Profound words from Seth the first full day we were here. That we are in the presence of tropical birds, lake Nicaragua, palm trees, intense humidity, beautiful blue skies, and an awesome colonial town.
We arrived here in Nicaragua on Monday night, to the airport in Managua. Its about an hour drive to our place here in Granada. We are staying at El Puente, the local base here. Here is a small map of Granada i found on the internet:
El Puente is at the end of Calle Santa Lucia, where it branches of into a Y, top right corner (right under the red milage key. Its about a 10 minute walk to Lake Nicaragua. Most of the places i will be going are within walking distance, although we are all getting bikes in order to be able to get places faster in this humidity. We have been visiting the different places where we could go this week. On Tuesday we went on a tour of Granada, and saw the cathedral of Granada, the lake, and the main square, as well as Sergio’s (Seth Barnes) favorite stores/restaurants.
Also on Tuesday, it was Sergio’s 25th birthday. Here in Nicaragua, it is custom to throw flour, and smash eggs on someones head when it is their birthday. Unfortunately, I did not have any eggs to smash on his head, but we did have an awesome birthday party for him at Frank & Becca, and Yenner & Onedas house.
I signed up for this trip with a passion to teach children; to help with the literacy program here at El Puente, and to work at the Hogar de Niñas (girls home), and to do ESL. That was what I really wanted to do here in Nicaragua. But since being here, I have realized there are many many different needs here in the community. We have so many different things that we as a team could do. Yesterday we visited the hospital, where people go and stay for months at a time, getting not very much medical attention at all. We made our schedule today for the next 2 weeks – I will be going to the hospital twice each week, the girls home, and doing literacy twice each week. We are also going to be planning for the ESL classes starting soon. Three of us will start those classes hopefully soon. And we are thinking of starting a coffee shop! One of the guys who works here, Pepe (his real name is Baker ) just started up a bike shop and there is a place in the front for a cafe. So we are brainstorming for that this week and hopefully that will be able to be up and running too!
Here in Granada, my name is Adriana. Apparently Amber is a hard name to pronounce in Spanish, so thus the name Adriana was born. Trevor is Jeffrey, Garrett is Gilberto, and everyone else has pretty easy names to say in Spanish 🙂 The Nicaraguan accent here is pretty hard for me to understand, but hopefully we will get used to it soon! I hope you are continuing to keep me in your thoughts and prayers, and I will keep you updated on everything I am doing here!
Here are some pictures from our first day here:
Front of El Puente, wher we are staying 🙂
The little dorm house inside El Puente. There are 2 hammocks on the porch. I spent an hour this morning laying on the hammock in the amazing weather.
View from the bell tower in a church here in Granada
Another view of the houses/streets
Landscape picture of Granada. If you can see in the distance, thats a famous cathedral here in Granada, i forget the name of it tho 😛
So anyways I have had an amazing time this week here in Granada, more pictures and blogs soon! Que Dios les bendiga! 🙂
