Nicaragua

From March 2nd to March 13, I was in the beautiful country of Nicaragua. My trip was broken up into three parts so that is how I will explain it! So many things happened that I am having difficulty summarizing everything. Feel free to ask me questions for more information!

Managua:
On Monday March 2, 2009, I woke up at 4:45 am and made my way to the bus station. Our whole group took a tour bus, TransNica, together. We spent the entire day on the bus and we arrived 10 hours later around 5:00 p.m. in Managua, Nicaragua. Managua is the nation’s capital. The whole feel of Nicaragua is different than Costa Rica. Life seems more easy going and not as busy. The people are friendly and have a different accent (which was hard to understand at times). We spent Tuesday and Wednesday as what I call academic tourists. We heard from many speakers (three who went to Messiah, which was pretty cool!). We visited many of the important locations in Managua. Since I wrote my paper about the Revolution in Nicaragua, it was especially cool to see the places in real life! Overall, I really enjoyed Managua!

Home Stay:
Thursday morning marked my first day of the home stay. Most of the group traveled to communities way out in the country of Nicaragua, but I chose to go to a small town, called Masaya, with 7 others from my group. We had about a 45 minute bus ride to Masaya. We all met at a place called Alternativa, which is a micro-credit loan place that assists people in starting their own business because work is so incredibly hard to find in Nicaragua.
We met our families and off we went! My family was rather large, with a Dad (Flavio) and a Mom (Jacqueline). I had three brothers, Flavio (13), Marvin (10), and Henry (8) and a little sister, Jacqueline (3). What a crew! They were so great and I especially fell in love with Jacqueline. We must have colored every page of her coloring books together. She kept forgetting my name and so she would called me Gringa!
Anyway, my family owns their own shoe business. They hand make shoes for women and children. They make flats and high heels that are absolutely beautiful! There are about seven employees, all male! I worked Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, in the workshop. I did lots of different small jobs but mostly I used a lot of glue! It was really interesting and really difficult to work with someone in another language but it was especially difficult to work with all men. In Central America, the woman is sometimes looked down upon and only her physical characteristics are noticed. This was an interesting thing to look at and experience. I am not going to lie, I felt uncomfortable a lot of the time, but I think that I definitely learned a lot!
On Sunday, we went to this beautiful lookout point, called Catarina, where I saw a volcano and one of the lakes in Masaya. On Monday, we went and saw the other lake and the other volcano. Definitely breathtaking. I also learned how to cook los rosqillas, which are little tortilla type things. I rolled the dough and everything. I also got to go to preschool with Jacqueline. Wow, it was nuts! Twenty some three-year-olds with one teacher.
This experience was the most difficult yet most rewarding weeks of my life. I was out of my comfort zone the majority of the time but I learned so much about Nicaragua, the people and culture and even myself. I still have a lot of thoughts going on in my head and I am not quite sure what to do with all of this. I was really blessed with a fun family who loved to talk and ask me questions about life in the United States.

Granada:
On Wednesday morning, we said goodbye to our families and took a bus to Granada. I absolutely LOVED this city. It was really old with beautiful buildings and nice people. We stayed in a super nice hostel with a pool! We basically had two free days to do whatever we wanted. I explored the city and went shopping and ate at some cool restaurants. On Friday, we were on the bus to go back to Costa Rica by 7:00 a.m. and I arrived back at my Costa Rican house around 6:30 p.m! It was a long day and I was definitely really excited to see my Tican family!

Overall, this trip was wonderful. I learned so much that my mind is exhausted. I wish I was able to put into writing everything that happened but that is definitely impossible. It was weird being out of contact for almost two weeks so I am looking forward to getting back in touch!
I have Saturday to Tuesday as my Spring Break. I am planning on going to the beach with my friends on Sunday and I will return on Tuesday! Talk to you then!