Thanksgiving

Yesterday was the first Thanksgiving I have ever spent away from family.  That being said, it was nothing to exciting.  I didn’t really feel like I was missing out on anything because I know that I will be there in just 2 short weeks, plus it is a whole lot warmer here!  I had a very uneventful week at Rancho Ebenezer and came back yesterday so I could spend a little more time here in Leon with my family.  I also got the chance to Skype with my family after they finished turkey dinner.  The plans for the weekend are to work on my final projects and papers, and maybe head to the beach.  

Since it was Thanksgiving yesterday, here are a few things I am grateful for:

• My family and friends that I get to see soon!
• The wonderful family I have here
• My awesome classmates who have been there to share all the crazy experiences
• Skype, so I can talk to people all over the world
•  Life, and the long life that my great-grandmother had
• The amazing chance I have had to spend over 3 months in Nicaragua
• Music to listen to at night and whenever I need some me time
• Animals and the chance to learn about them no matter where I go
• My Spanish improving so I can have actual conversations with my host family
• An education that will hopefully leave me prepared for a job in May
•  Most of all, a God who forgives our sins and loves us no matter what

Most of these are pretty typical and cliché, but I can’t think of anything too creative right now.

Too many thoughts

Being at Rancho Ebenezer usually gives me lots of time to think about things and the beginning of this week was no different.  I’m not usually one to share my thoughts with everyone, but here are just a few things I’ve been thinking about lately. 

The future: As my time here is quickly coming to an end and I have to realize that I am a senior in college, I have been thinking a lot about what I want to do when I graduate and have to “grow up.”  I haven’t come to any solid decisions, but my experiences here in Nicaragua have definitely given me more to think about and helped me see options for my future.  Right now, these are the three things running through my head the most. 1) I still look back on my experience this past summer and through college and would love to work on a farm with animals…somewhere. 2) I am still very interested in animal nutrition and would love to find a job that deals with that…just not sure what that job would be. 3) I would still love to work overseas with farmers in developing countries at some point.  Besides these ideas, I have had to think about where I want to be, how many of these jobs I am actually qualified for, and where would I find these kind of jobs. 

Then I was listening to music this week and the song At Your Feet by Casting Crowns came on.  One verse especially spoke to me:

Here at Your feet

I lay my future down

All of my dreams

I give to You now and

I find peace

I find peace

So, in my search for what the future brings, I lay the worries at Jesus’s feet while I continue searching and deciding.

Goodbyes: I met a girl from New Zealand on the bus this week and after parting our separate ways I got thinking about something I have thought about many times before.  It always amazes me how many times we meet people and then say goodbye without knowing if we will ever see them again.  It could be someone we talked to for an hour on a bus or someone we spent a week with on a trip, but once you each leave, each person goes on with their own life.  It’s especially crazy here, being in a different country, meeting new people almost every week.  In a month, we will go back to another country, while many of the people we have met will never get the chance to leave Nicaragua, and others will go on to other parts of the world.  Now being involved with the CRC and Dutch community through Dordt, many of these people we meet we are bound to make connections with at some point in the future because that is how the Dutch people are, but there are many we may never see again.  Saying goodbye in December to my host family will be difficult most likely, because, although I hope to get back here someday, only God knows our futures.  It will be more difficult than saying goodbye to my friends and family in the States was, because I knew in August that I would most likely be seeing everyone again shortly.  

Ok, enough of my thoughts for now.  Thankfully, after a Monday full of those thoughts, my brain was busy the rest of the week learning.  Tuesday I learned all there is to know about rabbits.  In the morning, Carlos taught me what he knows and I learned about breeding rabbits and saw the charts where they keep track of all the rabbits.  In the afternoon, I went with Yaser, who takes care of rabbits all day long.  He taught me more about the care of rabbits and I got to tattoo a few rabbits’ ears.  Since all of this was in Spanish, my brain had to work extra hard to understand and retain the information, but I think I learned a lot.  Wednesday I also did a lot of learning in the afternoon.  I went with Carlos to a presentation in town on chickens.  A lot of the information was pretty basic stuff, but still interesting.  It was especially neat to see the differences between what I know about chicken production in the Midwest compared to Central America.

