Aaron-Central America

Aaron in Central America

hello. things are still going good. it is so wierd to think that there is snow there, as I am roasting 24/7. today we went to the pacific ocean and went swimming and hung out at the beach, it was great, and very warm, and the water was sweet. it is such a different world down here, in everything from attitudes to food. and at the same time, people are very similar everywhere. i was playing with some little kids and talking with them (they are very forgiving about language mistakes), and they enjoy the same games and the babies make the same little sounds, it really is a wonderful thing to see. }

thank you so much to those who wrote me back i loved hearing from you, and your prayers are so greatly appreciated! school is good, we talk and learn from our professor, and then walk with him around town, to different churches, markets, and just talk and learn about the city, history, and practice spanish. the in the afternoons we go on different excursions around the area. the other day we got on this boat and headed out into lago de nicaragua, which looks like the ocean because it is so big! we went out to this island and swam and picked mangoes. i also so a naked man just chillin on the street walking to school the other day. my host family is great, for the most part, and we hang out together quite a bit. mark and i bought slinshots and and host brother wants to bring us out cat hunting- we will see about that.

there are so many poor and hurting people here, but they don´t really seem to notice, and for the msot part i have been so impressed about how warm and welcoming people are. i will be walking around and i will know people by name on the street and have made these friends/aquaitances, adn i have only been here a week. i don´t know if that would happen in the states, it seems like we can live a lifetime in a neighborhood and not open up to our neighbors.

anyway, i am looking greately forward to a restful weekend after a week of madness. i love you all and just am so greatful for your friendship and support!

i read psalm 37 this morning it is a good one.

at the beach today there were all kinds of pelicans flying around adn diving after fish-so cool. it made me feel like i was in jurassic park. we also played a game of futbol (soccer) with a bunch of little kids and teenagers on the beach, it was the first time that we have actually beaten them in anything, they are really good and really into games and any little activity. i saw a bunch of little kids playing soccer this evening with a dice for a ball and there mother´s chair as teh goal. there are also little geckos that come out adn crawl all over the walls at night. we have also been seeing adn doing a lot of dancing- different salsas and mambos- pretty fun! we have one more week here and then we are moving to Leon, which is kind of the opposite of Grenada where we are know, so that will be neat to see something so different!

once again, you are all grrrrrrrreat and thank you so much for it all!
1/14/05

Here is the view from our school. it is one of the oldest buildings in town and it looks right out onto central park. we have class upstairs where there is big open windows that we get this view out of. on most days we can see the couple miles down to lago de Nicaragua.
	here is a picture of us playing basketball at the prison. yesterday we went there after class and hung out and played basketball, volleball, soccer, hackey sack, and whatever else. the last time they were aloud out to play games was 6 months ago.
here is some kids at the beach who were homeless and trying to sell different trinkets to us. we went out to the pacific ocean last friday and we spent quite a bit of time talking and hanging out with these little kids.
	today i spent the day playing and loving on boys at a shelter who have addictions to glue, which is actually a huge problem down here. kids get it cheap from shoe shiners and tons are addicted. so this pic is me with a little boy named Jose, who was very sad to see me go, but the rest of the time was crazy and so much fun. we played all sorts of games, which they are all so stinkin good at. i was continuly blown away at their skill at everything from futbol to marbles, from tops to beads.
this pic is the little girls that are in my host family taken outside my house. they are great!

It has been absolutely wonderful to actually quite a bit of actually hands on hanging out with people this week. it is so powerful just to share in a day or even a couple of hours with someone who is so far removed from the lives that we live. the little boys today were incredible, just craving attention and would just beam when someone showed them that they cared. they would just grab my hand and lead me all over showing me different games and trying to teach me how to play them, and i have never seen such great patience. this 13 year old boy named alberto taught me this game with a string of beads and i couldn´t get if forever, but everytime i messed up he just took it back did it and then gave it back to me. then when i got it he took me over and taught me a marble game (kinda like mini krokae). and jose would show me how to shoot by using my arm as if it was the ground, and then put my hand on his arm and want me to imitate him. 1/23/05

	The picture is a of me on the roof of the largest cathedral in Central America, which is here in Leon. a couple of our teachers had some connections and some of us were able to get up there.
The picture is of a couple of us doing some homework at the beach where we spent yesterday afternoon swimming, body surfing, and basically just living it up.

