Martes (Tuesday)

The roosters started crowing at 3 am. The women and children that live at House of Hope were up by 4.  This was Tuesday, the craziest day of the week.  On Tuesdays, around 300 women and teenage girls come from all over Managua to House of Hope.  Many of them are still active in prostitution.  After a time of singing and Bible study, it's production time.  Different tables have different tasks.  Some make greeting cards, others make gift tags, still others make bracelets, while others make earrings.  I learned that I'll be in charge of five tables.  Mine are all bead making tables.  The women cut up wrapping paper and roll it onto a toothpick and then put brillo (which is like clear nail-polish) on it to keep it from unraveling.  The result is a bead which will (on a following Tuesday) be put onto a bracelet or earring.  Some of the tables I observed made over 600 beads.  I'm in charge of making sure all 5 tables have the needed supplies.  I also am supposed to make sure they don't steal any of the supplies (apparently some of the women take supplies and make more beads at home and then bring them later to make the day's total much higher).  At the end of the morning, I will be counting all the beads made for the day.  Since the amount of money they make is mostly determined by how many beads are produced, the women watch the counting process very closely.  Sometimes they try to manipulate the process or argue the final count.  Should be fun.
After production is finished, the residents clean up the area and it's lunch time.  This particular Tuesday, there was a mission team at House of Hope, so after lunch we had another project.  The North American ladies were teaching the residents to sew school uniforms.  I was helping cut out the fabric.  The pattern was in Spanish, and the ladies helping me couldn't read. Oh, and the directions were wrong. And Home Ec wasn't my best subject in school anyway (not to mention it was about 8 years ago). It was awesome.
After sewing, the current intern took me to the grocery store.  It was a store designed for gringos, so it looked like any grocery store in the US. Except all the prices were in cordobas.  So some prices said things like 166.68. Which looks really crazy. But it's only about $7. So anyway, I was trying to find food items that I could cook on a hot plate. (The current intern was really nice and loaned me a hot plate, a pot and some dishes.)  I hope I get a lot better at cooking...
Speaking of things I need to get better at...driving a stick shift vehicle!  I haven't done that in about 5 years (and it wasn't my favorite then!). But in Nicaragua, that's the only option.  And for my job (or to get to the grocery store) I'll have to drive.  Nope, I can't read the road signs.  And yes, Nicaraguan drivers are crazy! And yes, the roads are absolutely terrible.  Should keep things interesting...