Nicaragua Trip 2010: February 2010

2/2/2010

Today we had class again and nothing else happened. Woo… I really want to go home though… :( I miss katy

2/1/2010

Today we had another mobile clinic to the village of esperansa. Today me and matt were together with Maria, the nurse who is the doctor's wife. We didn’t really see anything new, or do anything new, or learn anything in the least, but it was a little fun to perscribe meds and diagnose different diseases.

One interesting group of patients had a funny thing happen. The patients would usually come in family groups. Also every mom had no problem with just plopping it out and then feeding their babies right in front of us. Another thing interesting is that every patient complains of diarrhea, loss of appitite (even though every baby ate in front of us, EVERY BABY) and fever (which only 1 out of a hundred really had!

So anyways this patient had a baby, and while the mom was feeding it the baby began to have diarrhea which leaked out of the baby's diaper and onto the moms lap. As disgusting as this was, the thing that almost made me lose it was at the exact same time, the lady's little girl who was standing next to us spread her legs a little bit and began to pee on the clinic floor!! She was 2 years old.

I didn’t even know what to do, I laughed a little bit, and then walked away and almost died laughing!!

1/31/2010

Another day doing nothing, woo I read all day… I really want to go home!!

1/30/2010

Today was an interesting day… lol! That was sarcastic!

This morning we slept in till about 750 and then went to breakfast about 20 min. late. It was really cool outside so we were able to sleep in without dying of heat! Hurray! Me and matt opted out of going to sabbath school on account of it being really boring! Haha. So instead we lay down in the hammocks and chilled for a while. It was actually quite nice. We then went to church and Jason preached. Afterwards we set up some cots and put it under the dorm, and listened to music and read for a while.

We then went to the store and picked up some chips. The chip bags are only 15 cents, but have like 5 chips in them!! Haha matt bought 10 bags! Lol that added up to like two bags or American chips. Tonight nothing much happened.

I sent another email to katy, only to realize that I had been sending messages to marcia's phone instead of Katy's! I had just copied and pasted the first cellphone email address in my outlook, and I assumed it was katy's! haha so apparently marcia has been getting my message… that’s not awkward at all!

Tomorrow we have to read about 100 pages for class, and Monday we are going on a mobile clinic, and Tuesday having class.

1/29/2010

Class day again.

I was way behind on reading for public health, so I had to cram read in the morning to try and get all the reading done before class. As always his quiz was ridiculously detailed, and the details on the quiz were irrelevant, and in no way reflected any of the topics that the book wanted you to learn… Fun

We had lunch after, and I read the Harry Potter book in Portuguese for about 2 hours. I am really understanding everything! It is really fun. I am trying to make a decision whether I want to keep reading it for fun, or to start making vocab lists of all the new words that I am learning or simply to read it for enjoyment.

We then had our next class, and after than we went for about a 3 mile run with matt and Stacy. Stacy is a crazy runner and could easily beat me in a race I think! Haha she has basketball skills and because of that she is a crazy athlete.

On the way back we stopped at Paula's store, a lady who owns the only store in town (at least I think so). She isn't christian, and her place is the hangout for all the drunks at night, but we were able to get an Orange Fanta and some chips. The fanta was a large one for 35 cordoba or a $1.50 and a bag of chips for 3 Cord or $0.15 .

We had stopped by here yesterday night as we visited the lady that we had visited before how had the TIA on the 22nd. She had had an argument with someone, and her already high blood pressure skyrocketing. She had a BP of 260/120 which is obviously very dangerous, and she had no medications for it.

Someone from the her family cam e to the mission and asked the doctor to come and help. She is the midwife for this region, and her daughter is the malaria nurse for the region, both are Miskito. On our way back we stopped at Paula's store, and got some cold drinks (she only had ice when she got back from the city, and she returned that day).

Today we don’t have a vesper like some of the students put on last week, but tomorrow we are hoping to go to the river again after church.

I really hope to get an email from Katy tomorrow as well :) I think I am going to read the second letter tonight as well.

1/28/2010

Clinic day!! Yay!! Today we had our first real mobile clinic where we traveled approximately 8 miles or 45 minutes away to a town called Wisconsin. It was named this because the funding for this town was provided by the University of Wisconsin. The town was actually very well maintained. It was a gated town, with agriculture, and pens for animals made out of bamboo.

