Today was a learning day – excited for a break from digging holes and painting! We first went to two different schools to see what other teams from Edu-deo have done.
The first school we visited was an inner-city school; when we arrived it looked like just a typical Nicaraguan building, but you enter, go down an alley, and out back was this small concrete courtyard surrounded by a two story tall school building for kids in grades 1-6. The second story was built by teams from Edu-deo last year. The second school we visited was a school and a church combined in a much more impoverished area (Teresa helped with this word), where we talked with the principal and the pastor (husband and wife team) and hung out with some super chattery, loving little kids, playing games and talking with them. Our next stop was lunch; a Nicaraguan buffet. This is not like The Mandarin style buffet back home where its all you can eat; here you get lots of options for food but they fill your plate and you only get one plate; kinda disappointing because you can't go back for the 2nds of the really good stuff!
Up next we visited a lookout; we drove up and got a great view of the city – so much different from our cities back home. There's no tall buildings here because of earthquakes, so you see a lot of trees with some beautiful mountains and volcanoes in the background. There's a museum here about the Samosa family, so we got a tour with Lester translating. The Samosa's had a three generation dictatorship and they torchered and killed lots of people, so I really liked learning about this.
Our last stop of the day was the metal shop back at the Nehemiah Centre. Here they run a program to teach trades to people that can go back to their communities around the city and teach others the skills learned. They also run an apprenticeship program for the highschool that is at the Nehemiah Centre. They do blacksmithing, welding, leather-work and auto mechanics stuff. They showed us how to make a leaf (keychain charm) out of rebar by heating it up and hitting it with a hammer (blacksmithing).
We had supper (which again included rice and beans), devotions, and now I'm off to practice the hand clapping skit we did at the fundraiser. The leaders think it'll be a good idea to show the kids at the school on our last day...I'm not too excited to have to re-learn this!
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