Monday, March 7

            Its March 7^th already!!! I can't believe how quickly time has flown by! Today was a really relaxed day, and it made for a great conclusion to Spring Break. This morning everyone kind of broke off to do their own thing. After I got up and got ready I called home and was thrilled to spend some time talking to John and my mom. The free wifi at our hotel proved a little sketchy with lots of people using it, and I ended up at an e-cafe, but it was totally worth it.

            The whole group met up for lunch and we found an awesome restaurant where everyone got something they loved and then headed over to the bus station to wait for our ride back to San Jose. We talked a lot about what we've been through so far this semester and how we want to approach things for the rest of the semester in order to get the most out of our experience here. The 4 hour bus ride home was pretty fun, too. Michelle, Haleigh and I sat in the back of the bus together and enjoyed listening to some fun music and marveling at the incredible views.

            When I got back to my host family's house, we shared pictures from the weekend (they went hiking and visited some family) and then they got out some puzzle games for me to try. I did alright with the 20 piece Thomas the Train puzzle Melany had to share and the balancing game that Kevin had was conquerable, but Andrey's puzzle is impossible! Everyone refuses to show me how it works and they said I have to take it to school tomorrow and see if my friends can help me figure it out.

            I was feeling pretty worn out, so after the puzzles I started to unpack from the weekend and get ready for the week. Its strange to think of having “normal” class again tomorrow after so many days of traveling and learning through seeing/experiencing other parts of Central America. It will be good to get back into a routine for a couple of weeks.

            I am so amazed by how clearly God has revealed Himself to me this weekend, and my challenge for the rest of the semester is to lean on Him more than ever. Trusting and seeking Him are my top priorities, and I want His word and will to be the measure against which I compare all of the new information I'm presented with. Your prayers on this journey are so greatly appreciated, and I can't even express how much it means to me to have such a great group of supporters at home!

Sunday, March 6

Our goal for today was pretty much to see as much as we could of this beautiful area in as short of time as possible. It turned into a pretty successful pursuit, and we all had a great time. We got up early this morning to swim in the pool at the lodge and check out the nearby waterfall. The pool was pretty gross and the waterfall pretty tiny, but it was still a fun adventure. After that, we all went back to get ready for zip lining. When we were all ready and waiting, the zip lining company called to tell us our shuttle would be a half hour late, so we all kind of split off to do a variety of different things. It was really nice for me to have some quite alone time with God..I really needed it, and He totally met me right where I was at. Its amazing to be able to see the clear ways He has been working even just in the last couple of days with all of our traveling and unorganized planning.

The shuttle finally arrived at 10:45 and it raced down the extremely rocky road to the lodge in order to get us to the zip lining place, Mundo Ventura, on time. Everyone LOVED zip lining! The views were spectacular and everyone made it through safely with a bunch of pictures to remind us of what a great time we had. We moved hotels after our zip lining escapade in order to be closer to town and to have enough beds for everyone. Our new hotel has free wifi, so I've been working furiously all night to update everything before going back to San Jose where my internet access is always unreliable. I apologize for the bombardment of posts tonight, I hope no one feels obligated to actually read them. They're mostly just for my memory's sake ;)

Anyways, we settled into our new hotel and went out for dinner before taking a taxi to a local hot spring to go swimming. We found an awesome taxi driver who showed us right where to go and waited for us so we would have a ride back whenever we wanted to leave. The hot spring was amazing, and we took turns swimming and watching our stuff on shore. After everyone had a turn swimming and sitting in the warm water, we headed back to the hotel for another relaxing night. I caught up on my emails, blogs, and pictures (which are now posted on Facebook) while Michelle and Haleigh went to check out the dancing scene in town and the rest of the girls wisely went to bed early. It feels great to have seen and done loads today, and I think I'll sleep like a baby tonight.

