Jan 19

This first part is mostly for people who have been to Nicaragua before ´cause it´s news from Salinas (big news!). (But the rest of you can read it). So I called Salinas today to tell Orlando and Pabla that I´m coming to visit next weekend (my first descanso) and then they called me back tonight to tell me that there´s a wedding next Saturday. Guess who´s getting married?? Juan Manuel! So I get to go to the wedding which is super exciting!! I dunno who he´s marrying, I assume whoever he was dating when Casey and Jen went to visit in the summer. Anyway, so that´s big news number one. Big news number two is that Agustin already GOT married (to the girl he was dating last January.) And no, I don´t know when he got married. But that´s pretty crazy. And I thought you all might like to know since neither of those boys thought to let us know. So I should know more after next weekend.

Anyway, things here at NPH are not nearly so exciting, but they´re good. We arrived on the island last Saturday. I was sick Saturday-Monday, so that was no fun. Monday we had tours of everything, so that was nice, even though I was sick. Then since then we´ve been working as tios and tias. So we´re with the kids all day. It´s pretty fun, but really laid back since it´s vacation and a lot of the pequeños are gone anyway. So I´ve been with the older girls (ages 14-18 about). It´s been nice. We get there at 7 and they´re up and ready to do a morning chore. One day we took dried corn off the cob (I dunno what you call that). It wasn´t too hard, but it made my thumbs hurt! The next day they cut the grass with machetes, but Kiki (a German volunteer who´s with me in the older girls house) and I decided that we would probably hurt ourselves or someone else with the machete, so we raked up the grass that the others cut, which was quite a bit easier. Another day they cleaned the ranchon (like a big picnic shelter) where they have been eating all their meals. After their morning work they all shower and get ready for breakfast, which is usually 9-930. Then they clean for a really long time because they procrastinate. Then somtimes there´s an activity (like today we walked down to the NPH beach, which is 5 mins from the kids´ houses and 1 minute from our house) or sometimes they just relax til lunch, which is at 2 or somtimes 3. And then there´s almost always some sort of afternoon activity, and then they shower around 5 or 6 and then dinner is at 7 or 8 and then sometimes they have evening activites too. Last week Wednesday (I think) we went to a beach all day (well, 11-5), so that was nice. And then yesterday (Friday) we went to San Marcos, the NPH farm and hung out there all day. There´s a beach there too, comes from living on an island I guess!! Let´s see, what else.. Oh, one day we ate sugar cane at the NPH beach, yum!! You don´t really eat it. You just chew it and swallow the liquid and spit out the rest. Friday night the volunteers all went out to eat and then went to a disco in Moyogalpa (the town on the island where the ferry arrives.) It was an open air disco and it played all types of music, reggaeton, US oldies, salsa, merengue, chacha, so that was nice.
Tomorrow is church and then I think maybe they´re going to play soccer in the afternoon. And then Monday is our last day as tios or tias. Tuesday we leave early to go to eat breakfast in San Jorge with important office people and then all the volunteers (old and new) are going to Laguna de Apoyo to relax and reflect. We´re staying one night there and then Wednesday late afternoon I´ll go back to Rivas with the group that doesn´t have descanso. I´ll stay there one night, ´cause we´ll get there too late to catch a bus to Salinas. Michelle is coming with me, so that´ll be nice. So Thursday morning we´ll go to Salinas. Then hopefully we can go to the beach on Friday, and then the wedding is Saturday, and then Sunday is church in the morning and then Sunday at noon we´ll catch a bus back to Rivas and then go back to the island. Then the pequeños have one more week of vacation and then school (and our normal jobs) start Feb 4.