In case some of you haven’t seen, our kids and the
Willard girls have their own blog now: http://365nica.wendywillard.com/. So, I guess that leaves this blog to Erinn and
me.
So today marks the end of our first two weeks in
Nicaragua. In that time, we’ve made some new friends, visited a few new awesome
places, and gotten to catch up with some old friends. I was also surprised with
a little birthday party with our neighbors on Sunday, and then Sammy, Corinna,
and Caeli started school the next day.
After these past two weeks, some things are definitely starting to get easier and
more familiar here. Things like getting around on our own, shopping, and those
sorts of things are definitely easier. Erinn even drove to the grocery store a
few nights ago. That might not sound like much to you, but if you have ever
driven here or some other places, you’d understand. It can be pretty
intimidating, but I don’t think any trip out here has ever been boring. Sunday
we saw a bus jammed with people (a common sight) moving along at full speed,
when a guy opened the back door, climbed over to the ladder to the roof,
climbed it, grabbed his basket of stuff, climbed back down to the door with the
basket, and waited for the bus to slow down to a relatively reasonable speed
before he hopped off. For a minute, I thought a new Die Hard movie was being
filmed here or something. Today, we were taking what we thought would a
leisurely trip out for a sushi lunch in Managua, when we noticed the clouds
looked like rain in that direction. Well, the rain turned out to be a
torrential downpour that completely flooded most of the roads. I mean, like the
roads had their own currents type of flooding. If I got pulled over today, I’m
pretty sure they would’ve asked me for my boater’s license. Then we showed up
at the sushi place completely drenched. It was a nice lunch with friends
anyway, and the rain let up by the time we left (and it didn’t even rain at our
house).
We’re getting used to our house and the flow of life
within it. The kids are all sleeping well and enjoying their own rooms. We have fewer “pets” (bugs and geckos) than we did when we moved
in, and the ones that continue to hang out go pretty much unnoticed. But we
still have fun getting some with our tennis-racket-bug-zappers.
We also got
some new hand-made living room furniture from a shop in Masatepe, and have acquired
some other things that have definitely helped make the place feel a bit more
like a home.
After moving, I tried to quickly get back to running, so
I started running with some of the neighbors and teachers from NCA in Colonia
Becklin. I also got the chance to run with Managua Runners, as well as explore
a little on my own. It turns out that NCA is starting a running club, and while
a neighbor will be coaching the girls, I was asked to coach the guys. It will be
a lot different from coaching competitive running, but the idea of creating
runners and instilling a love for the sport is the same. The goal is to train
them to be able to complete a 5k to the best of their abilities by the end of
September. I am grateful for the opportunity to volunteer my time in this way,
and I’m really excited to meet some of the kids and parents at the school
through this club.
Many things, though, are still very much a challenge for
us. We’re still without our own internet and television, so we’ve pretty much
missed most of the Olympics. And without internet, it’s been difficult to even
make Skype calls to relatives, or companies that we have unfinished business
with in the US. I even found myself getting truly frustrated for the first time
here this morning because calls to our old insurance company in the US kept getting
dropped every time I would finally get a CSR on the line.
Some things are really inexpensive here that would be
expensive in the US (like mangos, furniture, and service-type trades), but
other things are crazy expensive (like apples, electronics, and cars). Between
these differences in prices and the difference between our old budget and our
new one, we really have to relearn what is affordable and what isn’t all over
again.
The biggest challenge continues to be the language and
general communication, but we will hopefully start some Spanish lessons pretty
soon. Nothing really makes someone feel like an outsider more than the
inability to communicate with most everyone else. We all have a deep desire to
be able to communicate with more Nicaraguans, and the language is obviously the
biggest obstacle. I think this desire really showed when Sammy told us that he
already has a favorite class in school this year - Spanish.
