Day 3.

Life just keeps getting better.

This morning I woke up to a feast that my tica mami had made me. I ate gallo pinto (rice and beans), a fried egg, a huge plate of pineapple, some bread from musmanni (the delicious bakery chain), and drank easily four glasses of delicious orange juice. Not from concentrate. And I can say that because she squeezed the oranges herself.

From there I ventured over to Alanna's house which is actually the house that my family lived in for two months when we first arrived here. It's amazing to have a friend from the states be here to share these experiences. We hopped the bus into downtown San Jose and then took the bus to La Carpio. All the stops are located in new places, so it's good to have Alanna with me to show me the way.

La Carpio has changed a lot since I was last here. I noticed many more shops and bakeries, and while there is still only one main paved road, there are many more sidewalks instead of the garbage-packed mudslides I was so used to. It seems that the are is more of a community now rather than just some scraps of metal filled with Nicaraguans.

I got to see so many people I haven't seen in ages....I was talking with two moms (Carmen and Lorena) who are now the cooks on the property. When we were here for a year, their children were some of my playmates and it's been great to talk with them. I walked right past the youngest girl, Valesqui, without even recognizing here! She was six years old while we were here and now she is twelve. It's crazy to think that she is now the age that I was when I was here before.

Also, I heard some absolutely crazy news. One of my best friends, Mileidy, had a baby! She now lives in Los Chiles right next to the Nicraguan border, but Lorena told me she has a six month old little boy. I really hope I get to see her at some point.

Now that I was caught up, I actually got to start working. First we did some volleyball drills with a group of girls for their PE class and then of course we played futbol. The whole time this group of about forty kids was gathered on the bottom field, all with instruments. I didn't know if they were from school or what exactly, but they had some sort of teacher who lead them in wonderfully organized chaos that was actually a lot of fun to dance to while we were playing. Apparently this happens a couple times a week, especially as September approaches before their Independence Day.

After playing for a while (something that got me very sweaty/tired), Carmen and Lorena fed us a delicious helping of some type of Nicaraguan dish that included masa dumplings and chicken....it was delicious.

Then it was time for a sort of study hall in the afternoon. Luckily my math skills came in handy as I worked with a group of girls who were in sixth grade and struggling with fractions. The twist? These girls are in between 15 and 21, and two of them had kids of their own, one of which was four years old. A lot of these girls are just that--girls. They have fun, they play sports, they like to tease and love being hugged, They can barely complete a multiplication table and struggle with reading. At the same time though, they have their own families. Many of them are married, already have their own children, or have some on the way. It's such a struggle that they deal with. On one hand they want to live out the childhood they never got, but at the same it's too late because they have already been assigned the roll of parents.

Tomorrow I am going to go into San Jose in the morning with Alanna to get some things I need for my room, and then we will travel into La Carpio to help with the girls' program in the afternoon. From what I understand, I will be having my own group of girls ages 12 to 13 who I will meet with every Saturday. We will play together, pray together, and grow together in these next nine months. It's incredible to see how this is actually happening!

I need to get some sleep and don't expect these blog entries to be this long and this frequent...up until now I have been very hesitant to use my camera and so I must document what happens in writing. I think next week I'm going to start toting my camera around.

Bendeciones,
Hannah