Friday, Jan 13

From Dillon

Hola from la playa in San Juan del Sur! As I type this, I am sitting on the beach and watching the waves crash and the sun set on the horizon. Today was, without question, my favorite day in Nicaragua. We all woke up early today to get a head start. This was difficult for many of us who decided to stay up late last night playing charades, in which the guys handily defeated the girls). After eating a nutritious chocolate chip pancake breakfast in our hotel, Carmen, Amiel, and Sandhya left to paint Cecilia and Edwin’s new store. The rest of us loaded into Jane’s book mobile to bring books to rural school children.  The ride there was like a roller coaster. The streets through the mountainside were bumpy, and we had to cross through a few streams. We had to stop multiple times for cows in the middle of the street and we even got to see monkeys hanging out of a tree. Matt, Pratik, Chelsea, and Stephanie went to one school while Leslie, Dipti, Nikita, Zaida and I went to another.

Upon our arrival, we saw a small building with a basketball court and what looked like the remains of an old swing set. Next thing we knew, there was a group of 20 school children, ages 3-7, coming out to greet us. We wasted no time getting down to business. Leslie used her Spanish skills to read the children Llama Llama Rojo Pajamas. Once she finished that, we went around the room and colored pictures of llamas while the children eagerly checked out books from two large containers. It was rewarding seeing the smiles on each child’s face as he or she picked out a book. In America, many children don’t appreciate a simple book with all of the technology that’s out there. (i.e. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sv4Hpz-GI3g)   But in rural Nicaragua, these children acted like we had given them gold. I think this speaks to a greater lesson about the importance of cultural perspective.

Once the children had checked out their books, I noticed that a lot of the boys were going outside behind the building so I decided to follow them out. To my surprise, I found one of the older boys reaching into a hole in the wall and pulling out handfuls of live snails. All the boys proceeded to grab them and quickly slurped the defenseless snails out of their shells. They offered me one but I had to respectfully decline. To distract them from their snail habit, I offered them my camera. It was fun to see how excited they got over taking pictures. I then played tag with the group for the rest of my time there.  By the time we met up with the other group, I was both exhausted and exhilarated. This was definitely an experience that I’ll always remember.

For lunch we stopped at a local seafood joint. Good fish and shrimp dishes with lots of guacamole. After lunch, we finally got to go on our canopy tour. Essentially, it was a series of zip lines on top of a mountain. The ride up the mountain was a bit bumpy to say the least. Once we got to the top of the mountain we had an incredible view of San Juan del Sur. Next thing I knew, I was hooked on to the zip line and speeding down the mountain, hundreds of feet above the ground. It was one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life and I am happy to report that everyone survived.

After zip lining, we went to Dinner at Hotel Villa Isabel. My group’s micro-entrepreneur, Roxana, cooked dinner for everyone. Without question, it was the best dinner we have had in Nicaragua. During the dinner, we all had a chance to speak with our entrepreneur. We met Roxana’s family and made plans to move clothing shelves and racks into her house. When the dinner was over she even gave us a tour of her house so we could take the proper measurements. Our UAM teammate, Roger, is driving back to Managua to pick up our parts tomorrow and we will put them all in her house on Monday. A group of us are looking forward to exploring San Juan del Sur’s nightlife tonight. That’s it for now. Buenos noche y adios!