Wednesday Wk 1: Rivas

This entry is written by: Ashley, Alex Fogg, Lydia, and Charlotte.

Wednesday was quite an eventful day, except for the Foggs. Unfortunately for Alex, she got sick in the early morning and was unable to take part in the team's adventure. Vicky, being the loving mother she is, stayed with Alex at the camp and took great care of her. Later on, Vicky had a chance to hang with the team and Pat stayed back with Alex.


The original plan was to re-paint the boy's bunk house. However, due to a lack of paint, plans changed, and we were happily surprised to be able to go into Rivas. We all piled into the 16-passenger van and a truck owned by the camp and headed out. When we arrived at the market in Rivas we split up into 3 groups and explored for a while. We reconvened at the van to find out that somebody had attempted to steal one of our truck's tires. Because the truck was being repaired, we didn't have enough seats in the van to travel to the hospital. This situation was remedied by Charlotte, Pat, Ruth, and our additional team members and translators Carrie, Jessica, and Heydi riding in some rickshaw-like vehicles. Charlotte particularly enjoyed riding with Heydi as it was both of their first times in the bicycle taxis.

We arrived at the hospital to deliver some medical supplies, but only Ruth, Tim, Zach, Dave, Lydia, Nate, and Jeremy were able to go in with Geo (our translator and coordinator, pronounced GEE-oh.) While everyone else waited outside we met with the head nurse and gave her all our supplies. She was very sweet and thankful. She then showed us around the hospital, where we saw lots of cats, dogs, and motorcycles in the courtyards and hallways. We then went out to lunch at Tip-Top Chicken.


After lunch we all went to the dump to visit children and try to get them to come to camp. It was really surprising to see how gracious and welcoming all the families were; they let us all go and look in their houses. We visited about four houses and then went back to camp.  We'll post these pictures separately; there are a lot of them.


After a little while, Geo gathered together some kids from his church and organized a soccer game for us to play against them. We were a little nervous because there were so many spectators-- it seemed like the whole town was watching! We played on a small dirt field that had goals made out of sticks.

We won the first game, but lost the second. It was such a fun experience to get to play with the Nicaraguan kids. After the games, we were all very sweaty and dirty. Then we all piled back in the van and headed back to camp, and had dinner. Then we went swimming in the dark!