We said goodbye to La Mariposa on Friday, February 1st, and headed north on a bus from Managua to Estelí, the city where we would be staying for the next 4 weeks of our trip. Denver’s cousin’s wife is from there, and it is her family we stayed with, and her brother, Marcelo, who is working with Denver on researching possibilities for the Tilmor tractor in Nicaragua. They have a nice upper level added onto their home with two bedrooms, a patio area, and a bathroom, just the right size to comfortably fit our family. And the rooftop patio provided some nice views overlooking our neighborhood and the surrounding mountains.
School Routine
Our first Saturday, we stopped by Divine Mercy Bilingual School, not far from where we stayed. We enrolled our children, purchased uniforms, and got signed up for bus pickup service. When Monday rolled around, we were ready well before 7:15 waiting for the bus to take the kids to school which started at 7:30. Around 7:40, the bus finally arrived. The rest of the week, the pickup time was closer to 8:00.
The following Monday, we were caught off guard when the bus showed up at 6:40am (we weren’t ready, so they agreed to go on with the route and then come back for our kids). They hadn’t communicated this, but apparently the school started at 7:00am after the first week. So the kids finally got settled into a regular routine of making sure to be ready by 6:30 (except for the time the main bus had broken down, and the bus again didn’t show up until well after 8:00 for a couple of days…).
School in Nicaragua starts the first week of February, so this was one of the reasons we had timed our visit to start in February. We were hoping our kids’ Spanish would improve by enrolling them in school. What we didn’t realize is “bi-lingual” meant that almost all the classes were done in English! This made for an easier transition and less stressful experience for our kids, although it didn’t force them to use their Spanish as much. Thea made a friend in her grade that ended up being our next-door neighbor, and it was fun to hear the two of them interact mostly in Spanish. So while our language goals weren’t completely met, it was a helpful experience for our kids to meet kids in another culture, and experience what school is like for them.
A normal school day ended at 1:00, with the kids getting home on the bus about 1:20. They would get changed out of their school uniforms and then we would go downstairs to eat the lunch that Karen and Karmen, our hostesses, always had ready and waiting for us. After lunch it was time for Cheyenne’s nap, and Quinten and Thea received their from-home school assignments for the day, usually a math sheet to complete, a reading and vocabulary assignment and/or a journal entry to write (with some time playing Minecraft on the tablet afterward as the big motivator to get schoolwork finished).
Fun Arte
A weekend activity that occurred every Saturday was “Fun Arte”, a kid’s painting class that we enrolled our kids in. Official start time was 8am, but they were lucky to start things by 8:30am. These classes started with a story, and the kids were free to paint something inspired from the story. Cheyenne was too young for the class, but we snuck her in because Denver agreed to hang with her the entire time. This created a bit of a challenge keeping a squirmy 3-year-old entertained while trying to translate a story into English enough for the kids to understand. When it was finally time to paint, it was a bit more “fun”, and the kids’ creativity came out.
Denver’s Work Routine
As mentioned earlier, Denver spent this month working with the Tilmor project here in Esteli. This often involved joining Marcelo to visit a farm that was testing the Tilmor tractor. During this time his focus was learning more about agricultural practices in Nicaragua, distribution options, access to credit, and figuring out next steps based on that.
On off-days from visiting farms and businesses, he would have “office” days back home. This gave him time to gather thoughts, write up reports, and take care of other business (and spend more time with his wife, of course! *Tara’s edit*)
Tara’s Routine
Originally, we thought I might be bored with nothing to do while Denver was working and the kids were in school. Denver had asked the school if I might be able to volunteer a few days a week. I rode along with the kids on the bus the first day and without any specific direction on what to do, I stuck with Cheyenne in her class for the morning and had a chance to help her settle into the classroom routine. She had some moments when she got scared and I needed to reassure her and coax her back to the room, and we made lots of trips to the bathroom (which she thought was fun because of the preschooler-sized toilets), so I felt good about being able to be there to help her.
While I was helping in Shiny’s class the first day, I noticed that the teacher of the youngest classroom, with mostly 3-year-olds, seemed very stressed with over 20 toddlers running everywhere and only one teacher, so I told her I would try to help her out the next day. I ended up coming every day that week to try to help, but “helping” mostly meant trying to control some of the chaos by running back and forth to the bathroom with kids who needed to go, or staying back in a class with children running around and yelling while the teacher went to take kids for diaper changes (4 children in the classroom still in diapers that she was expected to have changed even though she was alone in a class of over 20 kids!). She said it was more kids in the classroom than they’d had previous years, and some of the kids were actually 2 when they were supposed to be 3 (and those children cried the whole morning, every morning,so I spent much of my time trying to calm those children as well).
I came home every day so exhausted and overwhelmed that I took a nap with Shiny and would sleep almost until dinner. After a week of that routine, I ended up really sick with a bad cold over the weekend and into the next week, and with that excuse not to return to school the first few days, I realized how much anxiety the school environment had created and I was happy to just have that time at home to relax while my kids were at school! (The teacher had told the head of school she needed a permanent classroom aide for when I was not there anymore, so I also hoped my not being there would help them realize the necessity of getting her some real long-term help!)
So my routine the remaining 3 weeks, after getting the kids ready and sent off to school, included things like eating a quiet breakfast with Denver, washing laundry or cleaning our living area, a lot of writing to catch up on the blog that we were very behind on, reading, practicing Spanish on my app, and preparing the kids’ homework assignments for later. I enjoyed the days that Denver worked from “home,” with some quiet time to talk and share a coffee and bread together midmorning while we worked. And it made so that on Valentine’s Day we even got away with a long walk to find a restaurant and had a kid-free lunch date with free babysitting since the kids were in school!
Evening and Weekend Free Time
We didn’t have easy access to any transportation besides relying on Marcelo to drive us in his truck, which we didn’t want to make him do all the time. Within walking distance our main options for getting out of the house on our own were a little ice cream shop we visited quite often for a treat, and another little shop where we could buy breakfast bread and snacks. There was a field across the road from us where the kids liked to go kick around the soccer ball, and on quieter evenings at home we played a lot of Dutch Blitz and Phase 10.
A longer walk away was a children’s park we played at a few times, once taking the neighbor girl and another time when Paulette visited us, and the kids always had a good time there.
We made a couple of visits to Marcello and Anabel’s house for Sunday lunch and spent the afternoon chatting while all the kids had fun cooling off in the kiddie pool they filled up for them. For Quinten’s birthday, we had the whole Castillo family over and ordered Pizza Hut (Quinn’s request), and the weekend after Quinten’s birthday we made a special trip to the movie theater to see the Lego Movie 2 as a gift—of course, the movie was in Spanish, so that was a fun new experience for the kids! Our home also gave the kids access to (Spanish) TV, which they hadn’t had in over a month, and the very sweet 8-month-old baby girl who lives there provided some cute entertainment as well!
We are especially thankful for the warm welcome and hospitality we received from the Castillo family during our time in Esteli. On our last night they had a special goodbye dinner with the whole family, and we had fun destroying the piñata that had been given to the children by La Mariposa.
The entire family was very generous in offering help with whatever we needed, keeping us well-fed, and in opening up their homes to our (often very noisy and wild) family! Thank you for taking care of us, Castillo family!