On our way there however, we stopped for about an hour and a half for the doctor to cut out the abcess/growth that was on the mans leg from Tuesday. After that we were on the road again for a little way only to be stopped once more for a lady who had malaria. We arrived at Wisconsin just in time for us to set up and eat lunch. Luckily and unluckily this was my day with the doctor. Luckily because I really wanted to follow him, and unluckily because I only got half a day. But it was a great half a day.

The doctor is really amazing to work with, he lets you take over and learn how to do assessments, he also teaches you all the reasoning behind his decisions and diagnoses. I learned how to check for sinus infections with a flashlight, how to listen to the four heart valves individually, we got to drain an abscess (unfortunately I lost the rock paper scissors game with Stacy and I just got to watch), and I learned a whole lot more. It was interesting trying to communicate with most of them because over 3/4ths of them only spoke Miskito, and those that did speak Spanish only spoke a little bit. We had two translators, and only one of them actually spoke English well.

After words we got to throw the football around with the kids. It was really funny to watch them try and throw a weirdly shaped soccer ball! Lol

That night we had our work out and took showers and slept. I also finished my book! Hurray! Lol it wasn't that good of a book.

I am trying really hard to get in contact with katy, but to no avail yet. I really don’t want to read her second letter already, but I might have to soon! I really miss her, and I try not to think about her because that makes me just miss her even more…

I am so happy that I have her, I know that I will always be happy to have her in my life, I hope that I can make her always feel the way that I feel with her. I really thank God for putting all the pieces in my life together so perfectly. I am just praying that the last piece will fall into place, and that is my acceptance to medical school.

Note added later:

Unfortunately during the night, while we were watching a movie, Julie was going to the bathroom, and someone tried to break in. Someone had sneaked on the property, and ripped the door off the hinges. Over the next couple days we took all the action possible to stop this from ever happening again. This is the first time anyone has ever tried to break in, and we talked to the Judge the next day, on Friday, and we now have a guard every night. It seems to have solved the problem, unfortunately there is a lot of mission drama up here, and apparently the general contactor who is building our building has been doing everything wrong, wasting money and time, and hiring (as the village elders put it) punks. It was likely one of them, but it wont happen again.

Some people got really angry and actually came up with possible solutions to draw this person out. Their idea was to telecast over the radio a message that all of us were leaving, leaving one sick girl alone on the property. In this way

1/27/2010

Wednesday: project development

Luckily we got to go and work in the community kind of. We started the day with breakfast and worship and then started working on a project to create a room for the pastor and his family in the library. The people going were Matt, Phil, Ryan V, Kade, Jeff and I. We got down there, set up a floor plan, and then tried to talk to a guy who is working down here named David Job who is a general contractor working here for free for a guy named Mr. Halverson who runs the adventist Radio. Unfortunately he is kind of scary, and this made for an interesting time! In the end, we set of the studs for 2 walls, and accomplished almost nothing! Haha I think that some of the people we were working with were to stuck up on perfection, and therefore nothing got done. I'm not saying that’s a bad thing, I'm just saying that more would get done if we did it more effeiently! But over all it was a fun day, and it was nice to get into the community a little, we didn’t see or talk to anyone, but we did something that mattered and that felt good. Also it rained allllll day! It was great not to feel like you are melting.

1/26/2010

Today we had our first mobile clinic. We went to a village called Santa Clara. It was about 7 kilometers or 4.75miles away. We left after breakfast at about 8 or so in the morning, and stopped by the clinic to get all the supplies that us 3 had helped pack the day before, and left for the clinic. We set up at a school and had 4 stops. A registration section, vitals (where me matt and stacey were placed), an examination room with a nurse, Maria, the doctor, and jeff. The fourth area was the pharmacy. We took vitals on about 100 patients, and made it through alive. There was nothing that interesting, a huge case of ring worm on a little boy. There was also a man who had had a cyst for a year and who is likely going to have surgery tomorrow to take care of it. I am hoping to be able to go and see this surgery. When we were heading back, I got the idea of instead of riding in the Duece, we should run! So I convinced matt, and stacey to run with me! Steven Baker and Matt Trethaway decided to go along with us, but in the end, only me matt and stacey made it to the end without stopping. She is crazy in shape, and tried to overtake me for the win at the end, but I kept my slight lead to win! Haha. Tonight we have another movie night, and we are watching Medicine Man with Sean Conrey.

