Adios!

Hello again!

Over the past week my fellowship has come to an end, but before that, a lot of good things happened, so I'll catch you up.

My final week at Santo Domingo was, in fact, the first time in which I taught the whole five days of the school week because the other weeks were interrupted by school being out of session because of exams and the political troubles. And since exams had already happened, my last classes with the students were mostly fun, learning things that interested them. In my class with my 10th graders we translated the song "Perfect" by Ed Sheeran into Spanish. Then with my 5th and 6th graders we learned the alphabet song. It was really a pleasure to teach these students during these weeks. A couple students have already reached out to me since I left on Monday asking me for help with their English work! Enjoy this video of my seventh graders learning the parts of the body.

Then, here are a couple of other miscellaneous pictures on my phone having fun with the kids at Santo Domingo.

I moved out of my host family's house and back in with the friars for my last few nights in the country. I really miss the company and love that José Ramón and Daniel always so willingly shared with me. Thanks so much to you two who really taught me a lot about accepting strangers and foreigners by taking me into their house and treating me like just another member of the family. Coming from a country like the United States this kind of embrace and acceptance was certainly something that was surprising to me and something that I can certainly strive to do better in my life in the States.

Then, in just my couple of days that I spent with the friars, I was really impressed by the way in which each of these three men centers his actions and prayers around peace and life. Although this perhaps doesn't sound that out of the box for a priest, but in Nicaragua in the current political situation, many people and even several religious leaders are calling people to violence. Here are some pictures from a little excursion that the friars and I went on to a beautiful place on the Pacific Coast called Magnific Rock!

Then on this past Saturday, I played in my last baseball game with the Caballos (horses), the name that has been placed upon the team of the teachers from Santo Domingo. We played against the 11th graders. Although the students played well and took an early 8-1 lead, the Caballos came back and ended up winning the game 16-10 highlighted by a game-tying inside-the-park home run by Félix.

Then some of the women that work at Santo Domingo made a really nice lunch for the baseball players and the couple of fans that watched the game. For the majority of the people present this was by goodbye because I was heading out on Monday morning before school. As I said goodbye to the teachers, the group of people that I had spent the most time with, I was pretty surprised by how close that I had grown with all of them in just six weeks which is an extremely short amount of time to get to know a person, let alone a group of about thirty. More than anything else, this says so much about the Nicaraguan people and their huge capacity to embrace others. Despite my arriving in Nicaragua amidst political turmoil and coming from completely different cultural and economic backgrounds than the people I met, they did not let this get in the way at all of forming friendships.

Last week when I posted I had expressed some optimism regarding the political situation in Nicaragua with many roadblocks getting cleared and schools getting started back up, yet despite these positive changes, things in the country as a whole continue in violence and without any real solution. BBC reported that on Monday 38 people died in anti-Ortega protests in one of the bloodiest days since the first protests on April 18th. The anti-Ortega group is calling for another national strike tomorrow that will surely continue to damage the Nicaraguan economy that is quickly shriveling with the collapse of the tourism industry in the wake of the political violence.

On Sunday, my last day in Nicaragua, one of the friars played a song on his phone while we were praying before mass. It was called, "El derecho vivir en paz," in English, "The Right to Live in Peace." This is perhaps one of the most profound things that I take with me as I leave Nicaragua, as I experienced on at least a very small level for a couple weeks the anxiety and uneasiness that comes with living in a country that is passing through daily violence and instability. Coming from a country like the United States, I can't really imagine the pain that Nicaraguans must be feeling having these problems in their homeland. Please keep praying for this suffering country and its friendly and loving people so that they can have their right to live in peace.

Lastly thank you so much to everyone who made this fellowship possible, especially to the Fellowship Committee in Providence and those who contribute to the fellowship, to the friars in Rivas, the teachers at Santo Domingo, my host family, and my own family back home in Maine for letting me take part in crazy experiences of growth and learning in Latin America, such as this one.

Thanks for reading,

Jack