Saturday, September 16, 2006

Finally, some pics!

I was trying to think of a title for this blog because nothing in particular has really happened, but I´ll just have to type until I think of one. Let´s see what´s been going on in the past couple of days...or weeks. Lots of studying and training! I´ve heard that even though the training is really intense, don´t take advantage because once you get to your site, things really slow down! Umm, I took my first bucket bath last week. It actually isn´t bad at all, in some ways even better than taking a shower because you can better control the amount of cold water your body is exposed to. : ) The water goes about probably every couple of days, not sure why because it rains enough here. I found out why the electricity goes out almost everyday though. It´s because (according to my host parents), the electric company shuts it off to conserve power/energy. I´ve gotten pretty used to it though and have learned to put my headlamp in a convenient place, so I don´t have to scramble around for it. Everyone still laughs at me when I wear it.

On Thursday, we had a birthday party for my host sister, Sacharis. It was the most moving birthday party I think I´ve ever seen. I guess for some evangelical families it´s typically to have a church service in the home, which is what she did. The living room was packed with people from the church, friends, family, neighbors, you name it. The entire service was dedicated to her birthday and at the end they sang the birthday song while every person went up to give her a hug and wish her a happy birthday. Then, her mother and father said something special about, as well as anyone else who wanted to. Of course after this, the crowd was pretty teary-eyed, including myself. Afterwards, they passed out arroz a la valenciana (a typical Nica rice dish) with bread and of course, cake. It was a great night!

This is a good example to show you how the Nica time system works. Yesterday, I was supposed to go to the river at 10:00 with my sister and her friend, which in Nica time means 10:30/11:00. So, I was ready and asked where they were and apparently they had gone to see the festivities for their independence celebrations. My mother then asked if I wanted to go as well, and we took a walk down to walk the bands play. When we got back, I guess plans had changed because they said we were now going to the beach (which produced no arguments from me except that I couldn´t go swimming...you just don´t spring the beach on a girl, especially when you have to take quick bucket baths, if you know what I mean). So, we all piled into the Toyota pick-up truck they had borrowed, the mom and son in the front and me and my 2 host brothers and sister in the back. Apparently, it´s not illegal to ride in the back as long as you are sitting down in the bed. This is a very common means of transportation here and I swear sometimes it´s as if there´s a contest to see how many Nica´s you can fit in the back of a truck. It took about 2 hours to get there because every time we would gain enough speed, the driver would have to slam on the brakes or go off of the road a little to avoid the tremendous amount of potholes in the road. It´s kind of exciting at first until about the 5th time your butt bounces off of the metal bed. The beach was absolutely amazing and beautiful! I think I´ve changed my mind and wouldn´t mind being placed by the beach. It was the Pacific side and the water was so perfectly warm. Hopefully, if I can figure it out I will put some pics up. We could only stay for a short while because apparently the water overtakes the beach pretty quickly, but I definitely expressed an interest to return. We also had lunch while we were there at this little outside bar. I ate some kind of fish which was delicious and some chicken and my family had salad and turtle eggs. I am pretty brave about trying most things, but when I saw the runny yellow substance inside, I just had to refuse.

Well, I guess that´s all for now. I need to head home because all day today we had a training to learn about how to make a tree nursery and garden with our youth groups. I´m excited to begin working with them. Monday is our first official meeting.

O.k., so I figured it out. Here are some pictures I took while at the beach, well, actually eating and riding in the truck. My time is running out so I try to post more next time.





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