I saw monkies!!!

Hello Everyone. I have decided to start this blog after the amazing day I had yesterday. I have been in my training town for one week as of yesterday and I am really liking it. It is a very small town with no internet access or phone booths that have international capabilities but yesterday I was able to purchase a cell phone in the nearest city,which is about a half hour bus ride from my town. Today in Nicaragua is the day of Fatima and I am going to join my family at Mass and a celebration. I have not visited the church yet and am pretty excited. Apparently my host sister thought Peace Corps was an evangelical organization so they didn{t think I would be interested in going to church with them. HOnestly I have been so busy I wouldn{t have had the time but today is a special occasion and I reallly want to check it out. Yesterday was a truly amazing day. In the morning I visited Jinotepe, the nearest city, for the first time. It was my first taste of freedom,as the Peace corps and my host family have been very protective my first week here. My host family are great. I have three sisters ages 21, 16 and 9. They are all super nice and fun. All of them are very involved in traditional dance and I think they are pretty popular in the town because both of the older girls were crowned Queen in the Fiestas Patronales in the past years, which is a pretty big deal. I think there is some sort of pageant and they have to showcase their talents. They are both very good dancers in the folklore tradition, and I think this was what gave them the edge. Anyway, my parents are also great. The dad is a carpenter and the mom is a teacher i the elementary school. They both work very hard. I am the first Aspirante, as PC trainees are called,to live with them and I hope to make the best impression. They are incredibly hospitable. Yesterday, after I went to Jinotepe, my friend stopped by the house to ask if we were going to visit the Finca. My host dad{s father owns property outside of the town, sort of like a farm but in the jungle. The word Finca, I think means like farm or grove. Anyway, the family had invited us earlier in the week and we all decided to go. We walked down our street about 4 blocks where the town ends and the road turns to dirt. We walked down a trail where we were surrounded by grapefruit, mango and coconut trees. After a few minutes we came to a cottage where there lives an artist. He has a workshop and very beautiful land. It was the most tranquil, peaceful place I have seen so far. There were tons of flowers and it was actually green. He made pottery and there were potted plants everywhere in the pots,which were beautiful. After that we walked on and they pointed out some monkies. I thought they were messing with us at first. I could not believe they were actually monkies so they took us off the trail to the trees, where we saw trees filled with about 15 monkies, called Congos. They are small and black and they were eating mangoes. I cannot even describe how awesome it was. It was so cool I almost cried. I never thought in my life that I would be out somewhere looking at monkies in their natural habitat. I felt like something out of National Geographic. My friend and I took about a million pictures and a couple of them are actually good. I am going to try to post them if I can figure it out. After the monkies we walked on to a hut in the middle of the jungle where my host dad{s father lives. He is about 80 years old and he prefers the jungle to the town. Saying that the town is too loud. I have to agree. He has two horses and a few dogs and of course chickens. He was very nice and smiley. We hung out there for a while and my host dad fashioned a tool out of a long branch and a machete. He used it to get us coconuts, which he peeled and opened so we could drink the milk. It was surreal. Sitting in a hut drinking fresh coconut milk. My Spaanish is still very minimal but I tried to express how much the experience meant to me. Fortunately my friend speaks fluently so she was able to tell my family how amazing the experience was. After we returned to town, we visited the home of my host dad{s aunt to build an altar to Fatima. There I met his grandmother who is 106 YEARS OLD!!! Later we went to a fiesta,which was a fundraiser for the church. My host sisters tried to get me to dance which was pretty bad. We only stayed for a while because after the day I was super tired. Well, that{s all for now. I am going to post this and then try to post photos. Wish me luck. As many of you know I am not technologically inclned and it does not help that the directions are in Spanish.