Bustamante peering through the windows confirming that yes, we made it to the right country. The rest of the day we spent chatting with them about life in the States and resting from our long trip. We also learned that we will be staying with the Lockridges for the next several days while our house is finished which will be nice while we adjust to life here.
Here we are at the airport in Seattle!
Today has consisted of a lot of firsts. We made our first trip to the bank where, for the first time, we withdrew $1000 in cash! (The economy can be unstable so it is much easier to just pull out a large lump of U.S. dollars and not worry about paying in Cordobas, the local currency.) We also made our first trip out to Los Cedros to see our newly updated and renovated home where we encountered our first house guest (see picture below). I (Mary Frances) had my first meeting as a teacher with the principle,Pastora, and got the basic idea that I will be teaching k-6 grade. My classes will have about 25 students in them and I will teach each class 80 minutes (or two 40 minute classes) a week, which works out to about three full days of teaching. So for the first time in Nicaragua, I am feeling overwhelmed.
After our time in Los Cedros we headed off for our first shopping trip to the Nicaraguan mall where we bought a washing machine for our house and signed up for cell phones. To end the afternoon of shopping, we went to Price Smart, the Nicaraguan Costco (which is we think is owned by Costco because they even have Kirkand brand!). So overall, it has been a full day in which we have begun to explore our new home.
To sum things up, we thought we'd liven up the blog with a couple of pictures from our trip thus far.
Our first house guest...Mr. Spider who will sadly die tomorrow when they fumigate our house! The second picture is our "Room #1 of 2" which is our living room/dining room/hallway.
Sorry Josh for the bad picture...but this door in our house opens to what will some day be our bathroom...until then we will make the trek to our bathroom in the blue building (our house is to the right).
Here is a picture of our backyard that is complete with cows, chickens, and a pig. The other picture is of the new kitchen that will serve the children lunch during school. They had to build a new building since the old kitchen was our house.
Finally, even missionaries have to have a little fun! The compound the Bustamantes and Lockridges live in comes complete with a tennis court and swimming pool!
