Lift Your Head up and Look Around

Lift Your Head Up and Look Around

Monday June 12, a hot summer day, I woke up early to finish packing my suitcase and make breakfast for the upcoming 3 hours on a bus and 7 hours on a plane; the trip was finally becoming real. A group of about 30 students from my school were about to be in Nicaragua for a whole week! I checked my weather app to see what temperature is was in Nicaragua, when I saw that it said 90 and sunny, I was even more excited.

As I sat at the edge of my seat looking out the plane window, I noticed right away that lights were only luminant in a small portion of the city below us. Although Nicaragua has electricity, we quickly found out WiFi would not be available to us. We were staying here for a week. From then on, everything seemed to shock me more than excite me. I realized my Spanish speaking skills were subpar, Nicaraguan people stared at our group as if they have never seen someone that looked different than them, and my nostrils flared when an unusual scent embraced me as I walked out the airport doors. We gathered everyone for the bus ride to Granada; I can’t say I was completely at ease with what was to come next. I put my headphones in and stared out the window.

The houses were much smaller than ours and their street lights were very dim and their roads were narrower and they didn’t have street signs and I was terrified. All of this only added on to the many fears I initially h of this trip, and I couldn’t even go on my phone to get away from all my concern. I couldn’t remember a time I went three days without using my phone, let alone a week. We were all dropped off with our roommate one by one. At this point, I could feel my heart beating in my throat. How would you feel if you were dropped off, in the dark, to a house you don’t know, in a neighborhood that you already thought was sketchy? As we got to our house, unpacked, and soaked it all in, I felt unconnected to the world. A whole week without WiFi was going to be tragic.

On the first day we took a guided tour around the city of Granada and saw cathedrals, statues, and schools. Most of the buildings were built back in the 16th or 17th century, they looked beaten up. I felt my eyes roll to the back of my head. Not even twelve hours into our trip, and my only thought was that I wanted to use my phone, but I couldn’t. We had to listen to a three hour lecture of the history of Granada in the tour; history is my least favorite subject. My head was going to explode.

We then took another long bus ride to our next planned destination. We arrived at a local public elementary school that lay on the plain dirt, with one swing set the kids called their playground. The school itself was destitute compared to the schools we have here in the US. First off, they only had four classrooms and in each of them, children were packed in, and the classrooms were lucky to have fans, a window, and cement floors. The building itself was ancient and so were their teachers. Students were lucky to have more than a pencil and paper for school supplies, yet they seemed happy with what they had. You find out quickly how bad your Spanish is when you are talking to children that don’t realize you need them to slow down, and you only comprehend fifty percent of what they are saying. After focusing so hard on trying to understand the children, we spent about an hour teaching them English. They knew some words, but the smile on their faces when they pronounced one correctly was exceptional. We ended our stay playing with them at recess and painting one of their classrooms.

San Juan de Oriente was next on the agenda. In this city we watched men make pottery and learned that ninety five percent of their population made pottery as their hobby, you could tell just by looking at the abundance of pottery around the city. Each pot, cup, or plate was hand crafted with intricate designs to make each one special. Our group purchased some items from their shop and then headed back to Granada.