A Lesson In Pain

So most of you know that I am a bit of a wuss when it comes to spicy foods.  Costa Rica doesn´t do much in the way of spicy food but in Nicaragua they do put a little bit of spice in some of their dishes.  Today Jose and I decided to try some of the local fare by taking a chance with the street food.  We got several things to try and brought them back to the hostel to eat, after washing our hands.  There was this one local dish that was amazing!!  They put it in a couple of banana leaves as the bowl, some plantains, yucca (a potato and yucca cross kind of thing), meat and some cabbage salad that is kind of pickled but it was really good.  I was eating the food with a little of everything in each bite and drinking my bottled water when, in one of my bites I suddenly bit into something that went "pop" in my mouth.  I immediately felt excruciating pain throughout my entire mouth.  The burning was horrendous and the pain didn´t seem to end!!  Jose is laughing at me, my mouth is on fire, my nose is running, I was crying...it was SO painful!

The culprit?  A bright green seed-like thing that was about the size of a pomegranate seed.  I had seen them in the salad, assumed they were spicy and thus avoided them.  That final bite had one hidden in it and Jose  didn{t believe me.  Now I have to find more, make him taste it, and (hopefully) have him say: "oh yah, that is kind of spicy."

I can check off a couple of things from my Central America "to-do list":
I have had my favorite kind of beer once again, Toña, and it is as good as I remember it.
I got to hear the rain fall on a corregated aluminum roof and I was rushed back to the small house in Monteverde that I lived in two years ago.
I got to climb the strangler fig in Monteverde
Jose got to meet my host mom.

I have yet to see a rainbow, but I have a feeling that it will happen soon.