I am definitely going to sleep well tonight!!

I am hoping Katy will see her email and send me a message, because I am really missing her. I am going to try and send another email now because I don’t want to read another one of her letters just yet :) I love her so much! And she is so beautiful!

1/25/2010

Monday, class day. Yesterday I read chapters 5 and 6 from tropical medicine, 50 pages on vaccinations and malaria. I had to present today on malaria, and chapter 2 from public health. Both presentations went swimmingly and Jeff even said after I was done with the malaria presentation that he had nothing else that he was able to add to my presentation! Haha. Right before our second class and before my malaria presentation (remember we have class every Monday an d Friday at 10-12 and 2-4) it began to rain, and rain and rain! It was amazing ! I ran out into the rain, and for the first time I was chilled! I wasn't melting! Soon everyone joined in, and some even took a chance to take a shower in the rain!. We are only allowed one 1 minute shower a day, so the rain provided another opportunity to enjoy feeling clean and sweat free!

That night we spent doing what we had done in the morning, which was sit and stare at stuff, and read a little. I am almost done with my book "the Alienist"' a mystery about a serial killer that is being solved by (for the first time) a forensic psychologist. A person who studies people who are alienated was called an alienist, hence the alienist.

1/24/2010

Today we did nothing. We stared at a tree for an hour, then averted our gaze to another tree for the following hour, you know to have a change of pace.

The End

(Also we watched terminator on Phil's computer)

1/23/2010

Today was Sabbath and we went to Sabbath school and church at the Adventist church here. The doctor gave the Sabbath school lesson. It was on Peace. The sermon was after, and was kinda boring. Although it might have just been the fact that it was 9000 degrees in there that made it so boring! In the afternoon we hiked for 3 miles to get to a beautiful river, and for the first time in such a long time we finally got some relief from the heat. Unfortunately it took us 2 hours of walking to get there, so we only had about 20 min to enjoy it. We are thinking of going next sabbath for the entire day so we can really enjoy it, and have church there.

The hours are still crawling, but the situation is really getting better, so I am really happy for this. I really miss being able to talk to katy. I really miss her kisses. I can't wait to hold her again.

Tonight is movie night again and we are going to watch a skiing movie called Warren Miller. I hope looking at the snow will cool us off a little bit.

It actually did a little bit, and then I read and passed out for the night.

1/21/2010

These last couple days have finally started turning around. I am writing this after classes on Friday, the 22nd. Yesterday we spent at the clinic! For the first time, we began doing what we were supposed to be doing!

The clinic here is kind of small, and is staffed only by one doctor and one nurse, so we were unable to take our entire group. The girls had gone the day before while we were forced to do unpaid labor. Today was our turn though! Unfortunately we were only able to bring 6 out of the 10 guys down to the clinic. We all had to play rock paper scissors to go. Luckily Matt, Phil and I all won, so we were able to go! We were divvied up into different jobs. There was a person to work the pharmacy, two to do "triage", one to follow the doctor and two to do wound cleaning and closure. I unfortunately got chosen to do the triage first. Basically I was a receptionist. It was actually kind of a fun, but I really wanted to hang out with the doctor. I would fill out a form as people entered into the clinic that had their age, where they lived, we would take their weight and BP, I would write their major complaint, and any allergies.

We got about 12 patients in the morning. One really cool case of Leishmaniasis, a 15 year old who thought she was pregnant, an abscess, and others who just had general malaise and possible fever.

We took a break for lunch, then headed back to the clinic to finish out the day. This time luckily I got to follow the doctor! Unfortunately over the next three hours we didn't have a single patient! Haha o well, I guess I will get lucky next time.

On Friday, the 22nd we started classes. We had about 70-80 pages to read before class from two books: tropical medicine (a medical school level book, on the back it had suggestions as to where to shelve it, and it said by internal medicine or family medicine!) and a public health book. Both of the classes were alright. The Tropical Medicine book was super interesting, and had a lot of awesome information including one really funny fact. When you get a chance look up Jerusalem Syndrome. :) The classes lecture just basically was a restatement of what was in the book. This was kind of disappointing, but it was waaaay better than having to do construction work.

I have been working with Jeff and Maria a lot more to try to continue finding a place for me to work in the community rather than on the building every Wednesday.

