Dear Nicaragua,

I love being with you. You make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. You're beautiful and nice. There are so many interesting and attractive qualities about you. I love each and every moment I share with you. From the very first moment I laid eyes on you I knew we were destined to be together someday. In fact, I think I might want to spend a good portion of the rest of my life with you…but here's the thing…every time I leave you, bad things happen to me. 

Last time I left you I was torn up. I cried and thought of you longingly. Then I had to spend the night on a hard floor in the Atlanta airport cold, hungry, devastated, and alone. I "woke up" (I never really slept) to find my gate assignment had changed and I forgot Atlanta is an hour ahead of Springfield and ran crying through the airport to arrive right as they were getting ready to close the gate for my flight. This time, I had the scariest plane experience of my life. 

Our plane was over the Gulf of Mexico when we hit some turbulence. I have flown quite a few times in my life, so I wasn't bothered by it until we started abruptly falling good distances through the air (the kind where you're rear end isn't actually in contact with your seat anymore) while shaking pretty violently until we jerked back into a normal flying position. This happened several times, but the real kicker was when it felt like an engine failed or part of the wing broke off the left side and the plane twisted hard to the right throwing all loose objects (including people) across the cabin. Of course this was the one time I had decided to get V8 instead of my usual water. My V8 along with my neighbor's coke ended up all over my lap and bag. People were screaming and crying hysterically. I reacted in my usual normal manner by laughing…uncontrollably. I was doing the hardcore ugly laugh. I'm sure everyone around me was seriously questioning my sanity. After getting the terrorizing flashbacks of LOST out of my head, our plane landed and sat on the tarmac for an hour. Now, I am gate hopping trying to follow my flight changes with a beautiful brownish-red stain on my pants....

Nicaragua, please realize I'm not leaving you for good, I just have other things I have to do before I can make the sort of commitment you deserve. No matter how many rivers, mountains, volcanoes, and countries separate us, nothing will stop me from returning to you. I just hope next time I don't have to suffer more than just the feeling of loss I get from our separation.

Thinking of you always,

Me

Life. It's a beautiful thing.

Today I opened my computer to find a conversation on facebook about the decision of whether or not to put down my dog, Justice. This dog has been my loyal companion and one of my best friends since I was five years old. Needless to say, the idea of putting an end to her life made me cry. I really can't remember my life before her and I can't imagine my life knowing she's not there.

This weekend at the beach I met a guy, Manuel, from Puerto Rico. We were discussing traveling and different lifestyles around the world and he said that in life there are different levels of life that each person lives depending on location, economic standing, and opportunity. These levels are bad, okay, good, and excellent. No matter at what level you live your life, that becomes the norm. So, if we always live a good life its not seen as good anymore, it's just normal. If you always live at the level of excellence, you miss out because you're at the top and to experience anything below excellent is a dissapointment. He also said that if you live at a higher norm you are less able to see the beauty of life and appreciate the experiences you have. 

My life is good. Good has become my norm, so sometimes I experience things that initially just hurt. It hurt when I left for college the first time. It hurt when I made mistakes in my life. It hurt when my grandpa got sick. It hurt when I found out one of my best friends is moving away. It hurt when my family went out of town. It hurt when I left Nagarote. It hurt when I found out my friend of sixteen years is probably going to be put down within the next few weeks. Because my life is good, it sometimes takes me a while to find the beauty in the experience.

Life is hard. It can't always be good or excellent. That is absolutely impossible. What I want to do is change my mindset where I can see the beauty in nearly any situation. I always try to tell myself I can do this, but when it comes down to it, most of the things that initially hurt me, still hurt deep down and I tend to hold a tiny glimmer of frustration or resentment for those things that aren't "good" in my life.

I absolutely do not want to condone putting my dog down. The idea of that hurts deep. But she has lived a wonderful, long life and brought incomprehensible joy to me throughout our years together….and that is a beautiful thing.

Los Gusanos

Nicaragua has taught me a lot of things, but more than anything this time Nicaragua has taught me how to laugh. I have not laughed this hard so many days in a row since I was a child. This week I have laughed so hard I have cried multiple times. These people laugh at everything. They're such happy people.

