One week to go!

With one week to go we have a busy week of events ahead of us. Today we're heading to Managua again to practice with the National Team and hopefully hear more about what else we can do to help girls soccer in Nicaragua. This morning, we had agreed to meet Milton and go to the Ministry of Education to get permission to host a tournament between the high school teams on Friday. Apparently this was not a good plan as the schools are closed today, which Milton knew but failed to tell us. I'm not sure what the protocol is for arranging a tournament in less than three days, but we have our fingers crossed we'll be able to pull it off by going to the schools tomorrow.

This morning was Veronica/Flaca's 21st birthday. A tradition here, and elsewhere in Central and South America, is to smash eggs on people's heads for their birthday. We met up with Laticia this morning and, armed with a half dozen eggs, we all headed over to Flaca's house to wish her a happy birthday. Flaca apparently had some sort of test this morning, and arrived home in a taxi to find us sitting on her porch. Her mom, knowing what we were there to do, ushered her to sit down on the stoop right in the middle of all of us, and grabbed her books and purse from her. After eyeing each other for a bit wondering who would attack first, Laticia distracted Flaca for a moment nodded for me to make a move. I planted my egg squarely on top of her head, and four others quickly followed. Molly, too nice to add a sixth to Flaca's already dripping hair, handed off her egg to Laticia who promptly crushed it on Flaca's head. We've spent the entire morning walking around smelling like raw eggs, most notably my entire backpack, which was caught in the crossfire. Consider yourselves warned, we are bringing this tradition with us back to the states!