Here we go!

View from our place in Granada after a storm.

Dustin and I will be driving to Puerto Cabezas this Thursday once Pastor Earl and Austin Fricker return from their long drive from Virginia. (They are driving back two vehicles that were donated to Pastor Earl.) The drive from coast to coast is about 14 hours across with some rough terrain. It’ll be my first time making the drive but I’m glad I’ll probably only have to do it once. I am looking forward to getting to Puerto Cabezas so I can get to work on starting up the Literacy and Life Skills program with the school principal, Mary. The classes will be held in Port and the nearby village of Betania. I also can’t wait to see the kids in the orphanage. Since I did not go on the spring break trip this year, it has been over a year since I’ve seen them. 

The plans for starting the Literacy program in Nueva Vida (as an ONET initiative)  is underway. I met with Pastor Berman to discuss specifics about the people interested in being the teachers as well as planning the future training sessions.  So far, we have a small handful of people interested but I was told that eight other churches are definitely interested in starting this program so the potential is high. Training is targeted for late November/early December with classes to start in January. 

Another ONET initiative that I’ve been tasked with is to meet with the volunteer teachers in Nueva Vida who teach English to the teens in the youth groups. I will be coaching them on teaching strategies and practices but will mostly focus on creating benchmarks and assessments to accurately track the progress of the students so they will be ready to take the English proficiency test at the university which will open up opportunities for future employment.

After six weeks of language school, my mind is a soupy mix of spanish words that need to get themselves in order. I have not had a huge amount of practice since school let out except for small talk and placing food orders. I have also been practicing listening to other natives speak. If everyone spoke as clear as my teacher, then I’d be set. But, they don’t so I need to practice listening as well as speaking.

I really enjoyed our time in Granada while we were in school. We took advantage of our surroundings on the weekends since Granada is a tourist town. My friend Jen came to visit over a long weekend and we had a lot of fun roaming around Granada and seeing what else it had to offer. One outing was driving up Mombacho Volcano which has a cloud forest at the top. The drive up was an adventure in of itself. We had to drive up a very steep one way road with sharp switchbacks but the road was surrounded by beautiful foliage. At the top we took a walking tour to one of the two craters and we were fortunate enough to arrive when the clouds broke so we could see the town and the islands in the lake below. Just the day before, we took a small boat around the islands in the lake which were formed when the volcano blew it’s top many years ago. There are 365 islands in lake that vary in size and are occupied by mostly personal homes (and one small island with just a few monkeys).

One of the monkeys we saw on Monkey Island.

We took a short vacation to San Juan del Sur before heading to Managua. We relaxed at several different beaches and Dustin took surfing lessons. Dustin was bit by the surfing bug so I’m sure there will be some future weekend trips when we are working on the west coast. 

Sunset in San Juan del Sur