amor

Last night, after an awesome tostada dinner and a long day of traveling, at least for Nica, all of the groups came back together for a relatively quick team meeting, essentially enough time for Tag to give us one very important, mandatory no questions asked assignment for this morning.  Sleep in as late as physically possible- at least up until our 10 am meeting of course.  I’m sure some of the guys could be in bed all afternoon without that clause in there, but  considering it’s about 8:30 and I’ve already been up and about for two hours, I’m glad he took into account that for some of us 13 hours of being tied to a bed would make us more tired and restless than having the freedom to roam before others awake.  Even so it’s nice to have a morning to relax, since he warned that our schedule is booked for the two days before the Africa teams and the leaders fly out. 
    Nica has another week here at the Gateway, but our time in Mexico is also running frighteningly thin.  I really am looking forward to arriving at El Puente, the AIM base in Grenada, but it’ll definitely be a step up difficulty wise.  I think we’ve all let ourselves get used to the freedom we have here, whether in having permission to leave our rooms before the sun rises  to taking a morning jog or long walks alone during solitude to even becoming more relaxed about logistics like being on time.  We’ve gotten comfortable where we are and I think that that’s the perfect time to get up and keep moving.  Somehow, I feel I’m gonna have to get used to this feeling of not knowing much to anything about the place that is about to become ‘home’, whether for a week or 6 months or maybe someday longer.  All I know is that we’re picking it up a pace. 
    Communicating verbally this past week without the help of Gabriel, our translator, was extremely difficult at best and word has it that Nicaraguans speak faster and drop the ‘s’ in words like ‘gracias’ but I know that intimacy and genuine love is still possible and to be sought out.  I found this past week, despite a larger language barrier than I had hoped for, that the people of Los Quiotes built very few walls around their private lives, for we were immediately welcomed into their homes and invited to share whatever they had.  I knew the Latin American culture was generally more hospitable and generous than we get used to seeing, but when we arrived unannounced and were immediately ushered into a woman’s kitchen and served tomales and cake during her child’s birthday party I have to admit I was caught off guard.  When the girls were given an entire room with two full sized beds or when Alicia, the extremely sweet grandmother that Tyler and Gabriel stayed with, started to bring out plates of tacos simply because we were working outside her home, the call to not hold anything back became a little stronger and challenging.  Yes, things are picking up a pace.  The language barrier will grow even larger but this past week we were given an example of the love that is supposed to radiate from us whether or not we can explain why verbally.  Our freedom around El Puente probably won’t be as great as we have here or the accommodations as spacious, but even if we were to live in a room made out of palm trees and rocks, it’s still possible for joy to overflow out of our very pores into everyone we come into contact.