As
someone who loves keeping things routine, I was very nervous when I began
preparing for this trip. I would be going to a foreign land, with foreign food
that I wasn’t sure I was going to like, a foreign language that I didn’t know
well, and with foreign people that I wasn’t sure I was going to get along with.
When I first arrived at the airport on Thursday morning (Wow! Was it really
just last week?) , I was feeling a little queasy at the thought of losing my
precious routine. However, when we arrived at Diría, the first thing we h
ad for
dinner was rice and beans as well as some crackers and a juice made out of a
variety of tropical fruits. Everything tasted amazing and I was surprised at
how many of the local foods I had already tried before. Our hosts have even
prepared some classics such as spaghetti and meat sauce that tastes like it was
made in Italy and fried chicken that rivals KFC. The next morning we headed out
to our worksite. The first thing we did was split up into groups and collect
census data for the local parish. I was scared because although I have taken
two years of Spanish, I was not prepared for the speed at which the locals
talked and I had not been able to understand much of the conversations in
Spanish that I had heard up to that point. Therefore, I was understandably
nervous about having to actually carry on a conversation in Spanish. Luckily, I
was in a group with native Spanish speakers from our group who helped increase
my vocabulary. By asking them questions
I was able to slowly but surely increase my knowledge of Spanish so that by the
end I was able to lead the conversation without much help. Thanks to the help
of the Spanish speakers in my group I have felt so much more confident during
my conversations with the Nicaraguans. After we finished the census work and
ate the delicious lunch prepared for us by our hosts, we met some of the local
kids. While at first I was a little shy and unsure about talking to them, I
began to open up more when we started playing with a soccer ball that we had
brought. Kicking the soccer ball around and giving the children piggy-back
rides erased the shell that was supposed to “protect” me from anything
unfamiliar. Hearing the huge grins and screams of laughter from the niños, brought
a huge smile to my face and let me realize what the main purpose of our mission
trip to Nicaragua: building a relationship between our two communities that
would last for the years to come.
P.S. Fr. Augustine
came up to me while I was writing this blog post and asked for a shout out. Seeing
that he does have a substantial amount of power over me, I decided that it
would be wise for me to comply. In all seriousness though, the chaperones have
done an excellent job planning the trip and making sure everyone is safe and I
couldn’t be more thankful for the countless hours that they have put in to make
this mission trip great.
