My week.

This week has been crazy.

The week started with a 5k run. Jenn and Bianca heard about this Managua 5k, and decided to do it. Saturday night, I decided…what the hell, I’ll do it to. I figured I wouldn’t be able to run the whole thing, but it was free if you didn’t buy a number, so I wouldn’t lose anything other than calories. Sunday morning we woke up at 6am, met up with Bianca’s Nicaraguan friend named Pedro, and we took a micro to La Galeria. I was pretty nervous since I haven’t ran 3 miles combined in the last 5 months, but I actually started out ok. I did the first 2 miles fine, but the last mile was almost all up hill, and I was dying. I was about ready to quit about half a mile from the end, but Jenn and Bianca stayed with me, coaching me on. Jenn kept saying, “We are all finishing this together.” And that is the story of how I finished my first race without stopping to walk a single time. Definitely the highlight of my week. (But needless to say…my legs were in major pain the rest of the week.)

Later on Sunday, I went with Tobin to the airport to pick up her 2 friends from Europe that are visiting for the next 2 weeks. One is from Germany and the other from Spain, so at the moment, our house is very multi-cultural. They have been fun to have here, but since my room is connected to the living room, and they have been staying up late, I didn’t get very good sleep this week.

Then came Monday. For the last month-ish, Heather, Adrienne, and I have been going to dance practices twice a week in Ciudad Sandino to get ready for our big performance at Carnaval with a group of Nicaraguan jovenes. This week the dance instructor, Marlon, decides that he wants to put us 3 in our own line in the middle of everyone. We are all appalled by the idea. We don’t want special treatment because we are chelas, and there are so many other way better dancers that I would rather have featured in the middle. We’ll see if we can convince him otherwise…

Thursday I found out that my grandpa died. My mom called and told me that he had died on Tuesday, and she explained everything that happened. At first it just felt really weird. When I finally go back to the U.S., he won’t be there. I will never see my grandpa again…like a small part of my life in the U.S. was just erased while I was gone. Then I felt really sad…for multiple reasons…but mostly because I knew I could not be there to support my family. Here I am in Nicaragua while my Grandma, parents, and brothers had to stand by my grandpa’s bed as he withered away and took him last raspy breaths. I’m so sorry. I feel really horrible. I wish so much that I could have been there with you.

Then today, I found out that Grety quit. Silvio also told me that he is leaving in December, and then Silvia said that if she can find a way, she will be leaving too. Everyone that I work with in the bank could very possibly be gone in a year. How am I supposed to do my job if everyone is gone!?

I feel overwhelmed. I thought I was almost out of the transition stage here. I thought I was starting to get things more or less under control. I was wrong.