At lunch break on Friday, us 3 got to with the doctor to go see a baby patient who had extremely bad diaper rash. We biked down there (approximately a mile) and got to the baby's house. Unfortunately the baby wasn't there, but while we were down there we got to do a follow up on a boy who had broken his elbow really badly and had had surgery to fix it up by Dr. Vargus. Unfortunately the doctor was unable to fix it completely, so he connected the elbow in a different way, with the growth plates angled out the back. In this way the bone would have to be cut after a bunch of years , and forever the boys arm would be shorter than the others.

Also we did a differential on a lady who more than likely had a Transient Ischemic Attack. She was very scared of dying, and had just had four friends that had died. The doctor told her that one thing certain in life is that we are all going to die. The thing that matters is if we are ready when that moment comes. It was really nice, and it comforted her a lot I think. She was a Christian as well.

Then a girl who had been having stomach pain was asked to be seen by the doctor. Soon after the patients mom told us that her arm was hurting also. It turned out that she had a Green Stick Fracture and had broken her arm! Crazy! We told her to meet us at the clinic and we would put a yeso (cast) on her arm. She was about 7 years old and a really cute girl. Phil had given the injection of antibiotic for the guy with the abcess, so I made a deal with Matt that for him to do this one, and I would get to do the next cool thing, so he put a cast on the little girls arm with the doctors help.

That night we stayed up till about 11 o clock chilling on the construction site sitting on top of the wall. It was a lot of fun. At about 1030 though a guy came to the mission yelling because he needed the doctor, and people and lights started going everywhere! However all that we saw was the yelling and lights, and we thought we that the people at the mission saw us and thought that we were thieves from the village! It was really funny.

1/20/2010

We just got down with a group meeting. The group had had a lot of concerns about what is going on here. My main concerns were these (we also wrote a list to show to Jeff to talk to him about. These issues will be in parenthesis after my concerns.)

1. I am paying Union college to come here, and I am spending almost all my time building a dorm and classrooms for them. I don’t think that it is fair for me to be forced to work for free for Union. (So far it feels like a volunteer mission trip instead of an educational experience, what is the pressing issue that requires finishing the dorm, Can we have an idea about how classes will look like and when they will be..)

2. We have had no (or very little) information on when we are going to start classes, how they are going to progress, what we are hoping to accomplish here, or if we are even going to have classes here. (There needs to be better communication about what will happen. So far we've been living day to day)

Luckily Jeff listened to a lot of our concerns. Ryan had showed him the list earlier in the day at about our concerns, and we set a meeting for 630. During the meeting he gave us a schedule of what the plans are. Tuesday and Thursday are going to be planned for clinic days in which we will likely be doing a mobile clinic and traveling to nearby villages. Monday and Friday will be reserved for classes for the first part of the day, and the second half of the day seems questionable.

Also every Wednesday we are going to be working on the building that is being built specifically for UNION, not for anyone else at all. We are going to spend 1/7th of our entire time working on a building for union, the people we are paying for an experience. Time that I could spend learning or interacting with the villagers here.

I just cant believe that they put us in this situation. The wood that they bought for the project is sitting, and rotting because they don’t have workers to build this. Now I feel almost guilted into doing this, and very fewpeople seem to have a problem with this.

I have luckily been discussing with Jeff, the Doctor, and Maria about helping out in the community instead of helping here. I haven't told my reasoning why because I don’t really want to start anything, but I am certain that I will not work on that building anymore.

Today we spent lifting 1500 lbs of concrete 100 pound bag at a time up a hill and squaring wood the rest of the day. Pretty much we were all pissed off and didn’t want to do it. We were more slacking than actually doing anything. It was our silent for of rebellion! Haha.

1/19/2010

This morning I woke up with Phil at about 6 am to go for a run. Unfortunately my legs were unaccustomed to biking, and the previous day had left me feeling pretty sore! I only went part way and headed back. We ate a pancake breakfast that was actually really good. We had a brown sugar syrup that was really good! It tasted like brown sugar mixed with molasses. We continued work at the clinic in the morning, and we had to bring down the generator to give us power for power tools and a water pump. The plumbing in this village is all supplied by self created water towers that a pump pumped water to to fill up. So the generator supplied the power for this as well. When I say the plumbing in this village I really mean on the mission property. It appears that everyone else gets their water from wells that are built around.

