Quick, Warm, Fuzzy Update

Our 59 volunteers (including three nationals) arrived on June 28th to begin a 2-day briefing on the 29th. We were so thrilled to finally welcome the volunteers to Nicaragua, and were teeming with energy at the airport as we got as close to the glass customs doors as possible waiting for everyone to arrive. Briefing itself had its ups and downs; as fantastic and as close as our Project Staff is, the whole week was high-stress and things certainly got more tense than we would have liked at times. Personally, I really surprised myself by how confident I felt as I facilitated activities, and how effective my training and advice really were. It's only the very beginning, and I can already feel myself growing as a person. It's lovely.

Since January, I've known that I'd be in Matagalpa at this time, and I knew that I'd be assigned some communities and have a route and have volunteers to train and support. But everything was just hypothetical--I was learning to lead a dozen blank faces and a group of rural locations that were fabricated by my imagination. Two days ago, as the Project Staff pieced together partnerships and community placements in one long, tense, nearly-all-nighter, those empty spaces in the picture were filled--and I am literally overjoyed. The nine volunteers I'll be overseeing this summer are some of the most insightful, articulate, thoughtful, capable and energetic people I've met in a long time, especially of their age. I really admire each one of them. I think they really do respect and look up to me as their supervisor, too, which will make for some fantastic work and healthy relationships.

My route (The Velawesomeraptors...!) and youth counterparts from all of their communities!

And to boot: we're getting a new supervisor tomorrow afternoon!! Meaning all of these extra responsibilities that many of us thought we'd have to take on this summer will be lifted off our shoulders. It is encouraging to think that at this exact time last week, I--well, all of us--were essentially panicking; right now, I, at least, couldn't be a single bit happier. I am looking forward to a (hopefully) relatively smooth summer of bragging about what awesome stuff my incredible vols are doing in their communities!