Now I am in Leon for a short weekend before going back to Rancho Ebenezer.  Tomorrow I am excited because we are going to a Quinceanara.  I hope that it is as fun as I think it will be.  Other than that, I am busy working on final papers and projects for my classes, so I keep plenty busy.

It is hard to believe that my time here is coming to an end, but I am super excited to see everyone and super not excited to be cold…but I’ll survive.

Costa Rica- Pura Vida

Pura Vida is the slogan of Costa Rica and means pure life.  This week we got to spend time in Nicaragua’s neighbor to the south.  While there, we got to be tourists, students, and we got to relax.  We left our houses last Saturday morning for Managua where we went ziplining on Mombacho volcano.  It was awesome! There were 11 platforms and various different types of ziplines.  Then Sunday morning we got up super early to be on the 7:00 bus to Costa Rica.  It was election day here in Nicaragua, so not many people were leaving the country and the border crossing went fairly quick.  We got to San Jose by 3:30, an hour and a half earlier than expected.  Then we got to go to where we would be spending the week.  

 We were each responsible for taking pictures of the people behind us ziplining, so here is Maynor on one of the lines.

We stayed at Whitworth College campus, in an old French restaurant up in the mountains.  As soon as we got there, we knew we were going to be spoiled.  It is a beautiful place with surroundings that remind me of Colorado.  Other plusses of staying there: hot showers and really good food!  The downside: it was cold!!! We were not expecting it to be quite that cold, so we spent many nights shivering in front of a fire.  Because it was so cold up at the campus, we forgot that spending all day Tuesday in the city would be warmer.  

 A view from the campus of Whitworth University

We went into San Jose Tuesday morning to a neighborhood called La Carpio.  This neighborhood is primarily made up of Nicaraguans who have immigrated over the last 20 years looking for a better life.  We spent the morning with Christ for the City, playing soccer and volleyball with the kids there.  Then in the afternoon, we went around with Cesar, a pastor who lives in La Carpio.  Cesar is very well respected in the community and took us to a bunch of different houses and people walking in the streets.  We got the chance to interview the people about their lives in Costa Rica and their homeland of Nicaragua.  It was very interesting, as Cesar took us to the poorest of the poor in La Carpio.  We even talked to a gang member who was staking out his gang’s territory.  Unfortunately, none of us had thought to put on sunscreen that morning and we all looked like we had been at the beach for too long by the end of the day.

Monday we spent on the campus doing things for class.  In the morning we had a long anticipated debate over different theories of development we have been learning over the semester.  We weren’t entirely prepared, but it went fairly well I think.  In the afternoon we got the chance to walk around the 27 acre campus, full of trees and blackberries.  Then we watched a movie called Nica/raguense, about the Costa Rican view of Nicaraguans living in their country.  It was an interesting preview of what we would see Tuesday in La Carpio.

To complement our learning about the Nicaraguan immigration, Tuesday night we had a speaker from the Costa Rican Housing department come in and speak to us.  All of the discussions were especially interesting because we had Maynor, a Nicaraguan, with us.  Maynor had never been to Costa Rica before, but had many preconceptions about the country and its people coming from a rivalry between the two countries.  This brought an interesting twist to many of our conversations and gave us an extra view into the relationship between these neighboring countries.

The rest of the week we got to spend being tourists for the most part.  We spent Wednesday in downtown San Jose, walking down the main drag and visiting the Museum of Gold.  It is definitely a different world from Nicaragua in Costa Rica.  Everything is much more American/European looking and it is not hard to see that Costa Rica is a richer country.  It was really hard to believe we were still in Central America with the cooler climate and the modern things all around us. 