We almost finished the door. Our haphazard way of measuring things, or not measuring things, came back to bite us in the end when we were about a quarter inch too wide on the door so it wouldn't close on the door jam. We decided to take a lunch break and rejoin everyone in the afternoon. It rained for about 10 minutes, and allowed us to cool off.

For lunch we had one of the most delicious lunches we have had so far, some rice with gluten and a curry like sauce on top. After lunch we had a chance to relax and play some football and slackline. It appeared for some reason that the clinic would not open that afternoon, so we had the afternoon off. Then the Doctor told Phil that he was going to clean someone's abscess out down at the clinic and asked if he wanted to watch. Luckily Phil is awesome and asked me and matt if we wanted to come along. We went down to the clinic and met a guy named something (lol we forgot) who had cut his thumb on a thorn and had had it infected.

He was a really nice guy who spoke Spanish and Miskito. He told me that his mom had died when he was nine, his dad when he was fifteen. He had had a really hard life. He had actually traveled a lot to places like Costa Rica where he worked construction and odd jobs. He talked about how he met a couple of Germans and taught them how to speak Miskito. He had a really big abscess on this thumb that Doctor Linares was treating.

This was my first experience being in the culture. This is what I really was hoping to get out of this trip! It was so nice just to get to know a little bit about the lives of the people down here, and in a small way to help them. I really wish we could do more.

1/18/2010

Today we woke up at aobut 545, right before sun rise. Me, Matt, Ryan and the Doctor went on a bike ride for about 40 minutes. It was a lot of fun, but I was struggling to keep up! I ended up switching bikes with the Doctor, and he realized that both the front and the back brakes had been aligned wrong and were rubbing against the tires. I had been going for like 3 miles with the brakes on. Once I got that problem fixed, it was a lot easier to keep up. We passed by a lot of the local village people on the way. It actually is a fairly large town, Francia has a population of around 3000 people. We passed by cottages and shacks on the way there, and played a little bit with one of the villagers pet monkey. There are a lot of chickens, cows and pigs here. Aparently the livestock are community owned, and therefore wander around everywhere. There is an occasion horse here and there, and tucans and parrots roam around the jungle.

We got back at around 700 for worship and a delicious breakfast of oatmeal with raisins. It was a wonderful breakfast. We then split up again to work. This time I decided to go to the clinic and work there. Us 3 were put in charge of building a door frame from wood. The clinic is made completely out of cement, and the door frames are just a rectangle cut out of cements. We were building this wooden frame so they would be able to hang a door from it. We didn’t have any masonry tools so we decided to build a special kind of frame. We cut wood to fit the inside of the door frame, and smaller slats to attach to this frame in a way that it would sandwich the cement wall around the door. In this way we would build an entire frame without needing to connect it to the wall.

The rest of the group worked on painting the entire clinic, and working in the camp to fix the bicycles and work on the leaky roof and stairs. Us three are getting a little bit aggravated that we haven't even started classes yet and we are almost a week into the trip. We all like to help, but this trip is not about mission work. We want to learn, do medical work, and study, but we are working on fixing up things. Even some of the student missionaries are not doing nearly the amount that we are doing! We can tolerate another day of this, but if this continues we are going to have to change something.

There is an entire dorm that is left to be built that only has the walls on the first floor done. This was supposed to be built for us, but it is not close to done. Jeff seems to want to have us finish this building through out the trip. This would consist of building a second story floor, second story, roof, bathrooms, flooring on the first floor, and about a week and a half of dedicated time. This is really not what I signed up for.

We are making the best of it though, and we are going to change things if they progress the way they have been progressing. For lunch we had rice and beans and some cabbage stuff which was really good.

I am trying not to complain, I feel like I am. We are having a fun time, but I really wouldn’t have a problem coming home now. Haha! I miss being with Katy, and I miss not having 400 bug bites on my legs. Us 3 are really hoping that the next three weeks pass quickly and we get to go to corn island. A place that is guaranteed to be a paradise. In the afternoon we headed back to the clinic to finish the door. We ended up goofing around more than actually building anything. After that we returned for dinner and enjoyed some rice, beans, plantains, and bread. The plantains were really good, fried with cinnamon and sugar.

