Hola Todos!

I am in Nicaragua!!!!! Our travels couldn´t have gone more smoothly aside from Tim losing his pillow. My departure from Cincinnati was a dry, bitter, freezing 20 degrees; and my arrival in Nicaragua was a balmy 80 degrees! No complaints there, but in the day it is SO hot, and it is only getting hotter. By the end of march it will be 100 degrees every day! I am sorry to say I am not able to put pictures up today, but plan to this weekend.
Our first night in Nicaragua, we stayed en La Casa San Juan, where we ate a ten o clock dinner and then showered and went to bed. In the morning we had breakfast with father Joe Mulligan, who is a priest here that works with Christian Based Communities, and will be very involved with our group over the next three months. After breakfast, the exciting and nerve wrecking part came, meeting the families!

I LOVE my family! I have a papa, Martín, who drives the bus for our group, so I basically go with him to work everyday; which is advantageous for me because I will NEVER BE LATE!!! My mama, Blanca, stays at home with her baby, and she is very outgoing and laughs at me a lot. She likes romantic movies, and does not like Lady GaGa. lol My baby sister´s name is Valentína, and she is one year old, and I think she might learn to walk while I am here! Her name is so because she was supposed to be born on Valentine´s day, but she was born in January instead. My other sister is Kenya, and she is 20 and we have so much to talk about. She was so happy that I wore jewelry and paint my nails, because she enjoys these things as well. She is attending University and is studying Business Administration, and she also like romantic movies. She also does traditional Nicaraguan dances in shows, so hopefully I will learn from. And finally, my one brother is 9, and he and Peter would get along so great! His name is Kenneth and he loves soccer, and Fifa, and the videogame Fifa, and his favorite team is Barcelona, and all of his possessions say Barcelona. There is a joke going that Kenneth is my boyfriend because all of the nieghborhood calls me Barbie, and his name is like Ken. My family is very fun and I really enjoy being with them. However, they have two dogs, Pocho and Quito, and they bark at me EVERYTIME they are aware of my presence. Quito is small and starting to like me, but they said Pocho will never like me. So when I use the restroom at night, I must walk past him, and he wakes up the whole barrio (neighborhood). SO this is my family in a nutshell.
The second night (last night) there was a party for us and we got to interact with all the families, and there was a church group that sang to us many times, and various cultural dancers. There was one many that Mom would have loved, but I was not able to find out his name, they just called him profe (professor). My sister Kenya was one of the dancers. After the party I stayed up with Kenya and Kenneth and showed them all my pictures of the family and Andy and Ashley and Kristin and we talked about various things. My Spanish is doing amazingly well!

Today we went to Pajarito Azul, (Little Blue Bird), which is a home for the mentally handicapped. It was so so so sad, and I wanted to work there, but it really pulled at my heart strings, so I do not know yet. I took a girl in a wheel chair outside, because most of the children never go outside because they are short staffed, and the girl could not talk but she just stared at the sky and smiled. She seemed very happy for a while. There are four more work sites to see, so no one will decide until after we´ve seen them all.

Tomorrow, I have an interview that will decide my placement into a Spanish class, but other than that I do not know what we are doing. Our general amount of information is very low, and we only know what time to get on the bus. But once we start our service sites, we will have more of a schedule to follow.

For now this is all, but pictures are to come this weekend, assuming these computers work. As a side note, this is not an American keypad, so if there are issues with my spelling, etc. I apologize. Oh, and all of the food has been delicious! (Except the cheese is really strong, like feta or goat cheese)

Mucho Amor,

Eva (Barbie)