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Nicaragua 2005, “Selección Florida”
Volume 2
Day 3, Sunday, July 10, 2005
By Marion Holland, Jacksonville Fl, Nease High School.
Today we started early (7:00am) because we were traveling to a new town 3 hours away called Esteli. We all had to pile on one small bus for the whole ride. The ride was filled with many pungent smells from the different cities we passed by. The back of the bus (Leah, Kamryn, Meghan, Kirstin, Marion, and Mariah) tried to occupy themselves by playing games but that soon got old. We saw the hills, valleys, and livestock as we traveled to our match. As we arrived about 30km outside of Managua we began to see beautiful mountains. Looking out the window all you saw was mountains upon mountains filled with lush greenery.
Not yet to Esteli, our bus made at pit stop at a small city. The city was home to the famous poet, Ruben Dario. He was like the Ernest Hemingway of Nicaragua. Here we toured his house and went to a memorial dedicated to him. The whole town was known for this one man!
We loaded back onto our non-air-conditioned bus and began the rest of the journey. About an hour later we finally reached Esteli. By the time we got there it was time for lunch. So we met up with the Nicaraguan National Team to have lunch. The younger team (and some older ones) finished lunch first so we decided to walk around the square of Esteli. The people walking were Mariah, Kamryn, Leah, Marion, Britta, and Chelsea. As we were walking many people tried to talk to us but all we were able to say was “No hablo español”. As we were walking down the street, a man in a white car stopped besides us. He started talking very fast in Spanish and all we could catch was “Volleyball” so we said “Si”. But then he kept talking and started to get out of his car. We couldn’t understand him and didn’t know who he was so we were a little scared so we ran away. When we were walking back to the restaurant, a man must have not liked Britta because he spit on her.
Next we were off to the local high school to play our matches. We were surprised when we arrived to see that the court we were to play on was solid concrete. Tonight the younger and older teams were both going to play. The younger team consisted of Kamryn, Mariah, Chelsea, Leah, Marion, Megan Crumpton, Jenna, and Britta. The first game playing together the team faced a tough loss of 16-25. But they came together and came back to win the second game with a score of 25-16. The next game would only be to 15. This game was the best of all 3. The score was 14-11, with the Nicaraguans winning. All the older girls thought that they younger girls had lost. It was Jenna’s turn to serve and brought the score to 14-14 with her amazing serving. They came back and won the game 20-18. The younger team was coached by Kirstin Smith, in which she got her first international win. They beat the Nicaraguans!
Team Florida Juniors with “Las Maristas” from San Francisco (Estelí)
Next the older team played the Nicaraguan National Team. We lost in 3 with the scores of 21-25, 19-25, and 22-25. After the match we realized that the announcer of the games was the man we had run away from. Then we went to this same man’s house to take showers. Karlyn and Jennifer were first to take their showers but we soon heard them yelling that there was no water. The water at the man’s house was not working so we had to get buckets of water from his artesian well and shower that way. Then we went out to eat with the Nicaraguan National Team. This time we intermingled with them. This was very fun and interesting because they could only speak minimal English and we could only speak “un poquito” in Spanish. We are now on our way back to our first hotel, “Los Pinos” to get our luggage and go to the dorms where we will be staying tonight.
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