Fiesta with the Girls

On Thursday night we had a farewell fiesta with the girls we spend time with each Thursday night. We ate pizza and then made homemade ice cream in a bag. You put milk, vanilla and a little sugar into a ziplock baggie. Then you put that into a larger bag that is filled with ice and salt. After about ten minutes of squeezing and kneading, you end up with ice cream. It was a lot of fun!

Amy is helping one of the girls get the plastic bags sealed correctly.

Wow! It worked!

Time to eat!

At the end of the evening the girls gave us a book of photos and handwritten cards to thank us for all the time we spent with them. The book is filled with sweet memories. We will miss them very much.

The Path of Chocolate

We went to a cacao farm today. We even got to plant cacao trees.

These seedlings will start to produce pods in about a year and a half.

This scarecrow helps to keep the birds away from the cacao pods.

The cacao seeds are found inside these pods.

The inside of the pod doesn't look too appealing, but these seeds produce amazing chocolate.

The seeds ferment for about five days.

Then they get spread out to dry. Every two hours they need to be raked.

We pounded some dry cacao seeds and added sugar to make some chocolate the old-fashioned way. It tasted great!

Then we headed inside to see the process done with modern machinery.

We all got to taste it. It was absolutely delicious. Chocolate is absolutely amazing.

Where do we live??

Our street finally got a street sign! We live on Calle 9 but we've never had any street signs in our neighborhood. We were certainly confused when we saw the sign they put up on the corner. Did someone make a mistake? Or did they change the name of our street? We have no idea but we think we'll still be able to find our way home.