Our Trip to Nicaragua: Day One (Ready to Do Work!)

After taking a morning jog around the housing complex in Chinandega, we returned to the Amigos for Christ home ready to packup our luggage and gear and go to work. Just last night we were leaving classes from The University of Texas at Tyler to the local airport to board a plane to Nicaragua. After a layover in Houston, we arrived in the capital city of Managua eight hours later and then rode three hours to where we would spend the night as our driver kept each of us awake, speeding past semi-trucks and swerving in and out of traffic. Little did we know it would be the only night that we would sleep in an actual bed until we checked-in to a hotel on our final night in Nicaragua - four days later.

The house was one of the nicer homes in the complex. There was a steel gate protecting the front of the home from unwelcome guests and a brick wall surrounding the rest of the property. To be sure that intruders would not be able to enter the house, a number broken beer bottles lined the brick along the top of the wall. Inside an atrium shone sunlight into the house and, unfortunately, a lot of heat as well. With no AC, the temperature at night got as low as 80 degrees.

Our guides for the trip seemed friendly as well, though they kept telling us how horrible the work we were about to do was. "Oh my god... I can't believe we're going to Chacraseca" they kept repeating. They complained about how hot it was going to be outside and made note several times that the work was going to be back-breaking. However, we already had something else to look forward to: our group decided that on our day off we were going to climb an active volcano and visit the beach with the time we had left! We talked more as we made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for our lunch about what they do, how long they'd been working in Nicaragua, and projects past volunteers introduced to the local Nicaraguans to benefit their community.

Then we packed all of our clothes in our bags, knowing that we weren't coming back, and loaded onto the bus that would take us to "Hell on Earth." Somehow, we were still excited. Ha! That would soon change...