Today, Luis and I went to Comedor Leti in Ojo de Agua. We both ordered fried chicken with plantain chips. I was talking to Luis about the health codes in the US and how a restaurant like that one would not fly in the States because it is someone's house with a dirt floor. That's when Leti came out with our food. It smelled great and I was starving, so I dug in. I ate a few big bites before I saw the meat moving….I took a closer look and there were maggots crawling all over my food….the food I had just ingested. 

It took everything I had to not vomit all over the place. I had just eaten maggots. I felt like they were stuck in my teeth, crawling down my throat, and writhing in my stomach. Leti brought me a new plate of food, but I had definitely lost my appetite.

                                                                                                                                                      

Luis and I just kept laughing in disbelief at what had just happened. On our way back to Las Pilas he made up a song that went "I will neber forget what happen today. I will neber go back to eat the food of Leti again." This made us laugh even harder. That's when Luis said that all you can do is laugh. When life is hard or difficult situations arise, there is nothing to do but laugh.

Over the river and through the woods...

I have spent most of my days here traveling to different communities with a woman named Patricia. Patricia is an odd bird…there is no other way to describe her. We have a lot of fun laughing at all the wrong times. Yesterday we lost it when Irma passed gas. Today, we drove the car into a mud pit and couldn't get out. We tried going forward, backward, and the mud was too deep to walk in, so we sat and laughed until we cried as we nervously ate plantain chips.

We finally got out, thanks to a group of strapping young men, and made our way to the home of Doña Nereys Lopez. Unfortunately, you cannot reach Doña Nereys' house by car, so we walked the rest of the way. We followed a maze of tiny footpaths through the overgrown countryside, along a cliff, through the woods, and across a river to reach Doña Nereys. I felt like I was actually part of that little ditty about a going on a bear hunt or the one that says "to grandmother's house we go." 

Once we reached her home, I realized we had endured all of this to ask Doña Nereys if her children, who are participating in the secondary school scholarship program, were going to join us for the meeting in the afternoon….

Honestly, I don't know if I would have done the same if I had been in Patricia's shoes. I know I have said this before, but I am constantly surprised and amazed at the persistence of these people and also their ability to laugh in the face of obstacles and difficulty. 

Irma

Irma de Jesús contracted a sickness when she was seven years old that left her with a lifelong disability. The left side of her body was severely crippled. She can't move her left arm much, and the muscles and bones in her leg formed in a way that only allows her to walk on her tip toes on her left foot. She limps through her community, San Antonio, with no shoes and no crutch or cane to assist her. She has no husband, but was, as she says, bless with a child sixteen years ago.

When Irma was a girl, her community was hit hard with a polio epidemic. Many people died and there are many that were left even more handicapped than Irma. For example, I met a woman, Amanda, that contracted polio when she was young and her legs never developed. Small, mangled remnants of legs and feet dangle below her skirt as she carries herself on homemade crutches through the nearly impassable streets. Others that survived polio were left deaf and mute.

Irma can't use her full voice, but she can whisper as she sucks air into her lungs. She shared with me the story of her life. Despite all of her misfortunes, Irma is one of the happiest people I have ever met. She greeted me with a laugh, smile, and affection that remained throughout our time together. This woman, left crippled, poor, and alone seemed to love life more than I ever have.

La Fey

I spent over half of my life in the church, most of that time was in the Southern Baptist church. I was one of those kids who judged people hard in the name of Jesus Christ. I loved Vacation Bible School, Jars of Clay, and any church related activities. When I was about 10 years old we began attending a Methodist church. After several more years, my family stopped going to church almost all together. We had unfortunately seen Christianity at its worst throughout the years. We had been part of churches who tried to teach it's children to speak in tongues. We had watched as another church fell into ruin because of a disagreement over the facilities. We had seen countless people who called themselves Christians (literally meaning 'little Christs') act like monsters.

