Photos from Orientation Week

Riding in the back of Mateo's truck

Breakfast with the other vols

Vanessa's colorful training posters

Yogurt breakfast parfait

Eating hot bean soup at the local hotspot, La Cucaracha. Supposedly, eating hot soup cools down the body. Hmmm, well....eating it certainly makes you sweat!

Trust exercise with Sam

Relaxing with my mosquito net and journal

Celebration in the streets

"¡Tajadas! ¡Tajadas!"

Mango juice and goat cheese/veggie sandwich at a French cafe called Pan y Paz

View from Mateo's house

Surprise trip to Poneloya beach

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Sayonara Arigato

We went out to a restaurant for lunch today, a little eatery called.... something that's located.... somewhere (At this point, I have absolutely no idea where things are located in León or the names of the restaurants we've eaten at. Typically we just hop into Mateo's truck and go wherever he decides to take us.) The restaurant is pretty busy - lunch is the biggest meal of the day, so the place is filled with hungry customers. Inside, there is a wood fire stove in the center of the restaurant, filling the room with a thick, smokey scent. Upon entering the restaurant, I passed by an older Nicaraguan man, whose face lit up when he saw me. "Ohhh!" he exclaimed. "Sayonara Arigato!!" I laughed. It was something that caught me completely off guard, and the incongruity of it struck me humorous, since the man obviously thought I was Japanese. If this same incident had happened back in the States, I would have felt insulted, but there was something about how t...

Meet my host family!

This morning, we met our host families and host agency representatives for the first time! After a few hours of introductions, autograph bingo, a presentation about our Community Based Initiative (or as Sam liked to call it, "mini proyecto"), and a game of Pictionary, we finally parted ways and left Mateo's house with our host families. My host family is very kind! They are also about the same height as me (we're all cute and short!) so I think it's a perfect match. Paulino, me, and Doña Chilo They have two daughters, a dog named Bebe, a rabbit named Joka (ho-ca), and they live with their grandmother. Doña Venega and Joka el Conejo JOKA!!! I also had a mini-adventure on my first day with Mpowering People. Ingrid, my jefe/mentor, and Gabriela, a post-graduate volunteer, arrived at my host family's home on a motorcycle to pick me...

I'm in León!

We made it! After 12 hours of traveling, we've finally made it to Nicaragua...."we" being myself and the whopping THREE other volunteers - Maddy from Portland, Olivia from Denver, and Sam from Chapel Hill! I was surprised by the small group size, but apparently that's characteristic of the gap year program. We actually flew into Nicaragua during a lightning storm! It was quite the experience to be in an aircraft, flying among the clouds, while bolts of lightning are shooting down all around you. Fun stuff! Our in-country Amigos coordinator met us at the airport, outside of customs, where a huge crowd of Nicaraguans were clustered about, families waiting to greet family coming off the airplane as well as various taxi drivers and vendors advertising their goods and services. We chucked our backpacks onto the bed of the coordinator's pickup truck and drove to a restaurant, where we had our first meal in Nicaragua! Enchiladas con mole y champiñones The en...

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