Nicaraguan Sister

For the first time since we left Nicaragua over a year ago, one of our Nica family members has come to us! Ena is the pre-school teacher at Colegio Havila, the school we taught at for a year in 2008. She is up here in Seattle for two weeks learning the ways of Excel, practicing her English and learning the ropes of what taking responsibility for the Sponsor-a-Student program from the Nicaragua end will look like.

It was so wonderful to have a direct connection to the people we came to love while living there...not to mention that we had an entire evening speaking in Spanish! I don't think either of us knew just how much we have missed speaking daily in Spanish till we spent the evening doing so. It has also gotten us excited about our potential trip to visit in February at the beginning of the new Nica school year...more to come on that I'm sure.

A couple of my favorite moments with her were as follows:

-Picking her up for our dinner and telling her we need to stop by the grocery store. She promptly said to me, after I parked the car, "Mari Franci, can I stay in the car? There is so much rain and it's so cold!"

-At dinner we miraculously had some Coca-Cola in our fridge. If you ever spend any time in Nicaragua, you will quickly find out that Coca-Cola runs in Nicaraguan's blood. It is their drink of choice and is consumed at any hour in the day with gusto. As Josh excitedly offered some to Ena at dinner the conversation went something like this:
"Ena! We have Coca-Cola! Would you like some?"
"Noooo, Josh! It's too cold for Coca-Cola!"
"What?! But you love Coca-cola! You're Nicaraguan, how can you say no?"
"Josh, Coca-Cola is for when it is hot!"

She did however happily take some orange juice. Not sure how the two are that different but there is obviously a time and a place for Coca-cola and it is not in Seattle!



Ena, our dear Nica sister. Carrying on with the cold theme we took her to Coldstone at the mall. Josh was not thrilled about the idea of going to the mall, but Ena quickly put him in his place when she told him that she needed to see everything she could cause this could be the only time she ever comes to Seattle!


Ena and Me





I'm sure Ena is think to herself "Oh the crazy things the gringos make me do!