“Summer Vacation”

What are you some of your favorite memories of summer vacation? Sidewalk challk? Going to camp? Hanging out at the local swimming pool or park? Playing in the neighborhood? Our students in town often get bored during their vacation time. There are not a lot of options in our small town, but we have seen them playing in the street with others, hanging out at the park, and, of course, watching TV. We decided that this was all fun and games, but we wanted to set-up something structured for our students to do during the day. We played around with a lot of ideas, a library program with the awesome library that Davie and Sarah helped fund for the high school, a sports program, a reading program or an English program. As often happens in volunteer work, our ideas started out big and then eventually were funneled down to a a 2 day a week, variety program. We did some reading together, learned origami, had a special guest teach us how to make books (thanks, Clare!), wrote thank-you notes to people in town, did a playground games day in the park and finally had a movie day with a montón of popcorn!

December and January are the between school-year break, like our summer break in the states. The school year runs with the calendar year (makes a lot of sense!) Our vacation program ran 2 days a week through the month of January and we had a blast getting to know the kids in our town. We go back to school on February 8th and we are feeling excited and refreshed about our work and relationships here in 2016! 

Here are a few photos of our time with our vacation programming:

Book making in the library at the school

Thanks, Clare, for teaching our kiddos how to make and write a book

Mi Gemela (My twin) – Alison

The final products!

We talked about gratitude and thankfulness and wrote thank-you notes to some people in town (including the mayor’s office, the bus drivers, the health center, teachers, and the store owners/workers)

Delivering our thank you notes in town

Some of the kids in our group after delivering cards to the teachers

Teaching Origami

A blurry shot—but movie day in our front sala. We watched Buscando por Nemo (Finding Nemo). Not pictured…the popcorn all over the floor

VMM Retreat

In the middle of January we were able to enjoy a retreat together at Laguna de Apoyo with the rest of the VMM crew. We enjoyed seeing the Managua ladies again. We got to meet Pieter—a long term VMM volunteer who lives in Guatemala (we will definitely be visiting him eventually! Especially for his delicious french fry dips! : D ) Having Joe—our in country coordinator—there was great to talk more about our experiences thus far and our expectations into the future. And we were SO very excited to have Billy and Kristin with us. We met them en vivo (in person), but we felt like we were long last friends…probably from the multiple skype conversations we had. (Have we said how AMAZING skype is??) They are members of the VMM board, but even cooler for us, they were the first volunteers with VMM in San Nicolas. It was so great to swap stories and to talk with them about many of our joys, struggles, and hopes for the town and our position. We have never felt alone on this experience so far, because of all the wonderful support of our community back in the states—all of you! But how wonderful it was to talk to people who have BEEN HERE before. They just GET IT and it was so great to bounce ideas and feelings off of them.
We had lots of time to reflect and have lots of great discussion! I hope to write more posts about some of our reflections soon. We also enjoyed our time relaxing by the beautiful lake, eating  (way too much!!) good food, and fellowshiping with our VMM community. A few pictures from our time together.

Where we spent A LOT of our time!

Current volunteers

The whole retreat crew!

Represent! San Nicolas! : )

Up next: Hawkins family visit! They come TODAY! We can’t wait to see them and show them our life here!

Grapefruit, anyone?

We came home from our organizational retreat this weekend to find un monton (a mountain!) of grapefruit that had fallen from our tree. 
This picture shows only about half of our bounty :)

Christmas in San Nicolas

We were lucky enough to celebrate Christmas in Nicaragua with the Stiffney Family. Kirk, Susan, Aaron and Josh all made there way south for a fun and festive Christmas in San Nicolas. We did A LOT in the week we were all together, but it was so fun to show new eyes all the things we are experiencing here. We visited wonderful lookouts, hiked, went on a tour of La Garnacha and visited some families that live further out in the campo.  We also stuck with a few good Christmas traditions—making taffy, christmas eve dinner,  and opening presents. It was definitely a different Christmas compared to others in the past, but it was a fun one!

One of our first nights in town we hiked up to a Mirador to watch a beautiful sunset!

We did a cigar factory tour in Esteli. It was really interesting!

We did some fun and beautiful hiking

Hiked to some beautiful look-outs

We had to visit Don Alberto—the rock carver. This is one of our favorite places around San Nicolas…if you visit we will definitely be taking you here.

Visiting some local farms and families (and cows!)

Plenty of card playing happened—Euchre was a favorite!

Our Christmas Eve roast in our Christmas present  (crockpot!)

Christmas time in San Nicolas. Complete with fake snowballs from Grandma and Grandpa Hawkins…Thanks!! Lots of snowball fights happened in Nicaragua for the first time in history ; )

Ohhh (mini) Christmas Tree : )

We had a great time with the Stiffneys, visiting the sites around San Nicolas and celebrating Christmas! It was fun to show our family our home and life here in San Nicolas. We are open to visitors for 2016!! Come on down!

We hope you had a blessed and Merry Christmas! Thanks for all your love, support and encouragement in 2015. Cheers to 2016!

Jinotepe Visit

Because Kirk and Aaron arrived earlier than the rest of the Stiffney family, we were able to visit Jinotepe—where Goshen College does their study portion of SST. This meant Aaron was able to stay with his host family in town and Kyle, Kirk and I were able to stay with my host family and catch up with them.  We also stopped by Kyle’s family’s house for an afternoon visit. It was so fun to reconnect with these families and it reminded us of why we fell in love with this country in 2008 on SST (Hint: It was the people!!)

The Marenco Family (some of them!) I just love these people.

They so kindly opened their home to us and also took us to many sites around Jinotepe—including Catarina overlooking Laguna de Apoyo

We visited the beach for a few hours to take in the beautiful sunset. This is my host mom—Virginia—and her granddaughter, Nicole. I loved meeting the new “littles” in the family.

My host dad—danilo—holding the sun

My beautiful host sister—Ana—she will be in her final year of high school in 2016! (Don’t mind the scratch on my lip, I hit myself in the face with a plastic stick…yes, really! and busted my lip pretty good. It’s all healed up now, but the pictures during the healing process are not my best photos. Ha….)

Another Gorgeous Nica sunset

This sweet girl! She kept calling me Tia Allison (Aunt Allison).

My host momma and I in our matching shirts.

We had such a wonderful time visiting Jinotepe and eating plenty of good food! We were stuffed by the end of our time together!! I really feel that this is my second family and I am so blessed to know them. It was great to reconnect and to know that they are just a quick bus ride away for a weekend visit! We will be back again, that’s for sure!

Here’s to 2016 and building new relationships and keeping up with old ones! Thanks for being a part of our journey, near and far!