Beginning

After a two day orientation in Gettysburg the six of us (Tara, Kate, Megan, Domenique, Jackie, and I) arrived in Managua yesterday. It is the rainy season here so everything is much more green and lush then it was when I was here in January.

Before I dive into talking about happenings in Managua, I thought I would first touch on what was covered in our orientation at Gettysburg. In Gettysburg we worked with the six interns who were accepted into the Adams county part of the Comunidades en Acion program run by CPS. The six interns in Gettysburg have internships focused mainly around the migrant population in Adams County. In our orientation we covered different approaches to sustainable community development that we can apply to our internships in both Nicaragua and Adams County. Through out the summer all of us will be corresponding via an application on the Gettysburg web page. The group clicked really well and I am looking forward to having a base of friends to correspond with throughout the summer who are dealing with similar challenges as myself.

While the Gettysburg orientation is complete we are just beginning a week long orientation in Nicaragua with FSD. It looks like we have a lot of great things planned from tours of Managua, Ciudad Sandino, and Masaya, to discussions with various professors about Nicaraguan history, to a day at the beach to relax. I should also add that the orientation is being done entirely in Spanish. The FSD coordinators have maybe said two sentences in English since we arrived yesterday. I am definitely having to adapt quickly and am enjoying the challenge thus far.