For several years now I have explored my beliefs. While my thoughts are still forming, these are some conclusions I have drawn thus far. I know there has to be something bigger than me because the passion and gifts that I have don't just come from myself. I also don't believe in God in the traditional Christian sense. I believe that "God" is what different people need it to be, but I think ultimately "God" is love, "God" is peace, and "God" is the universe that surrounds us. A Cornell University professor came to William Jewell this past semester and put these thoughts in a much more coherent way. He said that in the US we use the American flag to represent the 300+million people living in our country because we can't possibly comprehend this number in our tiny human brains. Just like the American flag, we use God to represent the ever expanding multiverse because our puny minds can't grasp the enormity of our world or what is beyond it.

This being said, some people need to believe in a more-than-human like creature living in the sky who controls our natural world. For me, I find "God" in humanity. I find "God" when I work with the homeless, with children, with those living in poverty, etc. I believe in something similar to "living a life like Christ" because I believe in living as brothers and sisters in humanity as servants to one another.

This morning I went to the Rainbow office in Nagarote. I was called into a room with three other people. One man began reading a passage from the bible, "Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head (Matthew 8:20)." As uncomfortable as I am with organized Christianity sometimes, I love the idea of Jesus and I love this passage. Actually I like it even better in the words of Rich Mullins, "Birds have nests and foxes have dens, but the hope of the whole world rests on the shoulders of a homeless man."

Oh man, I have so many things to say about this and I'm not sure it will make any coherent sense, so bear with me…..

So, going back to this morning, after reading this passage the four of us talked about Jesus, God, and the need for faith. A woman I have been working with, Flor de Ly, said that life in Nicaragua is harder than most other places, so the people need a god they can relate to. They need a god that can give them hope. She said that every day parents work hard, but their children still go hungry and that every day there are children who have to deal with things that they are too young to fully understand. She said that there is so much poverty, suffering, and struggle, but God is in their hearts so they can keep going because God gives them hope and a promise of a wonderful eternal life in His kingdom. Flor also said that Christianity is different in the states because we live very fortunate lives, so we need God and the example of Christ to remind us of our brothers and sisters around the world who are not as fortunate.

Afterward, we held hands and prayed. This was the first time I had prayed in this way for a long time (excluding the prayers around the dinner table with my grandparents). Flor thanked God for me and my work, but mostly she thanked him for her riches, meaning her children, her husband, the roof over her head, her job, and the fact that her family has enough food to survive. It was then that I wept. 

I wept for the fact that Flor's riches were what we often take for granted in the States. Our riches are money, a big house, a car for each family member, electronics, and just all of our expensive stuff. I wept because many people claim to strive for a life like Christ, but they forget that Jesus was a homeless dude. He didn't live in a giant house with flat screens and vacation in Cabo. I wept because I don't know how or when we forgot about humanity. When did we lose sight of what is real and important? Our lives are so full of jobs, school, shopping, traveling, etc. that we sometimes forget to love. We sometimes forget what love is, and sometimes we forget to share that love with our brothers and sisters around the world. We sometimes forget that no matter what "God" is for each of us, the truth is that right now in this life all we have is each other

La Hípica

Today is the last day of the fair in Nagarote. On this day is La Hípica where people come from communities all around Nagarote to ride their horses through the streets. Everyone is dressed in plaid with boots, cowboy hats, and spurs. It's basically one giant party in the streets.

This morning I was eating breakfast and Aura Lee and Aura Maria (two women that work at the hostel) asked me if I had met Roberto's wife (Roberto is the hostel owners son). I was confused because I have spent a lot of time with Roberto and knew he had a baby, but no wife. Aura Lee led me to the window and showed me Katrina, Roberto's horse. She said he spends more time with that horse than he does with any person. That has remained a consistent joke throughout the day.

In the afternoon I went with Aura Lee and Aura Maria to watch the parade of horses. We saw everything from small children riding on ponies to men riding giant clydesdales. Today I also learned that horses can dance. Some people have trained their horses to walk with a sidestep so they looked like they were dancing their way down the street.

I got many offers to ride people's horses, but I was a bit hesitant to jump on a full sized horse in shorts and sandals, so I settled for taking an offer from a little boy to ride his pony.