Welcome back to Nicaragua! January 2013

Nicaragua

Day 1: Saturday, January 5th, 2013

Off on an incredible journey to Central America! Thanks for everyone who follows the blog during the trip! I'm going to do my best in posting as daily as possible to keep everyone updated on the adventures we have along the way! I will also put a link to the blogposts up when I write a new one on www.Facebook.com/MoreThanFutbol,  www.Facebook.com/ChampionsSoccerTraining, if you want to get more updates check out those pages!

More Than Futbol continues to grow each year and this year is our biggest yet! Thank you to everyone for your generous donations! Thanks to all of the donations from local families and a generous donation of uniforms from LTRC Baseball we were overloaded with gear, more than we could take.

When I say overloaded I mean over 1000 jerseys, 200 shorts, 200 pairs of shoes, and tons of soccer balls. This is a great problem to have since we travel down each year and all of the gear will eventually make its way down. To get the gear down the safest and securest way possible we must fly it down with us. I couldn't help but feel a little bummed that with all of these donations there was not a way to get EVERYTHING to the kids in Nicaragua and Belize. I was the only one traveling to Nicaragua and we have a group of 7 going to Belize. Since I travel to Belize from Nicaragua my "checked bags" would go to Nicarauga, which puts us down to 6 bags to Belize. Carol Phillips, a soccer mom and doctor traveling to Belize with us with her daughter is bringing down bags of medical supplies, which now puts our Belize bags of gear down to 4 and even if I check 2 bags of gear and carry my clothes on board I can only bring 2 bags to Nicaragua. :-( 

Well, someone must be looking out for this mission because less than a week before I was set to fly out to Nicaragua, Danny Schaifer, a 17 year old Junior soccer player from Boys Latin, was suddenly inspired to come on the trip and do whatever it took to make that happen. After lots of parental-convincing and school organizing, Danny's plane ticket was bought and 2 more giant gear bags were packed for Nicaragua! 2 days before leaving for Nicaragua I received an email from 3 graduate students at University of Maryland in Baltimore wondering if it was too late to travel down with us! The next day 3 plane tickets were bought and 3 bags were packed with gear. 

Is it bad luck to say that this trip must be fated to be something incredible? 

 As incredible as the trip is panning out to be, what is not so incredible is waking up at 5:00am. In this phase of life, I'm a night owl and my morning wake up call is no earlier than 7:30am. With a couple of items still unpacked, I scrambled to get ready in time to leave at 6:00am. I think anyone would agree that its the "getting out of bed" that is the hardest, once you are up you are up, and by 5:15 I was cranking and after my Dunkin Donuts morning beverage I was REALLY cranking. Flying out of Dulles this time, Danny and I walked in with 4 HUGE bags of soccer gear, and 2 small bags each packed EACH with our clothes and, let me tell you, the airline check-in lady's face was priceless… like, "Are you serious with all of that luggage?" As she ushered us into line, she wasted no time telling us that we were 2 bags over and the cost of each bag was going to be $135 and more if they were overweight. Goodness gracious, now what? Our ride is gone. What are we going to do with all of this soccer gear? …If you saw the bags you would know that they were absolutely packed to the brim but thanks to a little good ol' fashion ingenuity, we figured out a way to get one of the bags consolidated, that still left us with one bag over. Ugh. Danny and I were inching up in line and with each inch the anticipation grew as we looked at all of the check-in staff up and down, making bets on who would be most lenient with us. The older lady with soft features? The young woman with the make up? the lady with the high hair-do? The lone huge intimidating man. Definitely not him, he would be the worse by far… and guess who we got? The first thing I said when I got to the front was, "We are on a soccer mission working with the church in Nicaragua and we are one small bag over, is there anyway you can please help us?" How many times do we need to learn, "Do not judge a book by its cover!" This guy was super nice and helpful and really trying to do his best to discretely get us on the plane with all of our gear without paying extra. Walking away with our boarding passes and a huge sigh of relief Danny and I headed over through security and to the gate for our 4 hour and 20 min connecting flight into El Salvador. 

After we arrived to El Salvador and hustled to our gate we walked out to board the plane, but wait... at the end of the isle was stairs leading outside to a row of cones to take us to our plane. The plane had propellors. That may seem like a normal thing to say but I'm used to just the wings that somehow make the plane go, not two fans on the front! 


I have never flown on a plane like this and although we were a little scared....

 shockingly it was a pretty smooth ride the whole way! 


Once arriving in Managua we stopped off for a few snacks and then arrived at Helen, a youth leader's, house. Helen has become a close friend over the years helping us with our camps and she has graciously given up her own bed for me to sleep in and her brother has given up his bed for Danny to sleep in. When I asked her where she would sleep she said that she would sleep in her parents bed with her Mom and Dad- tight squeeze! But that is Nicaraguan hospitality. So nice :-) Thanks Helen! Helen fixed us an amazing quesadilla dinner Nica style! Yum. 


Unwinding now and about to fall asleep... great first day of travel! Tomorrow we will go to church in the morning and then load 2 buses of 70 kids to go to the camping location. After introducing the camp to the kids, the afternoon will be spent getting situated with the camp and unpacking all of the gear and organizing it and then Monday, let the games begin!

Good night!