Nicaragua - Day 6

Tiiiired again. I didn't sleep very well, and woke up super early (like 5:30)... Power stayed on though, and no scorpions in my mouth, so I won't complain. :)

Devotional time at 6:30 again. Jorge (after telling us some really funny stories about his family moving to the US without knowing any English) shared about how everyone in the US tends to want 'quick fixes' for everything - wants fast fast and busy busy lives.  But what for?? What do we do with our time from our quick fixes?? We don't live simple lives or invest our time in anything worthwhile for the most part. He talked about how much he enjoys his much simpler life here in Nicaragua, after living in the US for 11 years. He said he hoped we enjoyed our "time away from it all" down here - aaaand I'm pretty sure he shut the wifi off this week so we wouldn't use it! We had wifi the first day we got here, and several of the other people were so excited they had it and just sat there on their phones! As always, his message was very good and way better than I can remember right now or put in my own words.

Breakfast was some sort of oatmeal apple cinnamon cake kind thing.  It was super good! :)  We left the house at 8am and rode with Yadir in his smaller green truck. It rained last night (its rained most nights) and the rode was soooo bumpy today!  We got to the village first and since I brought my big camera to the village today, I took some pictures of my favorite little family - Josue, Isaiah, and Brian.

Then Kenia and I went on a walk through the village - one more time - and of course I snapped lots more pictures...babies, houses, animals...

The "shower"

Kenia picked a beautiful pink hibiscus and said, "This is for my friend," and put it in my hair.  She is so sweet, and this job is perfect for her. She's been studying English for two years and its really pretty good, plus she's so friendly and outgoing - everyone loves her! :)

At one house, the women invited me in and showed me the big kettle of soup stewing over a wood burning stove - that was pretty cool! :)

When we got back to the village, the drill team was putting the final pipes down the well shaft!  We all got to sign the inside of the handle and then we could pump water! A lot of people were sitting around waiting, and they all clapped when we finally pumped the first drops of clean water from our well!! It was exciting! :)

We had another pretty intense game of kickball going on in the street - boys vs girls.  It was seriously just too hot and humid for me to play. I was dripping sweat and soaked through two shirts just SITTING there - seriously - again! At one point I was holding Isabella and I sweat through HER little onesie!  I guess they are just all so accustomed to the heat, because they never sweat! Its so weird!  And I don't think it helps that any time I sit down, its a mad dash for the spots on my legs.  I always have at least 3 filthy little kids sitting on me or hanging on me at all times - and I love it. :)  Seriously though - if I don't get sick or at least come down with something after this trip, it IS a miracle! I can't even imagine how many new germs I've been exposed to this week!!

The BOYS

The GIRLS

This is where I went to sit...with the kids of course!

The pastor from the church eventually showed up and prayed and spoke - thanked us for our work and for showing them love...  A couple of the other women spoke as well, and as Kenia translated, I started to cry.  I don't really cry very often...but the tears were rolling as she talked about how her grandkids kids were going to be healthy now because they were going to have clean water.  It just made me really realize the impact this one well could have - for generations - and you could see in their faces how much it really meant to them. :) I had two little girls wrapped around each leg - their arms around my waist - as we were standing around the well listening. They looked up and saw me crying and they were so sad!  They didn't understand why I was crying, they were happy they had clean water! I just put my sunglasses on so they couldn't really tell anymore. ;)



Pumping clean water!

I know the water looks dirty, but the bucket was dirty!

The pastor of the local church

Once people had spoke and we all pumped some water and took pictures with our well, it was time to eat the meal the women had prepared for us. They brought out a plate with 5 or 6 different random things on it (squash, a ripe plantain and a not rip one, two different kinds of roots, etc) ... And then they brought us out giant (seriously - giant) bowls of steaming hot soup with hunks of meat (beef I think??) And cabbage and a crab leg hanging out of it! It looked pretty questionable, but it would have been considered rude for us not to eat it. Most of it at least. I mean there was no way any of us were going to finish that much food. It was really pretty good! I ate quite a bit of it, and most of what was on my plate, and I felt pretty good about that! Oh and the "spoon" they gave us was like a hardened coconut shell thing shaped like a scoop - and it actually worked really well with the soup - as for the rest of the food on our plates, I just used my hands. My unwashed, filthy, dirt covered germ infested hands that is! That spoon thing though, it was so cool, I'm going to have to try and find one to buy!

