MCC Team

Here is MCC Nicaragua! This picture was taken in front of the MCC office in Managua and includes:
-2 SALTers (the one-year service and learning program), Sarah in yellow and Erin in orange
-Our country representative (jefa :)) Angela in white in the center
-3 long-term volunteers, us in blue (the matching was not planned) and Lydell, the one in the middle with a beard
-2 local workers--Veronica (in pink) works with the social commissions of the Anabaptist churches, and Yolanda (in the white t-shirt) works in the office
We just had 2 days of team meetings, and were reminded how much we really enjoy our team members here. Lots of meaningful conversations as well as laughing/joking in two languages.

A New House!

We failed to post anything thru the Christmas & New Years season, but we made it into 2007 in good health. Our big news is that last week we moved into our own house! It's a half a block south from our host family, and we've enjoyed dropping by to visit with them in the evenings. But it's nice to have our own space and finally not live out of suitcases for the first time since mid-September. We're learning to cook Nica-style (we'll probably post something on the food in the future) and we're adjusting to the constant dust that permeates everything.

Our house is located about 10 blocks from the MCC office, so Beth can either walk or take a quick bus ride. We're across the city from Alan's job, but only about 5 blocks from a bus route that passes close to the university.

We're already getting to know many of our neighbors, especially the kids and youth. There's a group of 6 or 7 between the ages of 12 and 33 who want to speak English better, and already we've had them over for conversation practice. We told them that we need practice with our Spanish, so they made us translate their English dialogues into Spanish - kind of rocky but really good practice for us! We will probably have a bigger group next week when they come over.

The pics are of the front of our house, our little kitchen, and one of our hammocks that we've hung in our patio out back. --Alan