a weekend of polar opposites

I hope you are all doing well and enjoying some nice weather. It sounds like finally the weather in the States is nicer than in Nicaragua. (at least I prefer 60-70 sunny Spring days to 95 ridiculously hot ones.)

So before I get to the weekend, a bit about this past week. It was fairly normal, but the big event (for me) was rearranging some of my aula de recurso kids. I stopped working with two (the teacher said they didn't need it, and they had seemed to be doing really well, so I agreed). I moved one to once every other week because he's really smart, he just doesn't want to do his work sometimes. And then I added four new ones, and an extra Monday (so every other week) appt for two others. I didn't start working with any new students last week, so that's what I'll be doing this week! Should be exciting!

During the week, in discussions about descanso, everyone wanted to go to San Juan again because there was a big music festival. But I really didn't want to go to San Juan because I'll go to San Juan next descanso with all the volunteers for a little retreat. So I was planning to just go to the monastery all weekend, when Anne told me of another option. Anne is a volunteer from the Netherlands who boxes for fun and exercise. She invited some boxers from Managua (one of whom was world champion) to come to NPH to do a day with the kids. They came a few weeks ago, but I was on descanso. They gave Anne 50 tickets to a boxing match in Managua this past weekend. Around Wednesday, in checking what she thought were last minute details, Anne discovered that hardly any of the NPH Managua kids were planning on going to the boxing match, so she wanted to know if any of us wanted to come along. At first I wasn't interested, but then I thought, what the heck! It's free, and it'll just be the first part of the weekend and then I'll go to the monastery.

So Friday we left on the first ferry (TOO early) but that meant we got NPH transport to Managua because some people from San Jorge were going there for a meeting. So that was nice. We dropped our stuff off at the girls' house, where we would stay that night, and went to a mall for a nice lunch of a big salad. That was nice. Then we wandered the stores. They had one department store with some really nice clothes for not so much money, so I might end up back there toward the end of my year here to work on getting a teacher's wardrobe started. Then we had chocolate cake from a coffee shop, which was also quite nice. Then we went back and got ready and headed over to the boys' house with a few of the girls that wanted to come with us. We managed to round up a decent number of kids, but not the 50 that we had tickets for. Oh well. So we took a taxi to the boxing place 'cause it was on the edge of a bad neighborhood (at least that's what they told us). It actually ended up being an interesting night! I'm not a huge boxing fan or anything now, but if someone really wanted me to go to another boxing match, I probably would, at least if it was free. I don't think I'd want to pay for it. Anyway, the crowd was really great because it had some families (of the boxers mostly) and was much less drunk than some baseball game crowds I've seen. And the boxers also had a lot of respect for eachother. Almost all of them congratulated the other one after the match. It was also fun because Anne and some of the boys knew some of the boxers, so the boxers would come over and say hi and take pictures with the kids and stuff like that. So that was nice.

Saturday we headed back to the island, with a lunch break in Rivas. I headed over to the monestary for that night. I was super tired so after dinner I took a shower, with HOT water ('cause the monestary has those electric shower things) and got in bed and read for a while and went to bed early.

Sunday I went to church at the monestary with Shirley (the nun) and then afterwards we had pancakes for lunch. I invited her for breakfast on Monday, but she said she needed to eat at 6:30 after her prayers 'cause then she had to do irrigating all morning. So we had them for lunch on Sunday instead. Then I talked to my parents that afternoon and watched movies that night.

Monday I relaxed in the morning and headed back over to the volunteer house after lunch to use the internet. So a very contrasting weekend, with a boxing match on one hand and the monestary on the other! But it was nice. I'll get some pictures up later, if the internet cooperates!