Mucho calor! -from Mary

Cesar's birthday cake- "Feliz Cumpleanos- Solo los Guapos"

Face painting at the fiesta

Mexico at the fiesta


Things are really starting to heat up here in Granada...literally. Supposedly this week intends to become one of the hottest weeks on record! So far the sun has claimed no victims amongst our group, unlike last year when one volunteer was forced to keep her hands wrapped in t-shirts for most of her stay due to an unfortunate Day 1 sun poisining. Maybe it's the health theme, maybe it's the bastante sunblock, but everyone is hanging in there quite well!

Speaking of the health theme, we kicked off the week with the ninas with a "Fiesta de Salud" (Health party) wherein the girls were put into the groups and traveled around the office from station to station learning different health facts and activities. Each carried a paper with seven questions, and the successful acquisition of seven answers meant they got a premio (prize). Subtle bribery never hurt anyone...

100 sets of clean teeth, clean hands, and bags of water later, we learned that:
1) Fruit loops make great and tasty necklaces
2) Cesar and Steph can face paint like champs. I, sadly, cannot. Some poor child went home thinking they had a batman symbol on their face when in reality it was a white rectangle with a few pink highlights. I can only hope the house lacks mirrors.
3) Starfruits are pretty AND tasty
4) It is possible for one person to wash their hands over a hundred times in one hour while singing happy birthday

All in all, a great fiesta! All the girls are wearing their new hats today; just in time to keep the blazing sun off their noses for the time being!

Before all the fun and games with the ninas began, we put a new twist on introductions by adding a mixed (Nicaraguan coaches and US volunteers) scavenger hunt-like activity to get the week started on Sunday. After an hour of running all over the town in search of tourists from countries that begin with F, mothers with more than 6 children, and photos of some of the prettiest churches in town, some of the volunteers were wondering what they had gotten themselves into...particularly the over 30 club (ahem, April) who claimed they "didn't sign up for this." Welcome to Granada! Returning to the office with all of their photos and signatures, the groups then had to fill out a trivia sheet with fun facts about each of the volunteers and Nica coaches.


The results? Group 5 suffered from an unfortunate loss of one Nica member to a stomach bug halfway through that really limited their inside knowledge of Granada. Kevin returned from some random hotel bathroom just in time to learn that his team had finished in dead last. Group 2, led by Chepe who helped design the activity, managed to collect the most points BUT also decided to ignore my time-keeping warnings and suffered a 10 point penalty for their tardiness...putting them in 4th place. Group 4 fared slightly better, taking the "just above average route" and possible just happy to survive. The others a tie! With 53 points each, group 1 and group 3 were forced to "picachu" for the championship. Picachu is a local way of playing Rock/Paper/Scissors with one heck of a buildup. Melisa insists it was one of the most important wins of her life...her Paper took the championship for her team!

The day finished out with a group dinner and birthday cake for our Coaching Director Cesar, who has been steadily taking on more responsibility this year and really coming into his own as a coach and director within the program.

Have to get to practice now but much more to share from Granada soon!