Me and matt read and chilled the rest of the night till about 900 then went to bead. Right before sundown we did our workout again which consisted of pushups (with matt standing on my shoulders), pullups on the sharp wooden cross beam, and leg lifts giong off our bed. We would take our quick showers after and go to dinner and worship. We had to conserve a lot of water because it is the "dry" season. This meant that we were only allowed 1 shower a day with the water running a maximum of 1 minute. It wasn't too bad because after our morning workout I would take a little sponge bath to clean off.

Tomorrow would be Tuesday and in the morning we were going to finish setting up the clinic and open it for business in the afternoon. I am really excited for this part. I really want something new, something exciting and different. So far all we have done is construction with no promise of a future without construction. I cant wait for something to learn and practice i.e. new medical knowledge and skills, survival, mission planning and infastructure, basically anything that does not consist of us paying union college to build stuff for them. All we are diong it mission work, but paying 15000 to do it.

1/17/2010

Sunday…

We woke up at about six forty five for a seven o'clock worship. Worship took place next to the kitchen. We sang a few songs and read a couple bible verses. We then proceeded into the kitchen for breakfast. The breakfast consisted of rice cereal. It had the consistency of runny boogers, but luckily for us it was tasteless. I added some granola that I had brought from Nana and Papa's house in Florida, and it significantly improved the taste.

When they say there are trillions of bugs and insects in the world, they forgot to mention that they are all at the mission in Fransia in Nicaragua. Already I have about 20 mosquito and chigger bites, localized around my ankles. You know how sometimes you can have "phantom" itches? Like something will start itching on you for no good reason? That is not the case here. If you have an itch, either your hand comes back with a dead bug on it, or you discover yet another bug bite.

We started the day dividing into groups. I was volunteered/chosen to stay at the camp and help build the bathroom and matt and phil went with the group to go to the clinic a quarter mile walk away to organize, clean, and paint. The bathroom here is basically a cement hole about 20 feet deep in the ground with two square "toilets" on top separated by a wall. The hole for the toilets has cemented into it a toilet seat, and the hole is just far enough from the edge of the square, that it is unclear whether it would be more comfortable to squat over it, or reach your butt to fit over the hole.

Our job was to build two doors out of wood to replace the plastic sheeting that was currently being used. The sheeting was fun because it added an element of danger to pooping. You never knew when it would blow right open, and everyone would get an interesting site . We got the wood from the building next to the clinic, and carried it to the bathroom. We spent the next couple hours taking the nails out of the boards and constructing two doors which turned out very nicely. We I then took a break and slacklined a little bit, ate lunch, typed up my blog for the previous day, and returned to put on the roof. There was left over aluminum from some other project that was super rusty, but so is everything out here, so it worked perfectly. We used the generator for all of our drilling and sawing needs, and go t the job done.

For dinner we had a burger sandwich thing that the cooks who work here made. There are cooks and workers here who work every day for three meals a day. I believe that the price of food and services is 10 dollars a day, which isn't bad considering, however the price for oranges and grapefruits is 2.5 cents american approximately! We have had fresh squeezed orange juice mixed with other fruit juices from concentrate at most of our meals.

Apparently we have a whole list of things that need to be done around here, and in reality I don’t think this is fair. It is as if we are on a mission trip, and we are doing the things that the missionaries should be doing (i.e. building a bathroom, fixing the roof, building stairs). If we were on a mission trip I would have no problem with this except I paid over 12000 dollars, and I expected to have class, do cool stuff, and relax during non-class hours.

We have a laundry service here, which the schedule of the washing is yet to be determined, but we all put our laundry out to be washed. The only thing is that earlier Andrew, the local SM, told us that he heard that they were going to wash our laundry in the nearby river. He advised that we wash our own clothes if they were to choose this as the river doubles as a bathroom for people up the stream. It turned out it was in the river, so I have decided to wash most of my own clothes. Everyone else's clothes turned out clean and nice, but after knowing about this, I don’t know if I could participate in the laundry service. Ignorance is Bliss.

Tomorrow we are going to have another day of mission work, and I am going to go for a bike ride in the morning.

I went to bed at about 915. I am getting tired with the sun now it seems. The generator only runs a couple hours a day, so there really is no use to stay up without electricity. And even though charging things is allowed, it is discouraged.

