Nicaragua --the Place We Call Home!: November 2016

Riding an emotional rollercoaster of excitement, nervousness, confusion, anticipation, exhaustion, boredom, and overload in the first two weeks, we tried to adjust to this wonderful country called Nicaragua. The first day, we were taken to LaUnion, a local grocery store to get some things to stock the kitchen. The biggest excitement was having two geckoes fall on our table right before our lunch. They created quite the commotion running onto one of the ladies in our group, which led to screaming, jumping, and lots of laughing!

Friday, we took the kids to see school for the first time. It was bigger than they anticipated, but the lockers seemed small. As I walked around, I was reminded of my first trip here and thinking at that time it would be fun to teach at NCA. How strange to know it was now a reality.

Walmart and PriceMart were the points of destination the next day. We stocked the house with some groceries and basic supplies to get started. I was feeling overwhelmed with all the decisions to be made. What do we need to get set up with right away and what can wait for a few month. We purchased hangers, towels, sheets, cooking utensils, pillows, baskets, kleenex, tp and more basics. Walmart was very typical on the inside except I couldn't read the Spanish signs. The Price Mart is very similar to Costco and even has the members mark brand names. A little bit familiar in a foreign world. Saturday night gave me my first encounter with a tarantula! He was crawling on a wall right outside our back door. Jeff quickly got rid of him for me.

Church and Sunday afternoon where quiet and gave us time to relax and prepare for the week of new teacher orientation. During each day of the first full week, Jeff and I were at school and the kids slept, read, watched tv, played games, and went to the pool once in awhile.The kids were quite bored and wanted to leave the house. They did get a chance to leave at night. We were invited to supper on several evenings and were able to socialize with some of the new staff, the administrators, and current teachers. It was a wonderful experience, except for the fact that we talked about bug and spider encounters every night! There were some things I really didn't need to hear:)!

During the second weekend, we took the kids to Walmart to buy some school supplies. The kid's reactions to Walmart: bigger than expected, the products weren't very good quality and there was a small selection of things.

So I asked the kids to share their thoughts of their first two weeks: