Today was our third day in the community of Santa Barbara.
We came to paint the schoolroom we helped build a couple of days before.
We loaded into the truck after breakfast and made our way to the school.
The kids were ecstatic to see us again. They lined up against the fence smiling as wide as they could. We unloaded the paint and supplies from the truck and began our day’s work. As expected, all of the kids wanted to help us paint. Also, as expected, the kids were nothing short of terrible at painting. So some of us had to paint while a couple of us went to entertain the kids. Molly and I went and started a super competitive game of kickball. Turns out kickball is a lot different in Nicaragua. You don’t play with a home, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd base– you just have home, 1st, and 2nd. A foul ball is anything that hits a tree, and there is no bunting or pegging. Luckily for me, I had the dream team– we beat the other team by double their points every time. After three games of my team dominating (and almost starting a few riots), we decided to a break from kickball and went off to sit in the shade.
While I was grabbing my water a little boy came up and gave me a huge hug. He asked me what my name is; I told him, and in turn, I asked him what his name was. He told me his name was Elton, as he dragged me into one of the classrooms we were working in to find some toys.
He showed me the corner in which a little bag of toys sat and asked me to get out one of the cars. I reached my hand in the bag and pulled out a little, red, wooden car and handed it to him. His face lit up with a smile. While most people would have gone straight to the ground to drive a car, Elton, who clearly didn’t have any driving experience, decided that driving it up and down me would be best– I made car noises so that the experience would at least be somewhat realistic. Elton followed me around pretty much all day driving the car up and down my chest.
After an afternoon full of work and play it was time to say goodbye to our friends in Santa Barbara once again. After we told them we would be back on Monday we loaded up and went home.