I can't believe it's almost over...

 Here are some of the supervisors at the Laguna last weekend.

It's starting to hit everybody that volunteers only have two weeks left in community.  (I stay almost two weeks after they leave - 6 days on the project and then I'm here for a week as a tourist.)  I'm too tired to write a lot right now; we did not have any free time this weekend because we are starting on paperwork for closing the project, and a group of AMIGOS training directors came here to visit and see how the volunteer experience is in action, and so we spent today hanging out/preparing/prepping them for their upcoming two-day community stays.  

Since I don't have the energy or brain power to write anything intelligent, I'll put up a few pictures of some of my volunteers and me.

The craziness continues

I went out on route a little late this week (Tuesday afternoon instead of Monday morning) because I got really sick on Sunday, and spent all of Monday lying on the couch at Staff House with a fever and headache and nausea.  Yuck.  Luckily it didn't last long.  Seeing all my volunteers was so much fun this week; it's so weird that we're post-midterm now.  Everything just goes by so quickly!  

Today I went to Managua to try to retrieve my package from my parents that has been stuck in customs for 3 weeks or so now (NEVER use DHL - they are hopeless.  Some people on staff got packages via Fedex or regular mail and those all got here).  I was told on the phone that customs close at 12:30, so we (Meredith, who kindly accompanied me, and I) rushed and got there at 12:10, only to find that the DHL desk actually closes at 12, and no one from DHL was there anymore.  So our 1 hour minibus ride and then 20 minute taxi ride was for nothing.  But I refused to go back to staff house empty-handed, so we went to the big mall in Managua (the mall for the rich Nicaraguans, where everything is priced in US dollars) for a while and splurged a bit - I got 3 summery dresses and one tank top.  Today is the first day I've worn anything sleeveless all summer, because I didn't really think to bring cooler clothes for the weekends at staff house.  So it was a good expedition after all.

Tomorrow we have our second day off as staff, and we are going to the Laguna de Apoyo again, which I am very excited about.  However, I am less excited by the 10 secondary medical school applications I have to do - ugh.  But I am grateful that I was asked to do the secondaries.  There are 4 schools I haven't heard back from yet, but the 10 that did e-mail me all asked for secondaries.  Right now, it's 31 essays in total that I have to write.  Honestly, I don't know where I'm going to find the time.  I'll definitely make a stab at some of them tomorrow at the Laguna, but that's not an atmosphere that's very conducive to working.

Despite being busy all the time, life continues to be wonderful.  I love every minute of being here in Nicaragua.  Sometimes I don't want it to ever end.  I do, however, wish I could have gone with my wonderful parents and brother and sister on their trip to Lake Tahoe this past week.

Much love to everyone back home and elsewhere who is reading this blog.

Maya

Past week on route

Only one major piece of news: 

Because of the political mess in Honduras, the Honduras AMIGOS projects that were supposed to start on June 30 got cancelled.  So our project is getting 9 more volunteers (who will only be able to do half the project, of course.)  I am getting one more on my route, who will take the place of the girl who went home.

My heroine moment of the week:

I rescued one of my volunteers from a large spider in his room.  It was about 4 inches across and ran really quickly.  Luckily, there happened to be a machete in the room... I did the job quickly and painlessly though.  

The funniest thing I saw this week:

I was in Rivas trying to figure out some logistics for midterm this weekend, and I was about to walk by a nice, air-conditioned office building or something of the sort.  A young man in his 20s with a white collared shirt and nice slacks walked out of the building right in front of me, carrying a young goat, which was cradled in one arm.  He hopped on a bicycle resting on the sidewalk and rode off with his goat.  Oh Nicaragua.

The funniest thing that happened to one of my volunteers this week:  

My volunteer was riding on the handlebars of her host sister's bicycle because it had rained a lot that day and the streets were covered with huge mud puddles, and she wanted to stay dry.  Everything was going fine until the bicycle got stuck in the mud.  The volunteer's host sister hopped off the bike to a shallow spot and barely got her feet muddy; my volunteer fell backwards, butt-first into the mud.  And the worst part is that it's never just mud in the streets - it's mud mixed with cow poop, horse poop, goat poop, and god knows what other kind of poop.  Ew.

Love,

Maya

Some photos

Sorry - photos are long overdue.  Here are a few.  I haven't even taken that many on my camera.  Some of the other staff members have more, which I will try to steal soon.  Jacy had some project/route photos that were good but of course, his camera got stolen in the whole kidnapping fiasco.  Bummer.

Here is all of staff.  From left to right, Miles, Kate, Adam, Clara, Jacy, Jillian, me, Meredith, Lindsay.  What a wonderful family we are.  Clara, Jacy, and Jillian are senior staff; the rest of us are project supervisors.

The four girl supervisors on the roof at Tepeyac, our lovely briefing site (which turned into our week-long health and wellness retreat...)

This is my whole route performing their "route gift" at the end of briefing.  They wrote a really nice song, and two (!!) of my volunteers brought guitars with them.

Hmm,  I had a few more but they aren't uploading; I'll try to put some more up later.