"Wait...You're WHERE Now?!?" (A sad farewell to the European School but a happy "hello" to Nicaragua)

Before we start adding more posts from Nicaragua, I figured I should step back and add a post explaining a bit about WHY we are in Nicaragua. And no, we are not on the run from the Costa Rican authorities (if we were, the experience crossing the border with our car would have probably been enough to drive us back to turn ourselves in).

More in Nicaragua in later posts but it is a maddeningly beautiful place in many ways...

...and I say "maddeningly" because scenes like the one in the first pic are never far from scenes like this. That's what you get when you mix a growing tourism sector into the second poorest country in the hemisphere.

Probably best to step back to December and January, when Audrey and I were having a whole lot of soul searching conversations about the future. We had grown to love the lifestyle, the location, the environment/surroundings, etc. We had made some good friends. Jack had made some friends and grown comfortable at school while the other three had made some very strong friendships and were already talking about how they wanted to find a way to juggle time in both Milton and Heredia (“if we went back every vacation we’d still see our family and friends in MA as a lot but we could still come back here for school next year…”).

Had to include a few more "view" pics from the house...

Audrey and kids took a walk outside on Audrey's bday to check out the crazy moon...

We thought long and hard about whether or not we could make it work if we opted to stay for another year or two. No need to go into all the reasons here but long-story-short we eventually concluded that the answer was “not now.” Who knows. Maybe we’ll figure out a way and a time to do another year there down the road but for now we need to call of the journey after a year.

Ironically, once we decided that we weren’t staying for 2-3 years at the school, we made the seemingly strange decision to pull the kids OUT of school for what would have been their fourth quarter (the school is on a quarterly system with 2-4 week breaks between each…they started Q1 last summer and finished their third quarter at the end of March). Our thinking was that they were already in a GREAT place emotionally with GREAT memories, an insane amount of maturation in a short period of time, and hopefully a few friendships that they can try to quasi-maintain from afar (yay for Skype and Email…!).

Liadan and Charlie doing crunches with "Coach Daniel" before last fencing class...

One of Charlie's last paintings from art club...

OK...this pic has nothing to do with anything but I thought it was hysterical. The kids made their own "hanging Oropendola nests" in Ella's room : )

But if this was going to be a “one and done” year, we wanted: (i) to have them see and experience a couple of other locations in more depth; (ii) mix in some volunteer work; and (iii) take some time to really build upon the baseline Spanish that they had learned while at The European School (the older three had a fantastic SSL teacher but they only had it maybe 4 times a week…and most of the rest of their day was in English b/c the kids their age were all trying to practice their English!). It was incredibly hard to say goodbye to the school. The teachers, administrators, folks who ran the after school activities — the entire school community, really — had been incredibly welcoming and supportive throughout the year. It was an emotional experience as parents to hear the nice things folks had to say about the kiddos. Liadan’s teacher and the principal of the lower grades even had a little going away cookout for us at the principal’s house (a day later they let all the kids in Liadan’s class skip wearing uniforms so they could surprise her by wearing green — her favorite color).

Liadan's note that she wrote on her own for her class.

Ella saying goodbye to her teacher (Miss Maria)

Ella and Charlie with Miss Rocio (the SSL teacher for the older three)

A homemade gift box made for Liadan as a going away gift (from Raoul)

Charlie and Liadan with Miss Monica (principal of the 1-3rd graders)

At the very least, the kids were able to end the year on a good note with a lot of get togethers with friends, a three-night camping trip for Ella with her grade (complete with crawling through mud-filled obstacles, wading across waste-deep streams during hikes, etc.).

Jack, Ella, Charlie and Santiago playing after school...

...while Ella was camping with her class (this was taken before the trip - no cameras allowed while camping!)

Dad welcoming back his little lady after her camping trip. : )

AND then there was Wearable Arts Day. Wearable Arts is a big deal at The European School. As you have seen in earlier entries (e.g. re: 15 de Septiembre) the school goes all out preparing for shows like this. In this case they paired up a grade from an “older class” in the primary school with a younger class (e.g. one 5th grade class might work with a Kindergarten class) to make costumes, work on their own dances, etc. to tell a story. This year’s theme was “bedtime stories from around the world.” Ella was part “The Little Prince.” Jack was part of an African tale about why the sky is far away. And Ella and Charlie got to work together on the story of Spriditis (a traditional Estonian folk tale — chosen by Liadan’s teacher, Miss Gita, who was born in Estonia). It was a super cool experience to sit on the big hill above the back field and watch the whole production. Btw...I am going to post a few video clips from Wearable Arts at some point. For now, all I have on YouTube is the final song (the whole school singing "Stand By Me"). Very cute. You can see it here... [button link="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_8loI-3crFczZ6FnI2a0nA" type="big" newwindow="yes"] Link to Video Clip...[/button]

Jack and others setting up for their skit (all skits are set to music, btw).

Jack (in homemade mask) getting into position (he was one of the "gods of the sky"

Some of the younger kids dancing in front of "the sky"...

Charlie and Liadan were in the same skit (Spriditis)

Charlie and the rest of the "winds" (he was the North Wind)

That's Liadan ("The Mother of the Forest") behind El Gigante...

The Mother of the Forest on the move...!

Ella's class (and some 1st graders) in The Little Prince

Not sure who those kids are but I thought their costumes were adorable

The whole school singing "Stand By Me" after the show...

