Lovin' León!

FIRST POST FROM NICARAGUA!

So my plane landed Thursday night, and I'm pretty sure I fell in love with Nicaragua before the plane even landed! It was already dark, but you could tell just from the lights exactly where the beach was.

Of course, my dad wanted to know how clearing customs was... It was easy. It took like, 30 seconds.

Also, since I stepped off the plane, I have not been cold. It is SO hot, all the time. Apparently this is the hottest time of the year, and apparently León is the hottest city in Nicaragua. Wonderful. But I love it. And the cold showers are the best!

So we took a big van from the airport in Managua to León, and there was no air conditioning (of course) so we rolled down all the windows. Well, actually, they didn't "roll down" they just slide open. But anyways. León is about an hour and a half away from Managua. And I think I'm getting a pretty good feel for how traffic works in Nicaragua: whoever honks first goes through the intersection first. And people generally drive on the right side of the road... generally.

We arrived at our house and it is SO cute. I love it! We have green wooden doors, and then a metal gate thing that swings open. Lots of people have them, and whenever anyone's home we leave the green doors open, and the metal gate closed. And then there's a little living room and a kitchen, and then a little wash-your-clothes-by-hand area that I'm excited to learn how to use (or I could just pay our neighbor lady 20 Cordoba to do my laundry for me... Which would be a little bit less than a dollar). Then, there's our hallway, which is halfway outside and halfway inside. So when it rains half  the hallway gets wet, which isn't really a problem because we're always so hot. And our rooms are really just walls and a roof and a bathroom. We do have running water, but its always cold. And we sleep on cots, which seems to be hard for a lot of girls here but I'm totally fine. (Thanks for all those summers sleeping on your cots, Grandma Kimball!!) We always have two or three fans in any room that we're in because it's so hot. So in my mind the nights are really windy... but they're not. There's just a bunch of fans in our bedroom. Oh! And at the end of the hallway there's a very precarious staircase that leads up to THE ROOF. I know, right? HECKA awesome. And up there is where our clothesline is and there's a couple lawn chairs and a hammock (I took a quick nap out there today... Heaven.)

Okay... so that was my first two hours in Nicaragua.

The next morning Arturo and Angie (our Country Directors, they've been here for a few weeks already) took us to la Iglesia San Juan, the church a couple blocks south of us. And it was there that they told us (the group of volunteers) that we would be going on a scavenger hunt... without them. Crazy. But we totally rocked it. My team won (duh). Along the way we made lots of new friends. Particularaly with a group of 14-16 year old school girls. They showed us the way to el mercado central and we answered questions about the US (But no, unfortunately, we don't know Justin Beiber).

Then that night we met with a group of Nicaraguans at a local church to talk about an English class that we're going to be teaching. That was fun and scary all at the same time.

Then on Saturday we made a trip down to a beach called Las Peñitas. It was about 20  mins away by bus- BUT we had to wait probably a half hour for the bus to leave. Buses here aren't on a time schedule, they just leave when they're full!

At the beach we were bombarded by kids selling necklaces and things out of shells. I told and 11 year old named Antonio that I would buy one later... he made my pinky promise. So I ended up buying three necklaces from three different kids, and then giving a can of Pringles to the rest of them and told them to leave me alone. Then we played soccer with some of the teenagers ( I think their names were Efrel and Wilbur). Pretty much it was two white girls versus one white guy and two Nicaraguans. Given our circumstances, we held our own pretty dang well!

Here's a picture of Wilbur, Me, Efrel, and Antonio... (Antonio was upset because I told him "later" again). Also, yes, I am very sunburnt. No need to mention this to me, I am already very well aware.

And here's some pictures from playing soccer with them. Running in sand = difficult.

Look! Even Efrel was tired!

 This was me while we were waiting on the bus we took to las penitas, with a cool little market in the background. I can't figure out how to turn the picture... so you'll have to turn your heads...

 A local guy from Canada who runs a super delicious taco stand gave me Aloe from a real Aloe plant. My team says that a lot of people have those even in the US, but I've never seen them there before, so I thought it was super cool.

 On the bus back I chatted with baby Benjamín and his family. They were going to León to visit Benjamín's grandma!

So I pretty much have multiple sunburn lines.... hopefully they'll even out into a nice Nicaraguan tan.

A lot of you are probably thinking "What the heck? I thought she was going down there to do service??" I TOTALLY AM. I PROMISE. haha We met with some locals Friday night and we're setting up an English class for them, and tomorrow morning I'm going with Arturo to meet with some other NGOs that are already down here to see what we can do to help!

Que tengan un buen día! Les extraño!