We are now in Leon, which is a beautiful city only a couple km from the Pacific. it is the other extreme of Granada, this being a very liberal college town. there is tons of art, which i have just loved experiencing. we went to an art museo today, but there is
also just tons of it in the streets, churches, tele poles, and basically all over. there is some intense anti war, anti Bush, anti american graffiti and paintings as well. we have school in one of the former mansions were the leaders of the Sandinistas used to hold parties.
1/27/05

first, this weekend we had our first ´plunge´. on friday night we all met at the school and we were divided into groups of four and given a little rural town and a set of questions, some money and a quick good luck. our job was to figure out how to get to this little town, when there find lodging, food, the answers to a bunch of questions regarding the history, agriculture, recreation, politics, etc., and get ourselves back on sunday, safe and well. it was a great experience! we found the bus station and had a crazy as always bus ride, then walked into town and withing 10 minutes of being there we were in the alcalde (mayor´s) office, in an air-conditioned room getting all, and a lot more, of our questions answered. we signs for this guy all over, and then this old lady said ¨that´s him¨ and pointed to this guy in the street. he also got us really cheap lodging in this funky little room where i slept with jon brewer in this tiny little cot (did´t actually sleep per se).
1/31/05

today was really meaningful as some of us went to a home/organization for blind people here in Leon. they do a lot of music, and basically just provide a safe alternative to being on the street since there is really no government involvement of any kind for the disabled. which is one aspect that contributes to the rawness of this culture. really that is the best word that describes what things are like down here: it is raw and in your face and real. people are disabled, people poop, people create large amounts of garbage. these things are facts, i see crazy people in the streets everday, have seen people pooping in the street, and gullies completely choked with garbage. these things we don´t really seen in rural middle class america, we hide it all somewhere. and it is actually quite refreshing, as well as disturbing, to be in a culture that doesn´t really have many masks. anyway, it was great today with the blind people- they had an upright bass!!! it only had three strings, which i had never heard of, but as soon as i figured out which three they were we were golden. i played with this big blind keyboard player all of these Nicaraguan folk songs, and they all loved it so much! this guy just didn´t want to stop, we just kept going, and he had this huge rad laugh that just light up the place. it was an awesome and very sobering experience just being with them and seeing how hard life can be and how lucky most of us are.
2/1/05

	this picture is of jon brewer and i atop of cerro negro- yes, it was crazy windy!
i put this one in as a more artsy one. i met this little girl out in the campo and bought a watermelon from her mama.
	this one is me playing at the home for the blind here in Leon- so good to have a bass in my hands again. only three strings!?

Honduras was incredible, and so meaningful. My family was wonderful.in the begining i didn't really have very much to do, so i just walked around a lot getting to know people, and reading my Bible and such. but then right away, through hanging out at the government headquarters, i got very connected with the kinda upper class of the town. elections for mayor were coming up and i had met all of the canidates, hung out at the mayor's house and stuff, and it was an interesting experience. there is a peace corps volunteer in
the town, who had been there for 4 years, who i imediately started doing work with. her name is Naoma, and she was great in introducing me to people and continuily inviting me to help her. her area of speciality was water systems and issues. so we would go out to little villages that didn't have any water and search for a water source. many times the villagers had streams that they had found and they wanted Naoma to go see them and tell them if it would work. so we did gallon per minute tests to see how many houses the stream would support, and searching for the least contaminated source.