The Windy Trio (Charlie, Gabriel and Santiago) after the show

A nice little end to our European School experience. We will miss the school and all of the people we met. Thanks to one and all for an unforgettable year! So…how did we end up in Nicaragua? Here is our “plan” for what would have been the fourth quarter of the school year. — 3 weeks in Granada, Nicaragua // back to Heredia for a week (with a visit from the Rowleys mixed in) // 3-ish weeks in Monteverde, Costa Rica // back to Heredia for a week // 3+ weeks in Peru // back to Heredia for a week // then back to Boston at the end of June (!?!) — During each stop, the kids will take Spanish classes in the mornings and in the afternoons we will do a mix of a bit of home-schooling in other subjects, a bit of exploring and a bit of volunteer work. I’ll save some of the details of our first week-plus in Nicaragua for a future entry but suffice to say that it has been a fantastic and eye-opening experience for all. It is SO different from Costa Rica (an understatement!). The language school has been awesome. The kids love it. The Granada area is both beautiful (in parts), gritty (in parts) and incredibly poor (in parts…tomorrow we were skipping out on school to go volunteer with a group that works in one of the poorest areas outside the city). More on all that later.

On our way to the border we stopped a bizarre roadside place for lunch. At least they had a bird...

The night before crossing, we found an awesome little "hotel" in the middle of nowhere. Small farm with some cabins. And a hammock...

Jack at dinner the night before crossing

I will leave you all with this copy/paste from an email that I sent to my parents right after we arrived in Granada. It is a description of the ridiculous process of crossing the Costa Rican/Nicaragua border with four kids and your own Costa Rican car. Let’s just say that the two governments don’t get along super well and people say that they have intentionally made the process a nightmare on both side of the border (10x harder than crossing from CR to Panama or from Nicaragua to Honduras, for example). Enjoy the list of steps…and take notes if you ever plan on doing the same… : ) ---------------------- Step 1: Right before you leave, take your car to pick up papers at a Costa Rican governmental office that has to give you a stamp that says “you can take your Costa Rican-registered car over the border." Step 2: After getting to above referenced office, realize that they want BOTH you and your spouse present. Call spouse. Have her drive across the city to join you. Get papers. Step 3: When you get to the border with your kids, realize that it is 100 degrees and realize that 100 degrees is wicked uncomfortable. Curse the car that you bought because the AC barely works (something you never noticed living in the mountains). Step 4: Fight through the crowd of nicaraguans offering to “guide you” through the process on the Costa Rican side

Step 5: Find the right building and ask a cop if I needed the kids with me going through the first line. I was too “no.”

Step 6: Wait in that line for a while only to find out that I DID need the kids with me.

Step 7: Go back and get family…wait in line again. Get passports stamped.

Step 8: Get told we need to go to ANOTHER line to get car papers stamped

Step 9: Stand in that line in the sun for 45 minutes…luckily learning BEFORE we got to the front that we needed PHOTO COPIES of a bunch of papers

Step 10: Leave Ella (who came with me to that line..thank God) in line for me and go to another line for a bus company (the only place with a copy machine)…stand in that line for a while

Ella holding my place in the other line...

Step 11: Back to the car paper line for a while. GET YOUR PAPERS STAMPED. WOO-HOO!!!

Step 12: Think for a moment that you are done. Step 13: Realize that the fun has only just begun. Sigh. Then curse. Then apologize to kids for cursing. Then laugh because the whole thing is SO ridiculous that you have to laugh. Step 14: Drive 200 meters to other side of border

Step 15: Go through a “fumigation” booth for the car. I think it was supposed to be a manned booth but there was nobody in it. Which was weird. We just sorta drove through it. I don’t think anything actually came out of the spray nozels so hopefully we didn’t bring in 10 invasive species that are about to destroy the ecology of Nicaragua.

Step 16: Get waved down by some guy who tells you that you need to go pay the “fumigation fee” and get the “fumigation papers”. Step 17: Stand in that line for a while and pay fumigation fee. Ask the people in that line if we are done now and have them tell you that they don’t know. Which is crazy because they are about 100 meters from the next line that you need to stand in. Realize that nobody in that strange beaurocratic bubble gives a shit about what any of their colleagues does. Step 18: Try to find someone who knows which line to go to next only to realize that the first woman you asked was….that’s right…wait for it…MUTE! Yes, of course we asked the one mute employee at the border. But she REALLY wanted to help so we figured out (eventually) what she was trying to tell us (I don’t know sign language).

Step 19: Eventually figure out where she was sending us. Stand in ANOTHER line for a while. Get more things stamped.

Step 20: MY FAVORITE STEP in the process because it highlighted the insanity of the whole thing. The next step is that you have to wander around a Nicaraguan parking lot trying to find a policeman to sign one of the forms. Seriously. One cop. Massive parking lot. He floats around with no set location. We were told “look for him under one of the trees.” I felt like we were seeking out a wise hermit at the top of a mountain except we were in a dirty, dusty parking lot. Step 21: Get cop to sign paper. Step 22: Get into yet another line and meet the SLOWEST government employee in the Americas. Took her about 30 minutes to fill out our form (no exaggeration). There were only about five lines on the form so I’m not sure what she was doing the whole time.

At the border...in the heat...waiting forever...

Step 23: Then go find the cop again (who had moved, of course) and get him to sign THAT form

Step 24: THEN you get to drive to the crossing guy and give him the papers and…FINALLY…CROSS THE BORDER!! You have NO idea how happy we were to finally drive past the "Bienvenidos a Nicaragua” sign. More later. Gotta run (today is Liadan's 7th BDay!)...