American Thanksgiving Break

Because of Thanksgiving, we had Thursday and Friday off school. With the extra long weekend three friends and I headed four hours out of Managua towards the mountains. This is one of my favorite places to visit and I often wish that NCA was located there. The mountains are where the coffee grows and already the first round of coffee beans had been picked. Here are three workers raking coffee beans which need to be dried before they are graded and then roasted. Sometimes these beans lay out for almost a week depending on the amount of sun. Even though the beans grow in the mountains, they are shipped to the valley to dry where there is more sun and flat space.

Because of heavy rains during the rainy season the roads can get quite rough in this area. It doesn't help that large trucks use these roads a lot to truck coffee, beans, and rice. At one point in the road the traffic was reduced to one lane because the other half of the road had fallen away. This was a fun sign we saw of a bus and a person falling into a pothole. The sign says Jinotega demands their roads. And really they are right it is important for them to have good roads because alot of Nicaragua's exportable products come from this part of the country. With the poor roads, the truck drivers are having more breakdowns and it is taking longer to deliver their products; also gas prices have gone up. As a result, in the past couple weeks food prices have risen. Now the poor are speaking out in the capital about this. It's a vicious cycle.
The main goal of the trip to the mountains was to spend a night at an orphanage. We spent most of Thursday afternoon preparing a Thanksgiving meal for the kids who live there. This was the one day out of the year that they were allowed to eat as much as they wanted. As we were preparing the food the kids were most interested in what we were doing. Most of the kids I talked to had never seen or tasted ham before. They had lots of fun eating and even though we had made lots of food there wasn't a lot left over in the end.
Here the kids are gathering around to see the cranberry sauce be prepared and the duck (not turkey because it was too expensive) being carved. The kids had killed and plucked the duck that morning before we arrived.
After the meal we shared one or two things that we were thankful to God for in the past year. Most of the kids were thankful for good grades in school, for the meal they had just eaten, and that they were healthy enough to do their work well. Usually a common answer we might have is family, but for these children they normally don't come from good or supportive families. Thankfully this orphanage is run very well and these kids have really formed one big family there.

Talent Show

This past weekend we had our Talent Show at the school. This is an evening where students can audition to present a talent. We had everything from dance routines, to stand up comedy, to bands and solos. Each class is also judged for their efforts in cheering. The tenth grade class brought trumpets and trombones and so they were obviously the loudest. When I mentioned to a Nicaraguan that I thought the evening was very loud, she quickly disagreed. There are two settings on every Nicaraguan stereo. It is either off or on full blast.

Traditionally the teachers put on an act as well. This year we did "The not-so Late Show". This consisted of some dry humor and jokes, a band with odd instruments, stupid human tricks, and of course our host. Our top 10 list was:

You know you're in Nicaragua...

10 When machetes are as common as cell phones.

9 When a team of oxen pulls your new pick up truck out of a pothole.

8 Oranges are green.

7 When you have sweat stains on your shirt by 6:30... am

6 There is always room for one more on the bus.

5 When candlelight dinners are a necessity, not just for special occasions.

4 Roosters never know what time it is.

3 Every one's favorite cologne is 'Burning Trash'.

2 Potholes can double as swimming pools.

1 When you think music class means listening to pigs being slaughtered.

Here Comes the Brides

Every wedding has something unique about it that makes you remember it. The wedding I attended last night will definitely be one I won't forget.

Let me give a little background on the wedding first. Several of the ladies that work at Nicaragua Christian Academy have never been married in the church. Although they have been with their spouses for many years and have several children, for economic reasons they have never been able to be married in the church. It is common among the poor in Nicaragua to have a civil wedding only, even among Christians. A wedding in the church is costly because you need to hire a pastor, buy new cloths, and feed the guests. As a result, many couples are not able to afford it. As a school community, we came together to support these couples as they celebrated this very special day.

The five brides

The ceremony was suppose to start at 5:00 and we were asked to be there by 4:30. I should have known better than that because we finally got underway at 6:00. In the hour and a half while we were waiting for things to begin, we got the heaviest downpour of the season. I thought it was going to be a hurricane. Because 3 of the sides of the chapel are open, the wind started blowing in the rain and there was a drip above the chair I was sitting in. So yes we did get slightly wet and could have used an umbrella at this wedding and it wasn't even outdoors. My roommates and I with Carmen. Yup that's a white skirt and I didn't even get a dirty!

Like I said earlier this event would be something these families would never be able to afford on their own, making this celebration extra meaningful and special for them. It also was special knowing that this is a culture where spouses are often not faithful to one another and yet these 5 couples promised their commitment to one another.

Rachel and I chauffeured three of the couples to a hotel at the end of the evening. We had heard that it is a custom in Nicaragua to get the vehicle shaken back and forth to get the the bride and groom to kiss. Although this didn't happen we did attach cans and bottles to the back and hung a sign that said 'Racien Casados' or 'Just Married'. Our other decorations got washed away in the rain.