Em and I had a really wonderful trip to Nicaragua that started January 2 at 5:25 am when our plane took off, to January 14, when our plane landed back in JFK at 2 am.  It was a full time and we got to make lots of new friends, work on our spanish, and learn so much about Nicaraguan culture. 

I spent almost every night in the orphanage, which was really neat.  The little girls were so excited that they were going to get to share their bed with one of the Americans, and it was interesting for me to see the way bed time worked in the orphanage.  I was, like the last time I went down, struck by how selfless and hard working the older girls were.  About eight girls in their late teens (who lived at the orphanage) essentially ran it.  They took care of the children, made the meals, and kept order in general. 

Emily and I spent some time painting roofs (their roofs are tin and will rust quickly without a coating of paint), visiting the jail (the picture in the prison was taken by Matt, our team leader), the market place, and the hospital.  I spent a lot of time in the hospital, and got to see the way they perform C-sections in third world countries.  It was really, uh, intense, but a good learning experience (I'm not cut out to be an OR nurse).  I spent time with different patients in the hospital, and by the time I left their were a couple of people that I really felt like I knew (the woman whoes C-section I saw I got to know the best.  She was the cousin of some of the kids in the orphanage which is how I met her origanally).

That Saterday Matt, Amy, Taylor, Emily and I (our entire team), went to the pier together.  It was one of the highlights of the trip, and an absolutely incredible culturally educational experience for me.  People poach sea tortoises in Puerto Cabezas, and we saw probably a dozen of them lying on their backs in the sun on the beach.  It was really sad to see the tortoises left there to die but even worse to think that that was the people's necassary source of income.  'Sounds depressing, but there were better things!  We got to tour a lobster boat, which... I'll write more about later because I'm at school right now and my ride's about to leave!

   Okay, so here I am again on March 23 (I know it took a while). 

    So movig on with our time at the pier on the lobster boat.  Matt had asked some of the lobster diver/sailor/people who were on their boat if we could get a tour of it.  They redily agreed (Nicaraguan's really are very abliging in that way.  They don't tend to be aware of any sort of time crunch like we are in the U.S., so it was no problem for them to take 15 minutes out of their preparation for the next trip to show us around).  The boat would carry 60 men for eleven days, and they would get well over one thousand pounds of lobsters.  All I could think when they told me that was how squishy it must have been for those eleven days.  It looked to me like twenty people would have been a squeeze.  There were lots of little boats piled up that they used to dive out of.  They also had many air tanks.

Emily declined the tour on the ship because of the sketchy means of entrance.  That is, there was an eight foot long rope connecting the ship to the peir, and a little, tiny, skinny rope about five feet above it that you held on to as you walked across the big rope to the boat.  When I first saw it I thought "There is no way I'm crossing that thing!" especially because the rope was swaying up and down about 4-6 feet as the boat rocked on the waves.  If you fell, it would have been a 10-15 foot drop to the terbulent water below.  Once someone else from our team crossed it though I new I could too.  If I can figure out how to post pictures I'll put some up from our trip to the peir.  While the rest of us were on the boat Emily had the oppertunity to talk with one of the lobster divers, work on her spanish, and avoid getting sea sick.  So in the end it proved to be a wonderfully educational experience for everyone.   

On the way home from the peir we learned a lot about the geographical layout of Puerto Cabezas (i.e. we got lost), and finally were picked up by Earl and Demaris (the paster and his wife) when they passed us on their way home from the market.  

Several days later Emily and I found ourselves flying from Puerto Cabezas to Managua on our way home.  We spent the night at an orphanage in Managua, and the next day flew home.  We got in to JFK at a little after midnight, spent that night at my grandparants, and the next day drove home!  

And that concludes Becky and Emily's mission trip/adventure to Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua (I can't wait to go back!)