Semana Santa - Holy Week

Happy Easter, Felices Pascuas, and happy spring to all those who have the pleasure of experiencing it this year. It seems to get hotter here. They say holy week is the hottest week of the year. That’s not true…perhaps this week is though. For Holy Week I went on “mission” for one day with other teachers and some students. We went to the homes of about fifteen students, visiting, and wishing happy and blessed Holy Weeks. Honestly, it was kind of awkward. It was much more evangelizing and guilt tripping than I was comfortable with. My boss was asking what the family had planned for holy week. As is custom the country over, many had planned trips to the beach or other places throughout the country. When my boss heard this she proceeded to remind people why it is holy week, because “we are celebrating the passion, death, and resurrection of the lord.” She would then remind everyone to go to services Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I sat in silence for the most part, smiling occasionally. On Tuesday of Holy Week I did the Nicaraguan thing and went swimming at a lake with some coworkers. We grilled meat, drank rum, and swam. It was great. Wednesday Michael and I headed back to the mountains of Estelí, to La Granacha. It was good to get out of the Managua’s heat; I relaxed. I finished reading Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, played my guitar, and went hiking with Michael. We ran into a snag on Friday when we were planning to head back to Managua. We found the bus to Estelí wasn’t running and that we had to stay another day. It was a mixed blessing. It was great to spend another day in paradise, but we were unable to notify our compañeras at home. When we finally got home on Saturday they were quite worried about us. So it goes.

Work started up again yesterday, Easter Monday, and it was a shock to the system. Luckily for me only about half the kids came because they didn’t realize there was class. Apparently all the public schools didn’t have school. Some people missed the memo. Anyway, I didn’t have to cover any classes because there were so few students. I finally took some photos at school. You can see some of the kids that I spend time with in the afternoons. These are not the kids I have in class, so I pretty much like them all. Good kids.