Moved in with new families
Friday began with a nice surprise: rain! Because the dry season begins in December, everything in Managua was very dry when we arrived. The rainy season usually begins around mid-May, but this year it appears to have started already. As we drove out of Managua and up the mountain to Jinotepe (where the SST unit house is located), the air smelled clean and the ground looked less dusty this morning.
After arriving in Jinotepe, a city of about 60,000 an hour directly south of Managua, we broke up into 3 groups for a walking tour. We had lunch in town and learned how to take the public transport minivans from Jinotepe to Diriamba, passing through Dolores. The 3 locations, where we will be living with host families for the next 6 weeks, are all only about 3 miles apart and connected by the same road, the Pan American Highway.
In the late afternoon our families arrived to pick us up and take us to our new homes. Hmmm, definitely going to have to use that Spanish this weekend! The next time we will see each other again will be Monday morning, when we meet for Spanish class.