A common site in Leon is the camionetas. Camionetas are a form of public transportation. Basically, they are trucks where the bed has been converted into a covered wagon type ride around the city. During busy times of the day, these are often jam packed full of people. I have ridden in these a few times since being here, but none were as packed as Wednesday night. About 4:30 Wednesday, someone came by to say church was at 5. Our church meets in a house about a block away, so this just meant we all changed quickly and walked over there. Once we got there, almost everyone got in the back of the camioneta with the sound equipment so we could have our worship service at someone else’s house. At this point, only a few people were standing in the middle with the rest of us sitting on the benches that line the truck bed. I thought it was pretty full at this point, but about halfway to the house we were going to, we stopped to pick up more people. This is when the camioneta was packed. I’m guessing there were about 30 people in total in the back of this truck. There really wasn’t room to even breathe. Every bump we hit, the back of the truck scraped the ground. We all piled out at the house and a few more people were already there or showed up shortly after. After church, we all needed to pack back in the camioneta. Except this time, we had to fit all those who had gotten other rides before in too. We ended up putting the speakers on top of the cab to fit more people in. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were 40 people in the back of the truck now. It was quite entertaining and fun since everyone knows each other, unlike a usual camioneta ride where it is all strangers. There were about 5 guys that just hung off the back end, kind of holding the rest of us in. Of course, Mama was looking out for me and made sure I had a sitting spot both ways, so that was nice. It was definitely something you will never experience in the States!
Last week was an interesting one because Wednesday and Thursday were national holidays celebrating Independence Day. This meant the whole country, besides us, had the two days off of school and work. We still had to go to class unfortunately. But it did mean that my family was free during the day, so Thursday afternoon, they took Lisa and me to Chinandega, another department in Nicaragua. There, we swam in a “pool” of sorts. It was basically a dammed up river that had different levels to swim in. It was fun to get out of the city and spend time in the water. After swimming, we went to visit my uncle’s family on a farm. It was a fun afternoon, capped off by being soaked on the way home. We had taken my uncle’s truck to Chinandega, which meant Lisa, me, Mama, and Papi were in the back of the truck. Even though we had bags to cover us, I still ended up fairly wet by the time we got home.
Saturday and Sunday I relaxed most of the day around the house with my family. I went grocery shopping with Mama on Saturday, and we got Oreos which made me happy. Yesterday evening I went with my sisters and a few of their friends to go play in a park. We had a beach ball and a soccer ball and played a little tag too. It was fun to hang out with new friends and get to see more of the city.
We are all very excited to be done with our Spanish classes now and starting something new. This week we start our other classes. We have class in Managua at the Nehemiah Center all day today and then tomorrow morning and in the afternoon tomorrow we will leave for the first of many trips around the country. This first trip takes us to Somotillo for a community development trip until Thursday. It will be weird to be away from our families for this long, but I am excited for the chance to see a little more of Nicaragua!
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