Whew! Today was a whirlwind of a day. This is Sarah writing. I'll try to recap it as briefly as I can, though that may be tough, since we got to do so much. Jess and I started out our day early at 5:30 AM to do some yoga. I had brought a video, and r set it up on the patio overlooking the mountains and did it while the sun rose and the rooster was crowing. Talk about zen!
We ate our breakfast at the hotel. Fresh fruit and gallo pinto, our breakfast every day thus far. Gallo pinto is red beans and rice, very delicious, though I'm not sure if I'll be saying that after five more days of it for breakfast and dinner. We have to be so careful about what we eat here, and avoid the water. About 75% of he group that was here last week got I'll from food poisoning. Dr Judy said its pretty common for most of the group to get sick during or after the trip!
We took off in our three big cars. There are twelve of us, along with three Nicaraguan men who serve as our drivers/translators/bodyguards! They are super nice and have helped out on every one of Gundersen’s trips here. It's nice to have people who know the area and can tell us about what we are seeing.
Marcos was our driver, and of course as soon as we started, it began to pour, rainforest style! The clouds were so low and we were up so high, he could hardly see the road in front of him, but he did great.
The road was windy and bumpy, and after a half hour, he said, "so, you thought this road was bad!" with a laugh as he turned onto what could not even be considered a road. For the next hour, we traveled on the bumpiest road ever, I'm talking flying off our seats and into the windows bumpy! It was shiny to see all of the houses along the way. These Nicaraguans are living in one room shacks, with n ventilation for their fires. It was not an easy thing to see, as I've never experienced poverty as great as this. When I think about how our house is getting redone because of a few hail dents, I realize just how lucky and spoiled we are in the US.
We arrived in Santa Celia finally, and the children ran to greet us. They were so excited and grabbed our hands to head to the school. W listened to a presentation Ian which the community leaders introduce themselves. They all kept saying how grateful they were to have us there, and how they thanked god for sending us. It was such a humbling experience for us.
Then it was our turn! All of the work that Jess and I had put in this summer paid off. We were literally putting on a show for other from 9AM til we left at 4! We sang them our Nicaraguan song that we had all practiced. We gave them the shakers that we had bought and sang lots of songs. Tis as probably their favorite part as they kept asking us all day to do it again..."Los huevitos, Los huevitos!"
We got to demonstrate an example of a play for them, as we has created a dozen bags full of props and scripts to leave with them. They thought that we were were pretty funny sunflowers!
We did lots of other activities, then we got to read to them. They loved the pigeon books and the David Shannon books in Spanish that I read to them. I had so much fun doing it! We served them their lunch, which was another humbling experience. They get a daily lunch of rice and tortillas, but we has brought some meat leftovers from our dinner to mix in, so they were very excited. We ate our lunches of granola bars and beef jerky, then we spent the afternoon playing games outside. They taught us many that we will use with our students back home, and we fought them red light, green light, duck duck goose, and more. It was so fun. I had a few kiddos who would not leave my side-
Maribel, David, and more. There were so many cute babies, too, many of them belonging to very young mothers only 15 years old.
We got to do our craft that we had prepared for them, making the Nicaraguan flag, and they really got excited about it. After all of this, it was time to leave. We have to leave fairly early so we are not driving on those roads in the dark.
It was so much fun to get to teach these kiddos and play with them. It is amazing to see how happy they are, despite the fact that they have so little. I honestly have a jaw ache right now because I don't think I stopped smiling all day long. Those kids made it all totally worth this trip!
So, that was totally not brief, but oh well! I'll try to update tomorrow. We are going it who work in la lima, the town before Santa Celia where the secondary students go. We will be helping to teach them how to tutor the younger ones.
I’ll leave you with a roster of our staff:
Sheila Riley: Administrative Lead
Sarah Kratt: First grade teacher at North Woods International School Immersion Program
Jessica Hembd: Fourth grade teacher at North Woods International School Spanish Immersion Program
Sandy Brauer: Principal; North Woods International School
Clay Fuhrman: Onalaska Luther High School student
Judy Klevan: Physician
Rachel Thompson: Physician, Translator
Sydney Klink: Translator
Lindsay Engh: Public Health; Global Partners Intern
Kae Creech: Registered Nurse
Owen Johnson: Photographer
Jeannette Fox: Westby Middle and High School Spanish teacher
Hasta mañana.
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