Day 1

Saludos de Nicaragua! Greetings from Nicaragua! After months of hard work and a day of travel, we are FINALLY here. Our hotel has rooms that 3-4 of us share, hammocks and palm trees out front, and is only a short walk from Lake Nicaragua. From there you can see not one, but two volcanoes, windmills, and beautiful green trees.

We arrived last night at 1:00 a.m. and fell asleep shortly after. At 6:30 a.m., we woke up to start the day. We got to Escuela Especial at about 7:45. Our first order of business was to clean the classrooms. I started with the windows, some started with the bathrooms, and some started by cleaning the toys. It was hot, and every time I wiped something down more dirt seemed to appear on it, but once I left the room I was confident it was as clean as possible. Eventually, we pulled out all of the furniture and wiped it down. Then, we scrubbed the walls and mopped the floors. By 2:00 p.m., we were completely finished and the school was spotless. It was great to see the results of our hard work and how clean it is now. I was really proud of myself and everyone here for doing such a good job. Even with the sun beating down on us and less that five hours of sleep, we managed to all be nice to each other, work hard, and make the school a nicer place for the kids. I drove away from Escuela Especial today thinking about how big these efforts are going to seem to the kids. In Nicaragua, children with disabilities are not treated well, and I think that having people come to their school and clean and spend time with them will be huge.

Tomorrow will be unlike anything I've ever experienced. I will be assisting two teachers: Alan and Lidya, who teach fifth and sixth grade. This will be the first time that I will use the lesson plans that I came up with earlier. This will also be my first time working with so many children with disabilities at once. To be honest, the idea of coming in tomorrow and being trusted to teach these children is a little scary, but I'm up for the challenge. My worries before we went in today were that I won't bond with the kids straight away or they won't like me or I won't be a good enough teacher. But the friendliness of the teachers at the school and my chaperones' descriptions of the kids put my mind at ease a little bit. I hope that tomorrow will go well, but if there's one thing I know, it's that these children will teach me just as much as I could possibly teach them.

We got used to the climate and the heat, and we learned what it is going to be like to work with these kids. I think that today was valuable beause I realized how much work I am going to need to put in to succeed and acheive my goals here. I have heard so many great things about these kids. I have been preparing for this trip for months, and now it is time to give it my all. Today I walked away appreciating even more the privileges that I take for granted: clean floors, vacuums, my house, my education, and the quality of my school, to name a few. Everything here is so different from Vail that it is hard not to realize how lucky I am to live where I do and be clean, safe, and well-fed each day. I'm looking forward to crawling into bed tonight and meeting the kids in the morning!