Welllll! It is January of 2012! I remember thinking at this time last year how super FAR AWAY this felt and now it's here! YES!
Ok, so I have been back to the USA, met my AMAZING new baby niece, Amelia, spent lots of time with family, enjoyed hot showers and good food and drink and am now back in Nicaragua and have been for about a month (guess I got pretty lazy in regards to my blog as of late...) The trip home was more amazing than I even thought it would be and while it was super hard to leave and indeed more tears were shed, it has been pretty good being back in Nicaragua.
Our host family has been spoiling us rotten, as usual, and school is still out for break. So what have we been up to if school isnt in session? Well matt taught another week long English camp--a tough one this time with high school kids in Managua--one of those start at 7 am dont finish til 10pm kind of camps....but they did some cool things like take the kids to an actual movie theater---a first for many of them in their lives...We taught a one week summer camp of Basic English to the kids in our town, and I have been running around like an insane person working on the classroom project that still may or may not happen....talking to construction workers and going to hardware stores, creating budgets and recycling contests... etc. Then we just had an IST or inservice training event in a cloudforest called Selva Negra. It was great to see the other volunteers and staff--and was jam packed as always with sessions but we had a little down time to stroll the forest and check out the place which is almost completely self sustainable....
We just got back to our town a couple days ago to discover that there has been no water for the past week and a half or so and it may be off for another month or two....no one seems to know...
So we hauled all our laundry down to the river today---luckily we got a ride with a truck because it is actually a pretty decent hike and then we washed all our clothes and took our "showers" in the river. It;s too bad this is so bad for the water/river because i actually really enjoyed it---we made some new friends and saw lots of our other ones at the river (everyone is down there!) However after a few more weeks of it, and especially when school starts, I may not like it as much (-:
We have also been enjoying catching up with our sitemate, Nishant, who Matt hasnt seen in almost 2 months due to vacation and different work related events! que loco!
I am still missing my friends and family so very much especially Amelia Bug, but we only have 10 months to go! And lots to do/accomplish!
