Nica in a Nutshell.

Clearly I am proving to be terrible at keeping up with my blogs. 
Here is a brief recap of March in Nicaragua. 

(Eating a carrot straight out of the ground.)

LIVING:
We were living on a property called Bloqueria Bethel that aims to create jobs for people from the local community after they have become ill with Kidney disease that is acquired in the sugar cane fields. Or after their spouses or children have died leaving them widowed. It was a dorm style building, with two of our Race teams and a Passport team. Passport is a program with Adventures in Missions for college aged kids. Quite a few of them are just waiting to be old enough to come on the race.

(Our two Race teams plus the Passport Team)

 

All the girls became super close this month. I was so lucky to have met these incredible young women, especially since Kacie wants to plan my wedding! 

(Some, but not all of the passport girls with Bethany, Natasha and I.)

WORKING: 
We spent a few days going into communities around Chinendega, just playing with the kids and enjoying time with the people. But what we spent the majority of the time doing was manual labor. We worked at an orphanage about 40 minutes away in Chinendega. The orphanage is completely self-sustained through farming. We did all sorts of tasks; filling and leveling an area that will become a basketball court, creating a baseball diamond, putting gutters on a roof, painting a building, raking a park, planting and weeding in the garden, painting verses on the rocks in the park. And those are only the things I personally worked on- not even what other groups were doing throughout the day. Everyday that had an amazing lunch for us, completely fresh and always delicious.

(I planted that!)

There was not a single work day that I went home without needing a shower- not just from being sweaty, but from being entirely covered in dirt or paint. 

(Leslie and I's dirty feet after a day throwing rocks and 
moving dirt to level out the area for the basketball court.)

One day we were clearing a patch of ground with machetes so they could make a new garden area.

(One of the boys at the orphanage working wtih us in the garden.)

 Some of the weeds we were pulling up had some random, but no edible, fruits growing off them. We started to play "baseball" with them- which turned into real life fruit ninja. If you don't know what fruit ninja is, look up the APP on your iPod. 

(Me getting a "hit" in fruit ninja.)

RUNNING:
There were some incredible running trails around where we were living. This is the first month I can truly say I ran/worked out consistently. There were dirt roads, hills, dry river beds. It was incredible. It made you WANT to get out and go. 

EATING:
I already told you about the amazing food at the orphanage, but we also had two women from Bethel cooking breakfast and dinner for us everyday. Theywere not only great cooks (some of the best home cooked food I've ever had) but they were incredible women. They were joyful, and always playing and laughing with us. It also became a habit of ours to walk down the street and eat anything off the trees that we could reach. Mangoes were everywhere (we find it hard to believe that people pay for them) and Tecati (very possibly spelled wrong, but they are grape sized with a hard shell and a nut in the middle- sour when they are green and sweet when they are red. We ate them both ways), plus a number of things we didn't recognize, or couldn't pronounce. 

(Leslie's collection of Tecati)

Everything except this Cashew fruit seemed to do well. Helena, the crazy, ate them like candy, but anyone else that ate them went numb in the mouth. They are related to poison ivy. 

(Helena eating a Cashew Fruit)

OFF DAYS:
At the start of the month, we had a "debrief" in Granada, about three hours from our ministry site. The town is awesome- I would highly suggest it for vacations. There are great restaurants, shopping, activities- and it is super cheap compared to many vacation spots around the globe. My favorite day was the BIke Boat Bike tour that Bethany and I did. It was about four hours of biking on mountainous rocky terrain and 15 minutes of luxurious boating. But it was awesome. We saw some incredible places outside of the city, we trespassed to climb a mango tree, we went as fast down hills as possible to make sure we could get back up the other side, and we handstand-dismounted into Lake Nicaragua (the only fresh water lake that has sharks in it.)

(Handstands into Lake Nicaragua.)

It was INCREDIBLE, especially since it was just the two of us with our guide, Fredder. If you ever go, you should do this tour with him. 

(Bethany and I getting off the boat to bike some more.)

Nicaragua is known for their beaches (Lake Nicaragua and the ocean) and their volcanoes. We went to both. We had a girls day at the beach- complete with a Nicaraguan creeper who just stood next to our campout spot on the beach for hours. 

(Helena creepin' the creeper.)

We also went to a volcano. We found an activity called "Volcano Boarding". It is basically sledding, but down an active volcano instead of snow. The volcano hasn't errupted in 10 years, but they warn you that it could at any moment. It takes about 45 minutes to hike to the top carrying your board, and then you sled down the side. It was incredible, and fun, and I would absolutely do it again. Helena, however, wiped out completely. She lost her board halfway down the volcano and rolled the rest of the way. Don't worry, she's okay! I am actually pretty jealous of her fall. But she was scraped up- and considering that she was skeptical of the whole adventure in the first place, she will not agree with the "I'd do it again!" statement. 

(Before pictures. Bethany has the during and after. Check Facebook to see if they've been posted.)