Hello all! We’re back from our home stays! Its me Chelsea and my blogging buddy Nathan! We’ll tell you all about what we did these past 4 days.
Monday we headed up to El Regadio, our home stay community. We also stopped in Esteli to eat lunch at a nonprofit restaurant that ran numerous side nonprofit organizations. We had the opportunity to talk to the owner of the restaurant and talk about her business. We headed across the street to the hostel run by the cafe to talk to 2 peace promoters. This man and women were part of opposing sides during the Contra war, but they came together to help dissolve the violence and promote peace amongst the region. They talked about the difficulties they had trusting each other, but eventually came together to create a change. It was a powerful talk hearing their two sides of the story. From there we headed up to El Regadio to meet our home stay families.
Tuesday consisted of a lovely hike up to the local cemetery,creepy sounding i know, but trust us it was a beautiful view. We hung out there for a while, got a nice breeze and a lovely sunburn. followed by attempt 1 of trying to go to the health center. After our lovely stroll back down the hill we all went back to our home stay families for lunch. This was followed by attempt 2 of trying to go to the health center. Because we couldn’t get into the health center, we went back to the community center and got a great talk on the history of El Regadio. WE learned about the running water project, the women’s association, and the impact of the United States with support of the war in the area.
Wednesday consisted of attempt 3 of trying to go to the health center. Once again we failed. To make up for that, we went to the school to learn about the school as well as play around with the local school kids. After our time at the school we had attempt 4 of the health center. Because we couldn’t get into the health center, we went to a local woman who made a business out of baking cookies with the new environmentally friendly ovens the woman’s group supplied. Followed by another lunch at our home stay families. After lunch and a little bit of free time we went down to a local home that welcomed us in and allowed us to make cookies! After a long baking session we went home and had our final dinner at our home stay house.
Today we left El Regadio, said goodbye to our home stay families, and took the long trip back to Managua. We prepped for our trip to the Embassy tomorrow, and had an interesting and informative talk with a local economist and biologist.
For some of us, these past few days were difficult, being sick, and adjusting to the home stays, but overall its an experience I believe we all learned and grew from.
Thank you fro reading, tomorrow we will be blogging from our new site in Matagalpa!