one day i got in trouble with the municipality people for working in the park with the "common folk." the town is redoing there little central park area, and i was bored and wanted to do something productive with my day and get to know some more of the people and develop those relationships further so i went in there and asked them if i could help. they said yes, and i could tell they didn't think that a gringo could handle a wheelbarrow full of rocks or swing a pick axe, so they were pretty suprised that i could pull my own. however, the people who hired those workers, the people who i had been hanging out with, came out after awhile and told me stop, saying that i don't have to do that manual labor, i kept it up though, and it was a little akward, but the dudes in the park sure enjoyed it.03/18/05

	a timer self portrait of me and the sunrise on the last day on the beach!
this is my wonderful little friend belcy, our compassion child, she is wonderful!
	this is my new brother and sister, don't get jelous family. they are wonderful, and it was so much fun to have a little brother!

i was so blessed to be a part of a medical brigade from vermont and new hampshire. the are connected to a missionary down here and have been coming down for 4 years adn heading to villages, setting up clinics and treating people. there are a wonderful group of people, all ages, some doctors, nurses, their kids, and some other great youth from the church. i was rocked by the poverty and pain, unless you have seen there is really no way how you can understand. in the past i have seen tv commercials about sponsoring children
or world hunger and believed sure there is poor hungry, hurting people in the world, but it wasn't real, and they probably just went to the poorest areas to get those pictures. but going to village after village and visiting there homes, and everyone in living in absolute poverty, mal nourished, no shoes, so hungry they can't concentrate in school, a single mother of 8 doing everything to just keep the children alive - when that is the case, you sacrifice so many important mom and loving things. people stealing and lying just to get toothbrushes, because that is what they have to do to survive. we visited a different village everyday,and only covered the tiniest percentage of the region of this tiny country. i challenge you to struggle with this. ignorance is easy, but it has consequences that we don't even realize. seek truth, the world is so complicated, adn we are so easily lost in middle class america. The greatest trick the devil ever played on
the world is convincing it he didn't exist. if we are not aware, evil can simply run free. i love America, and i am so excited to go home, at the same time God's truth is bigger than any institution, and must be sought above all else.

it was hard to leave Santa Rita, and be thrown back into the city of Tegucigalpa and back into life with a group of 30 white people, going from a place where i was one of two. but on the day after i got back, i had one of the most meaningful experiences of my time - i spent the day with my families Compassion child. her name is Belcy, she is 8, and she is the sweetest girl i have probably ever met. the compassion leader in her town brought her and her mom to meet in this park above the city with this huge Jesus figure looking out over it. we went to this little zoo and just hung out, got to know eachother, and it was absolutely precious. she was quite shy, but at the same time very close and i could tell that she loved me and my family. when we met i gave her a flower that i had bought for her, and said hello and introduced myself, she didn't really say anything but then just ran into my arms and gave me a huge hug. we would be walking around looking at animals or playing in the grass adn she would just take my hand, and when we said goodbye adn she was driving off in the taxi, she turned and blew me a kiss. it was hard and sad and wonderful. she has a very poor family, and her mom said she had 6 other kids, but we had a day, and i gave her a stuffed animal, and was able to love on her.then we flew to Costa Rica and...

The jungle, was absolutely out of control! i will talk about it because it is fresher in my brain and easy to talk rather superficially about. We flew into San Jose, i stayed up all night writing a paper, and then we left at 5:30 for Punta Mona. if you look it up on the internet you can learn a lot about what it is and see some pics of us there! so we arrived on the Caribbean by luch time, played hackey sack on the beach until we ate a great lunch at this little bungalow restaurant blaring ragae, which i enjoyed so much. then we loaded all of out bags onto a boat, broke up into smaller groups, and started hiking along the ocean. each group had a local guide, and mine was great and knew absolutely everything about each plant and animal. it was about a 4.5 hour hike through the jungle to Punta Mona, where our bags were waiting for us. it is a community of people dedicated to organic farming and sustainable community. they are completely off the grid, and self sustaing. solar power and rain water and all of the food, which was pretty crazy at times, was taken right there from the jungle. 03/18/05

	a real life sloth in the jungle!
this is the real Central America. beautiful and polluted, obsessed with Coke and American culture. this is just outside of Copan, Honduras.
	this is on the medical brigade. visiting a Chortis village with Dr. Spricer, an incredible man of God and doctor.

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