Hey guys!

Lots of people have been sending me e-mails asking for more details about my day-to-day life here, and so I figured I should share some of my more regular experiences with you all. So here are some thoughts on differents aspects of my crazy life:


On The Menu:
I eat some combination of rice and beans about 14 times a week. Sometimes it's rice and eggs for breakfast, and sometimes it's beans and eggs. But more often it's rice and beans. Actually, Nicaraguans are very proud of their famous national dish, called gallopinto (guy-o peento; it means "painted rooster"), which is actually rice and beans, but totally different, because in gallopinto, the rice and beans are mixed together.

Upon surveying this week's menu for example, rice is listed 15 times, while beans are listed at a rare low of 9... but time will tell.


On My Daily Routine:
Morning comes at about 5:30, as I'm currently trying to transition my schedule over to better suit the kid's days. Currently I'm house-sitting/surrogate-parenting for the missionary who is away, so I have an 10-year-old living with me in the missionary's house about 30 feet from the orphanage. I'm trying to use that first half hour to start waking up and getting ready, so I can wake Ana up at 6 and we can both go over to join the children at 6:30 for devotions.

After devotions comes breakfast and at 8AM the kids begin their homework and study time. A retired teacher named Profe Selfida comes to tutor the kids, and I am taking the kids out in groups of 3-5 at a time for English classes, provided they've finished their homework. This added motivation is helping the kids to settle down a bit better during their 2-3 hour study time... the opportunity to learn English is a very strong motivator for these kids; it's one of the things they value most. A more detailed post about my English class adventures is forthcoming, so keep posted.

After study time, the kids change into their school uniforms and bring their backpacks over to be checked. We make sure they have their notebooks, a pencil, and nothing suspicious in there, and each child recieves a candy and, if he could recite the daily memory verse at morning devotions, a pack of cookies as well.

The kids eat lunch, get patted down to make sure they're not carrying anything extra with them to school (like iPods, for example), and then load onto the bus to head to school. In Central America, kids usually only go to school for half-days.

In the afternoon, my schedule varies depending on the day. On Monday, I go in on the bus to go grocery shopping for he week with Profe Ana, one of the staff here. Wednesdays are my free days, which I hope to begin spending in Jinotega, perhaps going for a swim at the pool there; that is, if the Nicaraguan men employed there aren't always as creepy as they were last time. Otherwise, my afternoon is open to some flexibility, sometimes including a nap, sometimes a book, and sometimes some e-mailing, facebook-stalking, or, like today, blogging.

The kids get home from school at 5, and it's mayhem, and energy, and getting dark out. At 6 we eat supper, and in the evening the kids have 15 minutes of Nintendo each (or, rather, those who've stayed out of trouble do). Other kids have an hour-long time-out in the gym-type area called the cancha. Sometimes 10-year-old Luis and I take turns throwing a volleyball in the air and seeing how many times we can clap our hands (audibly, that's the rule) before catching it again... my record, by the way, is 7.

At 7:30, I plan to start heading back over to the house to help Ana get ready for bed. Bedtime is at 8, which means that the kids should be in bed by 8:30, but since we have a girl who comes here every night to put the kids to bed and get them up in the morning, and since I find that the kids goof around and procrastinate more at bedtime when they have me there to entertain, I'm going to leave the bedtime routine in Samara's capable hands. Also, now that I'm house/Ana-sitting, if I were to stay over here until the kids were in bed, Ana wouldn't be in bed until 9, and I would never sleep.

My new bedtime is going to be 9:30 - that is, if I can ever get my nighthawk body to fall asleep at such an unthinkable hour! Hopefully a couple days of no naps and crazy kids will exhaust me to the point where this will work out.

The finer schedule details here are in part because of my recent move from the orphanage over to the house, and partly because I've recently been annointed the Gringa-In-Charge, which has required me to devise an in-depth coping mechanism (as outlined in part above).


On Being Esther:
The home was recently visited by Doña Sandra, the American woman who both began the ministry of Children of Destiny Nicaragua, and adopted her Nicaraguan-born daughter, Ana, when Ana 7 months old. She was here for just over 24 hours; her week involved such events as flying to Nicaragua and back, and getting married three days later back in her hometown. She's a busy woman and currently the sole fundraiser for Children of Destiny Nicaragua.