Yesterday, our last day in Costa Rica, we were going to go to Volcano Poas, but it was too cloudy, so instead we headed to a Waterfall garden.  It was rainy while we were there, but it was still a really cool place to go.  On the walk down to the waterfalls, there were many plants and animals, like a zoo and botanical garden mixed in one.  We got to hold toucans, see all different kinds of hummingbirds up close, play with a jaguar through the glass, and try some traditional Costa Rican cake and tea.  Then we walked down to the 4 waterfalls.  It was a beautiful hike, with many fun pictures taken along the way.

 Me holding a toucan!! It felt super weird.

 An awesome tree frog

 One of the waterfalls

This morning we had to leave at 3:30, so most of us just stayed up all night and slept on the bus ride.  Thankfully, our travels all went without any big problems and now we are all in Leon, although very tired.  Next week, everyone starts their Service Learning portion of the semester.  I will go back to Rancho Ebenezer, but this time I get to stay Monday through Friday, so I am hoping to get to do some new things.  Four weeks from today I will be flying back to the bitter cold of Minnesota.  Crazy! The time here has just flown by, so I am hoping to make the most of the last month.

Beaches and farms...I'm in heaven

Normally, my weekends are pretty relaxed, full of sitting around and doing homework.  This last weekend though, I ended up staying pretty busy and not having much time for homework, but I’m not going to complain about that.  On Friday, our church was having a half-vigil, meaning they had a service from 6 until midnight.  Thankfully, our church meets in Lisa’s house (she’s another one of the Dordt students here).  Instead of sitting through the service, Lisa and I hung out in her room talking about many things during that time and the night ended with 3 of the girls from church entertaining us.  They were all past tired I’m sure and trying to stay awake so it was very entertaining to watch. 

Saturday, us girls all went to the beach, such a fun thing to do at the end of October!! It was a nice day and we found a calmer part of the beach where we could swim a little more.  We came back early because our church was having another service, this time a youth service.  The service was recognizing the active youth in the church and ended up being like Christmas.   A few women in the congregation had gotten presents for the youth, so they all ended up with 2 or 3 gifts, with things like socks, belts, shirts, sandals, and perfume in them.

Sunday, instead of going to church, we went to the family farm!  I was really excited because I have been wanting to go since I first got here.  My mom, papito, brother, and I got in the back of my aunt and uncle’s truck with another uncle for the ride to the farm.  The first hour was fairly smooth, but then we had to leave the main road and get on a dirt road.  The river had flooded over the road to the point where you couldn’t see it at all for about half a mile.  I wasn’t sure if we would make it or not, but thankfully we did!  At the farm, I met lots more family since three of my mom’s brothers live there with their families.  My brother and cousins gave me a tour around, showing me all sorts of fruit trees and the animals.  Then we got in the truck again to go down the road to another part of their farm.   There, we sat on the porch and ate papaya in honey, a delicious snack/dessert they have here.  On the way back to the other farm, we stopped to pick some corn and I felt like I was back in Iowa (besides the volcanoes in the background).  Once back with the others, I helped the women make tamales, which we got to enjoy later for supper.  The whole day, everyone was finding all sorts of things for me to take pictures of, so I have lots to share today!  It was a really good day, but when we got back I still had homework to do for Monday’s classes.

My week at the farm was fairly uneventful and now I’m back in Leon for a few days.  Saturday we are going ziplining, which I am very excited for! And then Sunday we leave for Costa Rica!! We are going to Costa Rica as part of our class, with several motivations.  One, the elections in Nicaragua are Sunday and should be calm, but in case anything happens, they want us to be out of the country.  Two, one of our professors lives in Costa Rica and we are studying the immigration of Nicaraguans to Costa Rica.  Three, our visas run out at the end of the month, so we need to leave the country for a few days in order to stay for the rest of the semester.  It looks like it will be a very busy week with classes and touristy things. 

 One of the many camioneta busses in Leon

 This is not a river...it's the road we drove to get to the family farm last weekend!

 Iowa or Nicaragua??

 The cows here are funny

 My adorable cousins! Naima, Jacob, Jonathan, Mareling

 A cute goat from Rancho Ebenezer...the ones that look like this are my favorite