Saturday, March 5

Spring Break has turned into quite an adventure here! Haleigh and I met this morning to take a taxi to the bus station to meet the rest of our group and buy tickets to La Fortuna, the town by Volcano Arenal where we're staying for the weekend. After just a few minutes in the taxi we could tell that our driver either didn't know where he was going or was just trying to drive us around to rack up our bill. At first we weren't too concerned because we had like 40 minutes before the bus was going to leave. We eventually got dropped off at a big bus station where we saw a group of LASP students.

Unfortunately, it was not the group we were looking for and we had gotten dropped off at the wrong bus station. Our bus was scheduled to leave at 8:40 and we arrived at the wrong station at 8:30! The other LASPers gave us directions to the right bus stop, and we quickly hopped into another taxi and asked the driver to hurry to the other station. Thank God he knew where ti was and we got to the station just in time. Megan was waiting for us with our tickets, and we rushed into some of the last seats on the bus just in time for its departure.

We had fun chatting with some of the other people on the bus, and the 4 hour ride to La Fortuna seemed really quick. As soon as we got off the bus we were bombarded with agents trying to sell us hotel rooms saying the whole town was full for the weekend. We wrote them off as scams and went to find some lunch. The coffee shop we stopped at was awesome and we loved the waffles with tropical fruit and ice cream we got there. After lunch we began hotel shopping and quickly found out that the agents at the bus station were not lying. There's a bike race going on here this weekend and all of the hotels really are full!

Luckily the owner of one hotel we stopped at offered to drive us to another place he thought might have room. It was a little far out of town, and there were no rooms there, but the man there called another place for us to try. Our new shuttle driver took us way out of town to a lodge in the country where we found one room with two beds open. The six of us eagerly reserved the room and asked for extra blankets to sleep on the floor.

The area around the lodge is absolutely beautiful, and this place will certainly do for at least one night. The biggest downfall is that its too far from town to walk, so we have to get taxis to go back and forth. The owner of our lodge called specific taxi drivers who know where the place was when we needed to go into town for dinner. We were all taken aback a bit when two completely black cars drove up to drive us into town, but our host gave them specific directions about where to take us (he had a tour reservation place that he wanted us to check out to make plans for tomorrow).

At the reservation place they tried to sell us all kinds of packages, but we settled for a simple zip lining deal. They agreed to pick us up tomorrow at 10:10, so we'll see how that goes. We stopped at a fruit shop after making the reservations and then found a place for dinner. After dinner we went grocery shopping for breakfast tomorrow and then found some payphones to check in with our host moms who all requested updates to know we were safe. By the time we made our way back to our hotel (this time in a clearly legit red taxi-van), we we all pretty tired and ended up just hanging out for the night. Snacks, movies and girl talk made for a perfect conclusion to our somewhat crazy day.

Friday, March 4

Today was a great day, and I found myself thinking “I have the best life in the world.” I slept in and had a late-ish breakfast with my host mom before taking a shower and working on organizing my room here. My host mom taught me how to use her laundry machine and I got started washing my clothes from Nicaragua. Its so weird to be finishing up the final stage of that trip, unpacking, but its also really nice to feel settled at home again.

I started working on my Nicaragua reflection essay, and when Melany and Kevin got home from school we all ate lunch together. After a while, they asked me to play outside with them, so I took a break to play on the swings and to ride bikes for a while. When we tired of that, I returned to finish my essay and then to work on typing up my journal entries from Nicaragua. Melany had religion class, and after that we all had a cafecito and got ready to go to a concert at her school.

The concert was given by the music teachers in the school district to show their students what they can do with their musical talents if they stick with music lessons. It was really good, and we had a fun time. After the concert, Melany and I played some cards and I packed for my Spring Break trip to Volcano Arenal. Its weird to be leaving again already, and it seems like the days are just flying by! I can't wait to see what this weekend adventure brings and to get back into the swing of having classes for a few weeks before my internship starts.

