A day in the life...

Well, time keeps moving on. On Tuesday we will reach the three week mark, and today we thought we'd give you a little taste of what each day looks like now that we are settled into a regular routine.

Each morning we have language classes at VIVA Spanish school which start at 8:00. That means we have to leave our house at about 6:45 to walk to the bus stop. We squeeze onto a bus that takes us to a bigger bus stop. There we switch to a different bus which drops us off close to VIVA. We generally arrive at about 7:45 to enjoy some coffee and talk with other people at the school. It seems like we're making progress; 4 hours each day should be helping! Our teachers are fantastic, and the rest of the staff as well. We take lots of breaks, sometimes only having class for three of the four hours. We often feel like we don't need as many breaks, but there have been days already where we are grateful for them. In all honesty, keeping things relaxed will help greatly with avoiding burnout. Three months of language classes is a long time!

After class we have a few hours of free time. So far we've found different places to eat, met up with different people for lunch and other things, run errands to get groceries and other things for the house, and spent time at home. We've got quite a bit to do at home each day. We have homework from VIVA, and we have to prepare to teach English at CINAFE each afternoon. PLUS, we have Emre to hang out with! [More on him later.]

At 3:00 each afternoon, we go to CINAFE to teach English to the children there. It is getting better each day. The first few days were very difficult. We didn't know how much English they had learned, and our Spanish was barely sufficient to explain things. After that we added songs, games, and hopefully useful vocabulary, and it seems like things are moving along quite well. Below you can find a nice little video from Valeska, showing a little of what she's learned. No cue cards or anything!

After classes, we get to eat supper with the kids and staff. It's been special to connect with them so quickly. CINAFE is the reason that we decided to make this move to Nicaragua, and we have been blessed to have them take us in and allow us to practice our Spanish and build relationships with them. We've gone to church each Sunday with them, and even participated in birthday celebrations. They are a great group of people, and we are so thankful that God has placed them in our lives. [Here's a little video of a Nicaraguan birthday piñata. It's quite a fun time.]

And now our blog post is getting rather long. We'll save Emre and some pictures of our house for tomorrow. Stop by sometime this week if you want to see our sweet new house and our sweet new dog!

Make it a great day,

Mitch and Lauren