March 22 pm - March 23 am

This is Tommy writing. The past few days have been the most emotionally difficult of the trip so far. We´ve enjoyed ourselves a lot, with the Nicas, putting on various dances and performances in our honor. But as much as we laugh and smile with them, the obvious makes everything bittersweet. We´re leaving in two days, and we feel it with every interaction.
My wild class of sixth graders threw me a wonderful birthday party yesterday. As a person who usually is travelling on my birthday, a party is something that I never get. I will never forget breaking the piñata and the ensuing onslaught of 12 year olds. To be honest, I was quite tired before the party. The two weeks away from what I´m used to had taken their toll. Something that I found difficult is trying to be cheerful when I´m not. We all have bad days, and under normal circumstances, it´s okay to be grouchy for a few hours, but not here, not for these two weeks. I care about a lot of the people here, so it´s easy to smile and talk to them. That´s the part that is great, but in my opinion, that´s not all that service means. Service is being decent, friendly, and enthusiastic, even when you feel too sleepy to pay attention to another dance, or talk to a seven year-old about who their favorite cartoon character is.
I want to make these last two days great, not just for me, but for the Nicaraguans I will probably never see again. They deserve to see us at 100%, and I know I will beat that.
(Cheri is writing this last paragraph.) I wanted to let you know about a wonderful time we had last night with a few recent graduates from la Nicaraguita who mean a lot to me. These graduates were U-Nica scholarship students supported by many different people back in the States. Pauline McKean (who works as Director of GS´s Global Service Program) and I started this non-profit organization called U-Nica in 2006 after we saw a need in the school´s neighborhood to sponsor children so they could attend the school and get off the street. We currently have 20 kids who attend la Nicaraguita through the generosity of 20 individuals or families from the USA. Last night´s get together was particularly meaningful to me because these recent grads came back to celebrate their success with our group from GS. In 2010, we were fortunate enough to connect with an American family who owns a company in Nicaragua and who saw the need for helping seniors at La Nicaraguita get some real work experience before graduating. In shifts of four weeks, every morning, a senior works at HEMCO, an ecologically friendly gold mining company which reinvests in the communities where it mines. These students are both U-Nica and non U-Nica seniors; all of them come out of the experience with an elevated self-confidence, work experience in filing, phoning, sending out checks, dressing and acting appropriately in a work place, and much more. We are very proud of the success rate of these students, and HEMCO committed last year to funding their four years in college. It´s a great story, and I wanted to share it. I have more stories just like this one. If you are interested in helping Pauline and I find sponsors for students who are having difficulties paying the monthly tuition of $22, please let me know. We always need help continuing to support individual students as well as supporting the English language program at la Nicaraguita.
Finally, this is the last entry of our blog. Tomorrow is a very busy day, with no breaks for us, ending with an evening of a good-bye party. Your child will attend a dinner with her host parents, may perform for the group and will say her good-byes to teachers and other families. Your children have been a super group to work with. They were extremely productive in their service (painting, cleaning, digging, teaching, working in the clinic, making posters, working in the public school) and you should be proud of them. They did not whine about anything. What a relief! Thank you for entrusting them to Ileabeth and me. We hope you will listen to their hearts when they do their best to relate to you this most rewarding experience.