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2 months without a post… oops!  I’ll try to stick to just explaining the exciting things that have happened.

First, thank you SO much to everyone who donated school supplies and backpacks, especially those at Bloomingdale School and the Scotch Plains Brownie Troop.  During my one week, wonderful vacation at home in July, I was able to meet some of the Brownies and see the incredible effort everyone has been putting forth to help out my students.  My parents’ basement is chock-full with supplies so now we’re trying to figure out how to get all of it to Teustepe.  I was able to carry two suitcases back to Nicaragua, one full of 30 backpacks and the other with pencils, crayons, and markers.  Can’t wait to give them to the kids!  (There’s still probably about 450 pounds of supplies waiting to get transported.)

I’m currently taking advantage of the excellent Amigos de las Americas volunteers to create another world map on the outside wall of the school in El Crucero.  These four high school students/graduates have been living in Nicaragua for the past month, working with the youth in their community to create media projects.  In their spare time, they’ve been helping me draw and paint what is soon to be an amazing, huge world map. 

After months of practice, the high school softball team I’m am the assistant coach for finally had its first game.  What better way to start the season than at Nationals?  We were instructed to meet at the high school at 7:00 AM on Wednesday morning to arrive in Managua at 9:00.  I should have known that 7:00 Nica time really meant 8:30, which was when we hit the road.  Representing the department of Boaco, we played our first game that afternoon against the department of Carazo and won 17-4!  All of the softball teams stayed at IND (Instituto Nacional de Deportes) in dorm style rooms.  We had the bad luck of getting placed in the building without running water.  Solution?  Wake up at 3:00 AM when it was pitch black outside to bathe ourselves by filling and dumping bottles of water over our bodies from washbasins in the open air.  I first nixed the idea of getting up at 3 in the morning but after some raised eyebrows from the girls, I, too, stripped down in the dark to get clean before the construction workers started their day next door.  Talk about adapting to the situation…  Unfortunately on day two, we lost 2 consecutive games versus the departments of Chinandega and Rivas and were sent home.  Season record: 1-2.

Next week, my regular schedule will start up again which I’m looking forward to (although I wouldn’t have minded to have the lovely company and delicious food in NJ for a few more days).  I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the school gardens are still green and growing.  My women’s group just bought a sewing machine with the money we earned from selling our earrings and our next project is making shoulder bags and purses from fabric scraps and chip bags.  My next feat is to learn how to use a sewing machine with a foot pedal.  It’s not as easy as it looks.

Tomorrow is the party that my Nica friends organized to celebrate my 24^th birthday!