1/16/2010

"Gahhhhhhhh…." I groaned as I rolled awake in my puddle of sweat. Someone had embedded a thousand nails into my lower back, neck, and butt. It was about 9 AM, and the dorm, consisting of about 20 bunk beds in the space of a 20x60 foot room. Needless to say, we were a little bit cramped, but this just added to the fun. I set up my bunk on the bottom bunk, and used the top bunk as a shelf for my stuff. Us 3 headed towards the showers down the hill, they were actually a very nice pair of showers, the water was ice cold, but when you got used to it, it wasn’t half bad. We are only allowed about a minute of water time in order to not deplete the camps supply of water. It is the dry season, so it has only rained once this week.

The rest of the day was spent laying around taking short naps. There was a church service at the local church at about 11, but matt and I were too tired to go. The heat and humidity really takes a getting used to. I felt like I was completely drained of energy from merely staying awake. The afternoon we spent slack lining and playing Frisbee. It was really quite enjoyable. Lunch and dinner were decent and we went to sleep early. I began to read the book the Alienist and took a slight break from the Harry Potter book I bought in Portuguese.

Though this was an uneventful day, it was necessary to recover from the previous days endeavors.

We ended up going to sleep at about 930, and had alarms set for our 7Am worship the following day.

1/15/2010

This morning we woke up at around seven to a banging on our door. Apparently people were concerned that we weren't up a half hour earlier than necessary. We promptly shut the door and commenced sleeping once more. We were supposed to meet a t 730 at the other hotel for breakfast (we had to split up the group because of the number of people staying with us). We arrived at around 735. We had to wait about two hours to eat, then had a breakfast of fresh orange juice, beans and rice, a type of cheese that I think is some kind of goat cheese, scrambled eggs, and coffee.

The bags had not arrived yet, and were due to arrive at the airport today. A group went over to the airport in Puerta Cabeza to look for the bags. Me and matt stayed back to talk on the phone, and to read. We actually ended up just sitting for a while, watching the traffic and people walk by. It was very relaxing. About two hours later, the group from the airport returned with the good news that our baggage had arrived. They had dropped it off at the school.

Us 3 went over to a local restaurant and had a pretty nice sized meal for about 2.50 American dollars! It consisted of beans and rice, juice, salad, the cheese again, and some other stuff. We then went to the school and started playing a couple games. We started a game of soccer, and nearly sweated out our brains! It is very tropical weather out here, like 90% humidity. The previous day, while waiting at the school, someone brought up wrestling, and I decided to partake. Believe it or not, it took me almost more than a half a minute to beat some people! O well, I must be getting rusty, or old! But today, the soccer game was quite fun!

We then packed up everything into the Duece ( a giant 6 wheel drive army vehicle that we use for our traveling) and waited sitting in it for about an hour and a half. I started to get really hungry, so I sneaked out, ran across the street, and bought some bread! Haha. We had about a 4-5 hour ride to Francia Serpi ahead of us, and apparently we were waiting for night fall to leave. Or at least that is what it seemed like! Finally we got on our way, and began our, in reality, 7 hour drive to hell. Image sitting on unforgiving metal seat, with bolts screwed in for the express purpose of discomfort. Now imagine sitting on that while going over a road made completely out of speed bumps. Now imagine sitting on that while going over a road make of speed bumps going fifty miles an hour while holding on to your seat enough to not fly off the side of the truck, but not to tight as to slam your sore buttocks down on the seat. When we finally arrived at about 3 in the morning, me and matt decided that we are never coming back to the United States, it is not worth is having to suffer through that again.

We had to stop for about an hour as the truck's stabalizer had slipped loose, and we had to use creative measures to get it back on.

We unpacked at the mission and headed to the dorms. Unfortunately someone had recently given away all the mattresses because they were "taking up space". I kept whispering to myself, "We are here to have fun, we are here to have fun" as I lay on the hard wooden bed. Luckily someone found a sliver of a mattress for me to lay on. It made it bearable. We set up the mosquito netting around the beds, and passed out.

But it was fun, or at least I think it is. I suppose this is an experience. Yipieee...

Nicaragua Trip 2010

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Passport Pictures for katy! :)

Sunday, February 7, 2010

2/8/2010

2/6/2007

2/5/2010

2/4/2010

2/3/2010

To Katinha Meu AMOR!!

Journal from sometime till a lot longer lol!

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