Our journey through security went smoothly and quickly...but when it was time to board the flight, we spent about half an hour sitting on the plane waiting to get on the runway. At one point the pilot came on over the intercom to tell us, quite calmly, that one of the engines wasn't working and needed to be reset. After another couple of minutes we had a smooth take off and the rest of the plane flight went well...except it was longer than the 2 and a half hour flight we expected. Because of storms, we took a round about route that took about 3.5 hours.
Once we got off the plane and made it through customs, we gathered all of our checked luggage and team bags and headed for the bus to make the three-hour drive to the team house in Matagalpa. We would like to give a special shout-out to Ms. Babs for providing us with the delicious puppy chow snack for the ride. In fact, the puppy chow ended up providing us with more entertainment than it did sustenance. Our first Nicaraguan adventure has now been named the Puppy Chow Riot, which consisted of about 20 Nicaraguan airport employees swarming around our group and asking for "toda la bolsa" (the whole bag/purse) of our puppy chow. We ended up giving them a baggy just because they loved it so much.
The rest of our voyage should have taken about 3 hours, but our bus engine overheated several times causing us to stop. At one point we stopped and got out to stretch and perform some yoga poses (pictures to come).
After arriving at the team house, we received a warm welcome from Don Omar and Dona Fide, along with a quick house tour and a rundown of the house rules, primarily "do not flush the toilet paper," which didn't pose much of an issue for us since we were also informed that we would not have running water in the sinks or flushable toilets until the morning. We made do with bottled water and headed to bed about 3 am American time, 1 am Nicaraguan time. They were generous enough to move breakfast today for us to 8 am instead of 7 am so we got that much needed extra hour of sleep! Post about the first day on the worksite to follow!
--OHBC Nicaragua 2013--
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| A little bus ride card game |
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| --Yoga style stretching, as taught by Jenna |
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| You might call this the "tree" |
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| waiting at the gate |
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| the fiances, pre-flight |
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| Jenna and Ricky, pre-flight |
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| All of our luggage made it safely! |
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| Our team leaders are SO excited to be here! |
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| Will is also thrilled as you can see |
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| the Spaid sistas! |
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| yours truly, Allie, with Pooh pillow pet |
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| Morgan, Amy, and Swindle! |
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| An ecstatic John and Kristine and Josh |
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| Jamie! |
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