Nicaragua

Well, I am not back from the amazing country of Nicaragua. Going there i was really nervous and very unsure about what it would be like and now I absolutly love the country. I had an amazing time there. I stayed with 4 others from our LASP group in a little town called Wapy. I lived with the pastor in his family in the house that was conected with the yard of the church. My parents were super nice and welcoming and the second i came in my mama told me that she was my mama and i was her hija and introduced me to my new brother and sisters. I had two sisters who were 19 (Tania, and Alba Lus who was tecnhically a cousin) and my brother German who was 14. The house was modest and even had electricty and one of the few phones in the community. The second day i was there the family got a tv and the third day they got their very first fridge! They were so excited! It was amazing to see how they lived and how excited they were! We had a latrine in the back and the shower was a bucket and then you used a smaller bowl to dump the water over your head. I learned how to wash my clothes on a ridged rock/sink. We had culto (church service) almost every day for about 2 hours. normally in the US a church service that is over an hour once a week can be long but here it felt normal and great. The church was so welcoming and loving. They asked us to even sing in front of the church which our little group did 4 times and each time they were so excited and loving. Our families and communites were so incredibly welcoming and loving even though they knew we would only be there for a week. It was amazing to see that kind of love and to feel the warmth of the community. It makes me wonder if people from Wapy came to the US how would be treated and how would they see our culture? Even though we only spent a week in Wapy I fell in love with the people there. It was actually hard to leave on Wednesday morning. Most of our parents were crying and most of us were crying during the truck ride to Esperanza to catch our bus back to Managua. It´s nice to be back in Costa Rica but I really did love Nicaragua. We had some crazy expierences there too. One day we went to a farm and learned how to milk cows and deplume freshly killed chickens and we watched as they killed a goat. The kids there absolutly loved us. It was rare that one of us wouldnt have kids sitting near us in church and we often played night games for hours after the church services. Oh what great times!