The 'spoon' is the darker brown thing on the left

We basically just packed up and left after we were done eating.  I was so sad because...well...because we were leaving, but more so because most of the people had gone back to their homes to eat too, and some of the kids weren't out of school yet!  I didn't get to say bye to hardly any of them! Leaving that village - and all those kids - was so much more emotional than I thought. Aaaand I cried again. :( I LOVE the people there!! As we were driving down the road to leave the village, several of the kids were walking back to the left over soup...waving goodbye to us and smiling. Oooh it made me cry even more. :(

We came back to the LWI house and had to clean out the truck and van and wash them...THAT was a chore.  It has gotten pretty dirty and muddy - inside and out - this week.  Once that was done, Alicia checked me for head lice - and found none, thank goodness!!  My head still doesn't really itch - I think I am head lice free!! :)

 
THEN we showered and headed to the BEACH - about 20 minutes away - to celebrate our successful well and hard work this week. We took the old white truck, that tends to break down and has NO air conditioning. That is so not cool (no pun intended) in Nicaragua, but we had the windows down and we were driving fast down a hiway, so it wasn't so bad.

I sat in the middle in the front seat...without a seat belt.

We pulled up to a little hotel with a restaurant out back - ON the beach. And oh the beach was just beautiful!!  Crashing waves and soft sand...and lots of seashells! I have a pocket full, and bought a couple necklaces and a little box from some kids selling them on the beach.  I bartered with them, but I'm sure I still paid way too much. They really liked me though, especially the girl (there was only one, Guadelupe). 

The first little boy I bought a couple necklaces from

FOR MY MOMMA : )

Surfers

I picked up LOTS of these...

Guadelupe took me up onto the rocks for a picture, and then they all (all the kids) started looking at my skin.  And by 'looking' I mean pulling up my shirt and patting my stomach, pulling up my sleeeves, looking down my shirt around my neck...just all over!  It was a litte weird, but I think they wanted to see if I got whiter under my clothes...which I don't, I'm just super white all over!  They really enjoyed the body search anyways, and kept telling me how "bonita" I was! ;)  I slipped on the way down the rocks - they were super slimy - and Guadalupe (the girl) kinda caught me - and one of the little boys nearly fell over from laughing so hard and kept asking me to do it again!



She is holding a fish the fisherman had just caught.



We walked along the beach and took some pictures, and then sat around the table and waited for our food. Which took TWO HOURS to get. Seriously - Nicaraguan time is crazy! It is SO much cooler here on the coast though with the breeze rolling in off the ocean! I'm sitting here waiting on my "steamed fish" right now...and I think for the first time since I've been in Nicaragua, I am NOT sweating!! :) 

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Okay, weeellll my dinner came. Turns out a steamed fish is just that. A whole, entire fish, steamed (supposedly) with a few veggies thrown on the plate and a bowl of rice.

Ugghh!!  And I was SO hungry too, I was forced to eat it...but only after I covered up its face with a tomato!  It was giving me the willies - that fish was watching me with that nasty eye. Speaking of that eye, I may have somewhat immaturely played with the fish after I had picked at it and eaten what I wanted. :) They bribed me and said they would pay me to eat the eyeball...I somewhat considered it until I dug it out and it was the nastiest slimiest thing I've ever seen! YUCK!! Anyways, the fish itself wasn't so bad, but I had to scrape it away fromt he skin/scales and spit out the bones. Thank goodness I had rice and potatoes and carrots to hold me over!

My new friends followed me around on the beach a little more, begged me for my watch and flip-flops, and even followed me clear out front to the truck!

The little boy in the yellow shirt is pointing to the beach, asking me to go fall down the rocks again!

The drive home was fun - windows down and music blaring again. "So I wake in the morning and I step outside, and I take a deep breathe and I get real high, and I, scream from the top of my lungs, what's goin' on..." What's Going On lyrics - that song was on the radio when we left Las Penitas - the beach town...good memories. :) 

We talked Angel in to driving us to the supermarket in town (Leon) to get piccos and ice cream. Piccos are kind of like a flat bread, maybe lightly fried, with honey or something sweet on them. Oooh they're amazing. The drive through Leon was interesting at night - still loud and busy, just a lit up different scene. I asked a lady at the bakery if they had piccos, but the piccos they had weren't fresh and weren't the ones we wanted, so I called Jorge on Angel's phone and had him tell Angel where we needed to go to get them. (Angel doesn't speak much English - at all.) I did buy some ice cream and lifesaver gummies and some other snacks at the supermarket though. Then we stopped at a little bakery and bought three big bags of piccos, and I got two bags of Nicaraguan coffee as gifts for people back home.

Once we got home, I literally couldn't wait to dig in to the piccos and vanilla ice cream - and it didn't disappoint. That raw fish just really didn't hit the spot for dinner. ;) I've had a LOT of vanilla ice cream in my day, and this stuff might of been the best vanilla ice cream I've ever had. Oooh it was SO good - and everyone else agreed too! The beach and the country drive with the windows down and the Leon nightlife and the ice cream made tonight one of the most enjoyable evenings I've had in awhile. :)