his cell phone.  Instead of seeing the movie, we went over to the sushi restauraunt, "Sushi Itto" where we were met by another Suni employee (from France), Charles, and his girlfriend.  A minute or two later another two guys (and their significant others) arrived, and at first I was excited to see that they looked like Gringos, but they ended up being from Finland.  We had sushi, and hung out there for a while, and truthfully if I hadn't been speaking Spanish, I could have easily confused the whole situation for anywhere in the United States.  After the Sushi place, we hit a few bars (thank God for the permeation of American music into all cultures of the world) and ended up back at Don Juan's around midnight (way past our bedtime!).  The whole evening was a lot of fun, and it was much needed after coming off this past week.  

Douglass informed us that we were invited to go to a movie night at Charles' house this evening, so we're looking forward to that.  I can only hope that the movie is in English with Spanish subtitles!  Or heck, I'd take English subtitles.  As long as I'm not in bed at 7:30 reading by flashlight, it's fine with me.