Greetings!

What a day! Precipitation plagued our activities today, and our brave comrade Dr.Burlingame fell ill today.  He was not able to accompany us to the site today which brought great sorrow to the group.  He is such a hard worker and so good with the children! It was a shame he could not come to the school.  To make matters worse, upon arrival to the site, rain began spitting on our exploits.  It was our goal to continue moving dirt and finishing the mural.  The mural is right outside the school for all to see, so it is our goal to finish the art before we have to leave. We have to have it completely painted by tomorrow.  We were greatly saddened when we discovered this, but something great came out of it: many of us were able to attempt to teach the children English in the classrooms.

Learning all of this, we promptly split into groups again.  Madison partnered with Meredith to teach the classes, while Courtney and Miki paired up to do the same.  Catherine, Lauren, Maggie, and Senora Tansey painted the grass on the mural.  Mr. Keiper tried to paint again…but he failed miserably.  We all gave him an A+ for effort.  Before this incident, Mr. Keiper diligently worked on benches that needed fixing, so painting was a good respite.

After being opened to a can of boisterous “monos”- monkeys- in the classroom, everyone commenced to morning recess.  This was special because Madison’s heart now belongs to Jonaykel, a fourth grader.  She graciously accepted his marble, something we consider that may just be the equivalent of a proposal.  It will be interesting to see what else he may bring tomorrow.  During this time, we further developed our knowledge of hand games.

The children in the classroom were so open to learning English.  Everyone was impressed at their willingness and acceptance to learn from us “gringos.”  Their excitement burst forth as they constantly scurried up to the board while we yelled “en tus pupitres”- in your seats- many times, in which the sassy little boys would ignore us and keep drawing their “carros”-cars.  It was on this day that we found that teaching a simple song is a fruitless effort, and that Catherine has become a new celebrity.  After a while, the children overcame their fear and began begging for autographs.  Senora Tansey was also an instant hit, in which a boy yelled “I love you” to her. 

Not only did the students impress and leave a mark on us, but the teachers also inspired us.  The school holds morning and afternoon sessions.  The morning children learn from 7 to 12, and the afternoon schooling takes place from 1 to 5.  Not a lot of time is given for the students to learn- at least not the amount of time that we are used to.  It took a lot for these mentors to give up this precious time for girls that can barely speak Spanish to teach their classes English. Through their actions to help us and even to learn with their beloved children, we learned a lot about love and sacrifice.

There are many people that have proved to be real heroes in our lives and the lives of the people in the community.  The construction workers that have been creating the kindergarten room from the ground up never cease to amaze us.  They slave in the hot Nicaragua sun all day, every day, for all of these kids.  It is rare for these magnificent men to take a break.  Their hearts alone could build this room.  While working very hard, these men have taken the time to get to know those of us that work with them.  Even though they just met us, they do not hesitate to lend us a hand or help make our work easier.  It is rather ironic since they have the harder tasks. Just today, Madison was transporting dirt from the outside of the room to its inside in order for the floor to be leveled out.  One of the faithful workers abruptly stopped his job and assisted in changing the boards to make it easier for Madison to wheel the wheelbarrow across the levels.  He worked with great vigor until the boards allowed for her to easily transport the objective.  When he finished, he immediately continued with his original job.  It is amazing what these men can do in conditions that are so foreign to us. Hopefully, we can transfer their work ethics and make it our own.  It will better help us to get things done correctly in the world.

Great fun came from the manual labor.  While Mr. Keiper was mending the seats of wooden chairs in the courtyard, an unlikely foe awakened in the boards of the chairs.  An entire battalion of red ants became very angry and decided to attack the closest thing that had been causing the most havoc among their ranks.  Mr. Keiper walked away from the battle with cuts on the leg and bruises on the mind.  Luckily, he walked away with a personal victory, despite the wounds. On the other side of the school, Catherine and Lauren wrestled with dirt.  As children strolled and watched them curiously, these two courageous gals slaved over sifting the dirt.  Despite becoming covered in dirt, they too walked away from their fight with a win.  All of this hard work indicates that no one was going to the let the rain be an obstruction to our mission.

This was especially evident in everyone’s zeal to still play “fútbol.”  The rain covered the field of dreams in buckets of water.  Despite our already tired and dirty demeanor, we took the field with determined states of mind.  We had renewed vigor to overtake the much more talented team.  To our delight, many nice boys kept filtering in to play with us on our team.  We stayed in the game this time because we were able to utilize the talents of our “amigos” Gato and Jorge.  They were splendid forwards in scoring almost all of our points and having the stamina to run up and down the field. We decided to grant them the titles of MVPs due to their courageous efforts. From a very wet game, Madison came out with being sore in her legs, Mr. Keiper with a baseball sized bruise, and Catherine with very evident wounds on her legs.  We had a much sweeter end of the game today; however, we will dominate tomorrow.

After leaving the school, our very sweet driver Vernon drove us to a mall where we purchased recreational tools for recess.  Whenever we played soccer, the balls proved to be very small, worn, or deflated.  We came away from the store with a bag of soccer balls, tennis balls, and air pumps for the balls.  We cannot wait for the kids to receive their gifts tomorrow.  Although we are only here for a week, we hope to leave our mark on them forever.  There is no doubt in any of our minds that they have made a lasting impression on each and every single one of us.