Sandy's visit here was whirlwind, and she came in part to officially install me as the home's temporary Gringa-In-Charge, or, as she preferred to call me, Esther, as in "for such a time as this"... She was pleased with my enthusiasm, encouraged by my experience as a program director, and confident in my capabilities (or at least that's what she told me). She gave the kids a few harsh warnings to behave, and we had a staff meeting with the core four caregivers here, and when she departed, I found myself on my own, without instruction or guidance, and in charge. (To clarify, before her visit I had merely been on my own without instruction or guidance. No one had been in charge.)

Sandy firmly believed that my moving into Joy's house would be a blessing and an added comfort, while I was quite comfortable in my unadorned but conveniently, centrally located room in the orphanage. Also, while having Ana as my roommate in the orphanage had been managable, it had not been without its moments, and I knew that the demands on me would only increase if we were to be cloistered together in the house, where there is one key, and she has come to expect countless additional liberties that she isn't privy to while living in the home. I had come into my meeting with Sandra planning to flatly refuse her offer/request that I move over to stay in the house with Ana, but when she explained that Joy was concerned about her house sitting empty and being broken in to, I caved and decided to re-adjust my boundaries in order to care for Joy's home in her absence. (If you're wondering who Joy is, I'm getting there.)

I had recieved about an hour's instruction in managing our finances, and I'm finding it quite challenging stretching our shoestring budget across the month; when I took over, with three weeks left to the month, there was only about 1/4 of the budget left... apparently that's normal after paying the hydro, etc. To my eyes there was barely enough money for two weeks of groceries, and that's without any other expenses, which of course, there have been.

Please consider these points to be my prayer requests; I know that this is in God's hands, but I definitely need him to be the God-In-Charge here, 'cause this gringa definitely can't do it alone.


On Joy:
Joy is the missionary who runs Hogar Amiguitos. For about the last two and a half months, Joy has been home in the States with her family, as her mom is essentially on her deathbed, with very little time left after being overtaken by cancer.

Joy is also Ana's surrogate mother here in Nicaragua, as Ana's adoptive mother lives and works in the States and Ana is currently enrolled in the Nicaraguan school system, after having trouble adjusting and fitting in to the American system (Ana is a Nicaraguan-American dual citizen and fully bilingual). Joy is something like an Aunt to Ana, and had agreed to take Ana into her care for the year for Sandy to let Ana give the Nicaraguan school system another try when Joy's mother's health crisis suddenly arose, ironically landing Ana back in the orphanage, in a manner of speaking.

While I have never met Joy, I have spoken to her several times by phone and Skype, and everyone speaks very highly of her work here, her ability to manage this place on an impossible budget (perhaps she's part Mennonite?), and her natural giftedness in relating to, working with, and showing love to the children who call this place home. I find that I have some rather large shoes to fill.


On Exhaustion:
Sunday, about three days after being "appointed", I began to feel the familiar feelings of drowning in stress that had essentially been my daily experience while program directing at Dauphin Bible Camp. When I finally sat down to eat, about two hours late, I realized that I was too exhausted to even eat, and scraped off most of my plate into the slop bucket (those who have worked alongside me at Dauphin Bible Camp have seen this play out day after day after day, coupled with a more-lenient-than-usual personal hygiene regimen that I will to this day defend as "not gross"). I realized at that moment that I needed to take some drastic measures if I wanted to be able to thrive here for the next few months, and possibly even in order to survive. With no one to throw the responsibility back to, and with nothing to do but buck up, I started working on my new routine, to incorporate the added responsibilities of house- and Ana-sitting, running the finances, while still trying to offer nurture and love to 18 other parentless children. Thus the development of my new weekly routine began.


On Being Organized And Disciplined:

... let's just say I'm new at it.

Time will tell.


On Parenting 19 kids:
Wow, am I unqualified! However, God's been gracious, in the midst of many immense challenges (like iPod-boy, for one). I am learning a lot, and every week as my relationship with the children grows and our mutual trust deepens, it gets a bit easier. Please pray that God will give me a supernatural ability to understand the needs of these children, because they're definitely in real need of a lot of the right kinds of love, compassion, and discipline.


On Being A Classroom Nazi:
I LOVE it. Much more to come on that!


On Friends Back Home:
I love you, I miss you, and hearing from you lights up my life.


And finally, what you've all been waiting for.... the Comments Tutorial!