After 3 days of a blissful orientation in Fort Lauderdale with the Nicaraguan & Ecuadorian Program Directors (PDs), I boarded a flight to Managua at 6:15 today with five Manna friends and a much better grasp of the goals and structure of the organization and the role I will be playing this year with MPI. Spending time with everyone before leaving the country allowed us to get to know all of the staff and PDs on both sites, as well as allowing us to enter Nicaragua with most of the awkward get-to-know-you moments already surpassed. As the old PDs greeted us at the airport and ushered us into the 15 passenger Micro Van, we were able to laugh, dream, and discuss the coming year in ernest with a certain degree of friendship already established.
Everything right now is, in a word, surreal. With only a 2 1/2 hour flight, I landed feeling like I was in the States, not in the middle of Central America. The skyscrapers and coastline of Miami had been replaced by the lights of tons of houses and street lamps, but I still had the sense of being close to home. Sure, the customs officer spoke to me in Spanish, but that's almost just as likely to happen when flying into certain cities in the Southern USA. It wasn't until I arrived at the Manna House, the place where I'll be living for the next 13 months, that the immensity of what I am doing started to hit. With geckos crawling on the wall, mosquitoes already nagging at my feet, rain beating a soothing rhythm on top of the house, and palm trees growing right outside the door, I'm certainly not in Tennessee anymore. And I love it. In learning about the organization and the Program Director position at orientation, I realized anew what a wonderful opportunity this is to learn, promote awareness, help inspire community development from within, and meet truly incredible people in the process.
It may not hit me now what a big task lies ahead of me, and maybe I should feel more overwhelmed...I'm sure that time is quickly approaching, but as for now, I just feel incredibly blessed to have the opportunity to live and love in Latin America.
Buenas noches from my first night in Nicaragua,
JM
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