Tonight is our last night at the Nehemiah Center (for now). Tomorrow we will meet and move in with our Host Families in Leon. The other girls and I spent the evening (after eating supper, playing cards and watching boys be ridiculous) packing and repacking our stuff... trying to make it all fit again, and succeeding much better than we did the first time around in the US (no weight limits for each bag this time... it makes things A LOT easier).
We have had so much f
un these past few days having our little orientation! We are up at around 7 each morning, have breakfast and get ready, and then start doing stuff at 8:30. The stuff we do varies a lot. The first day, Thursday, was just our group and talking about classes and our host families and receiving our cell phones and such. On Friday we toured around Managua and visited Volcan Masaya, which is absolutely gorgeous. We also went to a museum and learned a lot about the history of Nicaragua. Today (Saturday), the Nehemiah Center was hosting a New Missionaries and Expatriates Orientation, so we attended. Not everything that was discussed applied to it, but a there were definitely parts that were really interesting and useful, especially when they were talking to us about adjusting to cultures and talking about specific differences between the Nica culture and our own.
We have had every afternoon and evening free so far. In the afternoons we all relax, read books, and take naps. Alicia (our coordinator here) and her husband Maynor come back at around 6 and eat supper with us, then we hang out and talk and play games. It's been fun. It gets dark at around 6 here, so we feel like it's way later than it is a lot of the time. Which is probably a good thing, because we're usually heading to bed a little earlier than we probably would otherwise.
Tomorrow we are headed to Leon after church. We're going to have lunch with our host families (which is when we will meet them for the first time), and then go home with them. I am ready. Partially because I'm excited to jump in and get started, partially because I am ready to unpack my suitcase and organize everything! I don't know much about my family except for their names (my parents are Lorenzo and Silva. I have 2 sisters, Karen and Marlen. Karen has a 3 year old son named Alejandro) and that the daughters are around my age (one a bit older, one a bit younger). In Leon, the 6 of us SPIN students will all live on the same street within 3 blocks of eachother... so we can walk to each others houses quite easily! We start our 3 weeks of 4 hour a day Spanish Classes right away on Monday morning. Hopefully it isn't too overwhelming. Right now I am just very glad that I already have a pretty good foundation!
I am very excited to see how things change and develop in the next few weeks. There will be times when it's hard, and times when it's easy. But in the end it will all be worth it.
