charlesbreland.com

all right, time for my Nica post. I’ll put some pics here, and a video at the bottom. the full set of pictures are out on my website. it was an amazing experience and made for some great pics, so i hope you’ll check it out. the website is www.charlesbreland.com and i’ll have it under my albums page.

sooooo, here are the pics. to give you a feel where we were. we landed in managua, then went to granada and masaya, before heading north to esteli, cusmapa and samoto. after a couple of days up that way we went down to the island of ometepe, one last night in granada and then back home. that amounted to eight days of meeting a bunch of people and learning a lot. the people at fabretto were great, and we got a ton of exposure to their community centers. we still don’t know where within the country we’ll end up, and what exactly our mission there will be, but it was an exciting trip and i can’t wait to go forward with this organization (which FYI we’ve named Rayo De Sol). further FYI, we’re now incorporated and are currently in the process of applying for 501c3 status, so things are moving right along.

here’s just a hodge podge of nicaragua videos. this runs the gammet from “el club” to some kids reading mothers day poems to stephen doing some jump rope to the amusement of some locals who look on.

So we headed down to the Bahamas to celebrate the impending end of Drew’s singlehood, before he lashed on his left hand manacle. Here’s a great picture of Drew’s front teeth.

here doug thinks to himself….”what can i do to get in big trouble with my soon to be sister-in-law? what can i do to cause drew mild disfigurement?”

brad’s a big shot down in the bahamas.

here, he and drew share a laugh in the van on the way out to the golf course.

jabro stares out confidently, surveying the course with the eye of a man who is about to steal $200 from dave.

doug and bill play a game of “capture the flag”

ok, doug really didn’t like this shot of jagermeister

but he really wouldn’t like what happened a few shots later. drew would have one too many drinks and fall face first on the pavement. we’ll run these in rapid order. my favorite features are (in no particular order) the people in the background looking for the tooth on the ground (quote from me, “um, it’s not a finger, we can’t reattach it.”), doug looking at drew’s face, trying to convince himself it’s not that bad, then covering his face in shame and going to look for the tooth before giving up and laying down on the ground, AND dave pointing out for drew where his missing tooth used to be.

here’s drew’s face the next morning. looking good drew, lookin good

then we went out fishing, but before we took off, there was a major league pose down on boat number two (the fishless fishing boat).

now a few picks from our boat (which did land 6 fish)

this fish ended up being the largest one caught

and consequently, i won this sweet lid as best angler of drew-a-palooza.

for the record, to qualify for best angler, you just wait for a big fish to hit the line when it’s your turn to reel. a real skills-fest.

when we got back to the dock, the fishless fishing boat was a little shocked to see that we had actually caught something. i love their expresssions. priceless!

here’s a team photo

and here’s a shot of the beach.

here’s the Drew’s Big Night Out Commemorative Video. the weekend was awesome and it was great to celebrate with drew. drew’s tooth was repaired the day after we got back and all was well.

No, not that kind of sweet 16. Dietze and I survived a rainstorm to watch LSU take down the Dukies and then saw an amazing finish between WV and Texas. Then Em and I caught the LSU/Texas game.

Not pictured are Dietze and I.

so here are some video clips, big baby and lsu beating up on the dukies, the texas cheerleaders and ambiguously cheerful mascot, and the Texas game winner.