Today marks one week of living in Nicaragua. It is hard to believe that we have been here for a week because it has gone so fast. (I will probably say that about the whole semester) Today I woke up at 4 am so that I could meet my friend at 4:30 to walk to the bus station. I got ready for the day and my host mom sent breakfast along with me. It was dark when I left. I met my friend and we tried to find the bus station in the dark. They told us to walk four blocks and then take a right. We walked for about six side roads looking for the bus station but we couldn't find it. It was a little before 5 am in the morning and I had no clue where we were. We finally asked a woman to bring us to the bus station. We paid about $2 to take a minibus (16 passenger van) to Managua. When we arrived in Managua we hopped on another bus that had about 80 people on it. I have never been that close to that many people. We took the bus for about 10 minutes and then hopped off in a really sketchy neighborhood. A woman offered us a ride so we rode with her to the mission. I was really glad that our Nicaraguan friend Roberto came with us because I felt much more safe with him. It was also nice because he only speaks Spanish, so we could practice our Spanish on the two hour bus ride there and back.
Danielle and I met our Agriculture professor and we were able to tweak the course curriculum to fit exactly what we want to do. Danielle and I expressed that we wanted to learn about as many different commodities as we could. The plan this semester is to visit farms all across Nicaragua. This summer I had the opportunity to job shadow at a cheese processing plant for a week. One afternoon I worked in receiving and watched all of the milk trucks come through. I saw a picture of a milk truck in Nicaragua and I can’t believe the difference! I am very excited to see how farmers in Nicaragua milk cows and learn more about dairy here. My professor told me that the cows here give about 6 pounds of milk a day. How crazy is that?!
Around 7 pm it started to rain, and it rained so hard that the entire hall was covered in over an inch of water. I stepped out of my room into a puddle. There was so much water that it ran down the hall, through the kitchen and out the front door. I couldn’t believe how much rain there was. The tin roof echoes through the whole house and the noise is so loud you have to yell to the person next to you so they can hear you. I opened the door to my room and put the fan by the door so that my room cooled off. I think that it dropped 15 degrees in a matter of minutes. Most Nicaraguans (or Nicas) throw their garbage in the streets and when it rains all the garbage is washed away.
This is my room in Nicaragua. I'm usually not this messy, I promise :)
This is the hallway. Most hallways in Nicaragua are open so they hang clothes on the line here. When it rains there is sometimes four inches of water in the hallway.
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