Gardening with a machete....?

Yes, it's true. My baby has been cutting down a ring of jungle overgrowth in one of our gardens. I spent yesterday hacking down shrubbery with a machete, then venturing into the forest to take down stalks of bamboo, which we cut into smaller pieces and split down the middle. Yes, it is just as much of a workout as it sounds like. I love usng a machete, though, you just grab a stick to protect your legs and hack away. It cuts the weeds like butter. All of this we were taught by our new father, Ruffino and his son Maximo.
Otherwise, we've just been building an oven, a firepit, a flat area for a composting box (which is what the bamboo was for), and extending the vermiculture bin.
For breakfast, we've had the most amazing meals, made by our resident mother, Maria. She uses fresh ingredients for everything, so we always have rice and/or bread, beans, plantains, scrambled eggs, different pork and chicken dishes, salads with tomatoes and onions with lime, and various other delicious things (plus snacks of fruit from the trees on the property like starfruit and coconut). I've been able to help Maria a bit in the afternoon, so I am learning to cook some delicious things :)
Then at night we head down to la playa (the beach) to do swimming and running through the sand (which, when the sweat drips from you like a faucet during the day, feels amazing). The beaches are beautiful, and the waves are huge.
The people here are wonderfully welcoming and nice. Our group has become really tight very quickly. My Spanish is improving exponentially, I get a lot of opportunities to speak with our family and other locals solely in Spanish. They're teaching me lots of vocabulary and basic phrases.
All in all, I am learning so much and loving Nicaragua. This is definitely the kind of stuff I have a passion for.