Primera semana or the first week

While waiting at the busstop I see a clothline full of laundrey. A young lady carefully takes a newly washed item from a basket and hangs it next to a few, dripping, bright white arpons with ruffles. It all looks bright and fresh. Then a big bus, followed by a motorcycle drive through the street..leaving me and the lady behind in a grey puff of smoke. I wonder how all those people here stay so crisp ans clean, or at least appear crisp an clean, in a city that has so many buses, cars and motorcycles that are obviously not famous for their environmentally friendly buses . Some of the buses are great though: clean on the inside and not so bad on the outside, others are less pretty. Today I sat in a bus which had a nice looking plate in front of the bus saying " no daña los asientos¨, meaning do not 'harm' the seats. I smiled while reading this, cause really there was nothing to harm ..the seats were stripped from anything soft..nothing to tear, break or assult there. This bus had, when I looked a bit closer, nothing on the inside that could be taken off, even the seat of the driver had been so 'assaulted; that there was only a heap of iron in the original shape of a chair..long before cushions had been added. But to be honest and fair the busses do move around well, the busdrivers are quite safe drivers and most buses I have been I these last few days ( and last year in Nicaragua and Ecuador)are fairly good. Most of the time they're on time, clean, airy (windows wide open) and nicely decorated with stickers, telling us we are assured of a safe trip cause Jesus guides us and will lead the way. Full busses do not excist..there is always room for a few more.

I am in Nicaragua this week. After arriving in Costa Rica on Tueday the director of ASART Sylvia took me to her house/office to get some rest. The following day we got in the car and made our way to Nicaragua, where we arrived at the beginning of the evening. I was dropped at my Nicaraguan hostfamily..luckly I did rememer some Spanish words and so was able to talk a bit with the mother and her 11 year old son. Sylvia aksed me to come to Nicaragua with her to visit some of their projects. Thursday morning my host mother and I went to a school in a poor neighbourhood. There we helped an art teacher and two of his older students to finish a mural they worked on earlier. The children get lessons on environment and make drawings. these drawings are then drawn on a wall and colored. The school were we were working stands in a poor community near Managua's large dump area, La Chureca. Most children that attend this school are from poor families that live either close to the school, near the dump or on the schoolground. This last group, approx. 150 families did not used to live their, but due to heavy rainfalls last year their houses near the lake were washed away. Now they're living on the schoolgrounds while the goverment builds new houses for them to live in.
This weekend we went to a different place to paint a mural. This place offered a kind of before and afterschool programs for children and youth. They get classes in art, computer and get home work assistance. For pictures of the mural you can either go to facebook and add ASART to your favorite pages or wait a bit till I place some pictures on this blog.

Well this is it for now. Hope you are all well. Greetings from a hot (humid at times) Nicaragua. Hasta pronto