Starting our Volunteer work at La Esperanza Granada

You know the saying “When it rains it pours” well here in Central America it pretty much rains and pours everyday. However, for us the sun has been shining for the last few days, not exactly literally though. The Nicaragua-Costa Rica boarder only took 2 hours instead of 4 like last time. I guessed it helped we had done the process here before so we pretty much did the same thing but backwards. After that we soared to Granada; went straight to Oasis hostel (the one the guy’s stayed at last time we were here) and waited for a response from the volunteer organization to see if we could move in ASAP. Since it was Sunday we figured we would not hear anything back till Monday but actually got a response that day. Wow that was fast!

Monday morning we moved into the volunteer housing. There are four different houses (which actually look like mini-hostels) all with clean kitchens, dining area, a common area with a TV and computer, a washing machine for laundry, communal bathrooms and dorm / private rooms. The house we are in is one of the smaller houses with only 5 rooms but the only one with double beds for couples.

Our bedroom for the next 2 months

The closet and sink in our room, oh luxuries

Our bed with a mosquito net

the kitchen, open to the jungle patio

Outdoor water tank shower

On the other hand our common area is one of the larger ones and our kitchen is half outdoors which keeps it cooler. Right now only us and another married couple are occupying the house. Stefan (29) and Anna (26) from London, England. A nice, friendly couple. By next week when the summer activity program starts we might get a few more people.

Our living room

After settling into the house, which definitely included deep cleaning our room and the kitchen, we attended our first volunteer meeting. At the meeting we found out that our volunteer work consist of planning and running the children’s (ages 5-12) winter break activity program for a poor village outside of Granada called San Ignacio. The activity program doesn’t start till next Tuesday, December 1st but since we are early arrivers we are the planning process (Ryan, me, Stef, and Anna). Both Ryan and I are super excited about this because we get to choose the activities the kid’s do: arts & crafts, sports, educational aspects, etc. for the next 2 months. We really feel like we will have an influence on the kid’s by creating the curriculum ourselves.

After the meeting we were all pumped up. We went straight home to start working on registration posters, (Registration is this Thursday, Friday and Monday) and looking up arts and crafts activities. With the arts and crafts we are first limited to the materials here in town and second have to keep in mind that some of the families are so poor they don’t even have money to buy food for dinner every night. Therefore, we are researching arts & crafts made with recyclable materials: toilet paper tubes, newspaper, magazines, rocks, straws, etc. Ryan came up with a few good ideas with the toilet paper tubes and construction paper such as: making animal critters and Christmas trees. Anyways, I sure we will have lots of stories over the next 2 months of all the activities and good times we have with the kids and other volunteers.

Ryan making a snake out of toilet paper rolls for the kids

Ryan's arts and craft snake

Another good “sun shining” thing that happened today was Ryan fixed Chiquimula. He had to pull out the passenger seat and pull apart the entire dashboard to get to the back of the engine, but when he did Thankfully he found the problem was only a leaky hose. Down the street a guy sold him a replacement hose for only a $1. After that she sounded good. We are going to take her for a long test drive this weekend to make sure all else is well.

So even though it has been raining a little bit each day it has been shining good news for us.

written by

ryan & debbrial on November 24, 2009 from Granada, Nicaragua

from the travel blog: Us Discovering the Latin Americas

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