Thursday, March 3

The majority of today was spent traveling. We left Granada at 5:00 am and didn't arrive in San Jose until about 5:00pm. While 12 hours seems like a long time in the bus, it went pretty fast and we took a couple of pit stops. I slept most of the way and had fun playing 10 fingers with some of the other students on my bus.

When I got back to San Jose, I had two packages and a card waiting for me in my mailbox! It was so exciting! Riding the bus from LASP to my host family's house felt really weird, almost like I was going home, and it made me think about how weird it is going to be to leave here. I'm already about halfway there, and I can't believe how much I've learned and I can hardly contain my excitement for what's left of the semester.

I was really grateful that I had slept so much on the way back so that I could do a good job of filling my host family in on my trip and spend a few hours playing cards and other silly games with Melany. I was so exhausted by 8:30 that I was grateful it was almost bedtime for the kids. I sort of unpacked my stuff and went through my pictures from the trip (they should be uploaded to FB soon!) and then crashed, still trying to process everything and taking comfort in knowing that we serve an incredible God and that He has every little detail of my life and of the lives of everyone else in the world planned out perfectly.

Wednesday, March 2

This morning we had a little Nicaragua reflection time and then we had down time until 1:00 when we took a boat tour of Lake Nicaragua, the biggest lake in Nicaragua. Our reflection time was phenomenal, and we discussed many themes that people saw throughout their experiences. It was really helpful to hear about what other people saw and learned, and talking as a group helped me put some words to my thoughts.

After our reflection Haleigh wasn't feeling well, so we spent our down time at the hotel resting and organizing our stuff to go back to San Jose tomorrow. I went to the market to buy some food for lunch, which was kind of fun, and I think I could get carried away and stay in a Latin American market for months. The sounds, smells and wild assortment of goods available just suck me in and I never want to leave!

Our lake tour was beautiful, fun, and relaxing. Before it started, I was dying for an ice cream sandwich, and I searched all over downtown for one. Not a single one of the vendors had one, so I settled for a different form of ice cream. It was fun eating a cool, yummy snack in the sun. I can't believe how quickly we all flipped the switch from roughing it to tourism, and processing things is still pretty overwhelming.

After the lake tour we went to a local market and a group of us went out for pizza for dinner. It was a pretty chill day and I hope I'm ready to jump back in with my San Jose host family tomorrow!

Tuesday, March 1

I got up early this morning to pack and get ready to leave. When I went out to say good morning, Santa Elena was really sad that I was leaving already. I'm really sad too...I LOVED my time here! At 8:30 I said goodbye to Luz Marina and Santa Elena took me to Jake's house where we waited for an hour for the pastor to arrive. When he and a few other members of the church got there, we all prayed together and said more goodbyes. It was a really sweet little meeting. Santa Elena and our host pastor came to Managua with us to say goodbye and make sure we got where we needed to go.

Once we found Trevor and Javier, Santa Elena said a tearful goodbye and I went with the rest of the group to the LASP bus where we waited for a couple of hours for the rest of the students to get there. Everyone had fun catching up and sharing stories from our week apart, and it was great to be with the LASP group again. I slept on the way to Granada, a tourist town where we will be spending the rest of our time in Nicaragua.

The nice hotel here is a huge change. Upon arriving, we all savored the AC and hot showers before going out to see the town. We shopped around some little shops in the town square, got pancakes for dinner, and went to an e-cafe. It was overwhelming going from one extreme to another, and while I really enjoyed myself, I was having trouble knowing what to think and how to process everything.

Its hard to soak all of these experiences up, and I feel like I'm in a bit of a daze. My time in the campo was amazing and I want to learn everything I can from that opportunity. I can't imagine going back to San Jose and falling back into our normal routine, and Minnesota seems so foreign that going home is almost unfathomable at this point. My prayer is that God would be moving in me now and every day to help me know what to do with all of these experiences. I want to understand Him and all of His world more fully each day.