So I am officially oriented to Nicaragua. My "test" yesterday was:
1. Go to the market and buy a chayote ("What the heck is a chayote?" you ask...it´s green and lumpy and delicious...sort of like a squash)
2. Buy a postcard at the libreria santiago
3. Go to the post office and send the post card to Canada.
4. Take a motobus to Catalina, go to El Mirador and see the site (volcano on one side, sweet lagoon on the other...it was beautiful)
5. Take a cucaracha to San Juan de Oriente (cucarachas are these little three wheeled contraptions that have a top and no sides)
6. Get yourself back home.
Sounds goofy to have a test but I guess the point is that if your group gets miserably lost, or comes back with a papaya or sends their post card to China...maybe you shouldn´t be on your own. But I PASSED, don´t worry.

This week was pretty eye opening. A girl that is staying at the house, Andrea, took us to meet a family she´s really close to. She´s actually getting an apartment around Jinotepe and looking to start a girls soccer league around here, which is great. She stayed with this family a while back, and taught english lessons out of their house. I was really overwhelmed by how kind and extraordinary this family was. They live in one of the poorer barrios, where they have to bring water from the road to their house. I guess they were some of the first people to live there, and first lived in a small wooden hut. The father is a carpenter and works with glass as well and he actually built the house they have now around the wooden hut, and then took out the hut when he was finished. It´s still small, a kitchen and two bed rooms, but it´s one of the nicer safer ones in the barrio. They were so welcoming and kind, words really can´t do them justice. Their daughter is fourteen and is a luchadora...wrestler, as are their sons and nephew. They go to all her matches and said that it´s good because it keeps her away from trouble and might get her away from the barrio, wrestlers sometimes travel around when they´re good enough. They invited us to one of her matches at the end of the month...so I think we´ll go be her cheering squad. The mother is truuuuly amazing. She went door to door in the barrio and taught the adults to read and write. She lets the kids in the barrio come to her house and have little dances, so that they´re somewhere safe. She worked in one of the sweatshops around here, testing chemicals for two years, until they found out that one of the chemicals she was testing causes cancer and asthma and other things. She has asthma and was sick for awhile and now works in a textile factory. It´s amazing...everyone here has a story. And most of them include working extremely hard for little money, sickness, sadness, hunger...and yet everyone is still so kind and proud. When we left they told us that they were our friends, and their house and family was open to us at anytime...and they were so genuine. I´m getting a little sappy here, but it´s just inspiring to meet so many people who have spirits strong enough to surpass obstacles that would break most others.