Friday, May 29th
Today was a very active day. First, we got together in Doña Edita’s house and divided the team in two groups. One group went to spend time at a mini party that the elders of San Ramón had in “La Casa del Niño” or The Children’s house. The other group, which I was a part of, went to help with the English class in Eric’s house. I think this class is mainly for students between 16 to 25 years-old. I was amazed by a few of the students who were able to speak English so well. Wendy, a student who had gone to visit Vermont with Beth and other Nicaraguan students in January and February, and I held a 15 to 20 minute conversation and I was very surprised by her English skills. She is very shy so I had never seen her English knowledge and comprehension. After the class we got on the bus to go Matagalpa. On our way there I talked to Beth about Wendy and how good it would be if she could be sponsored by an organization to send her to study in the United States. Beth told me that she was already working on that because she also knew that she appeared to be very interested in learning English. I was very happy to hear that because I believe she really deserves that opportunity. Wendy lives only with her grandmother, her mom works in Costa Rica and, like many kids here, she does not mention her dad at any time. I hope she gets that opportunity in the future.
Anyways, when we got in Matagalpa, we had lunch in Don Chaco’s Café. I had a steak with Jalapeño sauce and a water shake of orange, pineapple, and celery. It might sound disgusting because of the celery, but believe, it was awesome. After lunch, the team had time to go shopping and buy some gifts for our host mothers for mother’s day. After I got a present to my host mother, I went to buy my bust ticket from Managua to Panama. Now I am all set to go to my beloved homeland in just a week. After the shopping hour, we went to La Chispa Library to keep working in the Library ID project and organize the books and board games there. I stayed on the second floor with Morgan, Maria and Ben and worked on some puzzles that had some missing pieces. We also worked organizing the board games according to the age and we did the same with the books.
Around 4:30 p.m. we headed back to San Ramón. I spent some time in the Internet and had dinner with my family as well. At 7:00 Elvis and his friend Eleazar showed the team how to make seed jewelry. After the jewelry workshop, I went back to my house and went to bed. We are leaving the town of San Ramon in two days and I feel that there is much more to do here. I think the trip has been great. I am very sure everybody on the team has learned something. It is incredible to see how local people have very little but they are still happy. They do not complain, they just keep working harder to improve their living standards. The environment we lived with the host families is very warm and everybody is very friendly. I am just glad I was able to come to this trip and learn about this culture.
