This was our weekend of...rest and relaxation. I, personally, am rather anxious to start working tomorrow. I am not going crazy, but I'd love to be photographing all the time. Yesterday afternoon, we went to a place on the shore of a volcanic lake, called Craters Edge
www.craters-edge.com. It's like a hostel, with a large open air dorm, plus smaller private rooms. The water is 78 degrees, and is slightly sufuric. Tourists get fed breakfast, lunch and dinner (good food, too) and can borrow kayaks or tubes. Massages are an option, and two of the girls had them. The photo above is from our orientation from the owner, Anne, when we arrived last night.
The room that we all slept in was set up like this (above) and had 12 beds. It was basically set into the hillside, and the front "door" was really just a big iron gate with screens on it. It worked! From the top of the resort to the bottom, there were several buildings designed this way, to take advantage of the terrain. Of course, this also meant that if you forgot something in the upper building, and then went to the lake edge, you had to climb all the way back up the many stairs to get back to the top. Suffice to say, I did a lot of climbing. :)
This is one section of the stairs down to the water. You can just barely see the roof of the lower hut. This photo was taken from the 3rd level...there are 4 different levels in all.
The girls at dinner last night...we had fun with long shutter speeds. As we ate dinner, we were kept company by a very entertaining praying mantis. He would flit around to each of us, preen, and provided general comic relief. And then, just as we were finshing dinner, he leapt into the candle flame (you can see them in the photo, that was all we had for light) and died. The poor thing!
The walls of one of the buildings.
One of the two resident cats. He was playful and well socialized. At one point, I overheard a conversation between a guest and Anne. The guest was asking if it was a "nica" cat (from Nicaragua). Most Nica cats are skinny and half dead, perpetually. She laughed and said that it was amazing how different they can look when you, you know, FEED them! And fix them. She's right.
There was a floating dock that the girls swam out to. Inner tubes were popular. The water was pretty choppy...again, it
is the windy season. :)
The whole group: Jackie, me, Jessica, Marianne, Nicole, Melissa, Leah, and Kelly on the upper patio area.
After arriving back at the Manna house, several girls joined mark for a yoga class. Mark is here visiting from Thailand...where he has lived for 4 years, teaching yoga.
Today's photos are all from our work at the Bradley House of Hope. It is a school/clinic a few miles away from Manna that is open during the week. They operate in 2 shifts- 8am to 12, and 2 to 4. The plan is for the WSC students to be at the clinic today thru Thursday all day, and then Friday in the afternoon. They are working with WSC professor Jackie Brennan and the staff at Bradley House- evaluating children, observing therapy sessions. The children are from the area, and each child is on a schedule- my understanding is that they come in twice a week, for half a day. Coincidentally, we are also working alongside another team made up of a doctor, a nurse practitioner, and a speech language pathologist. This week, the clinic is seeing 10 new children, and evaluations need to be done for each child. 
An aberration in the series of kid photos...a dog photo. I met this dog today, as I sat outside eating my lunch...a ham and cheese sandwich. She was desperately hungry, and sat very quietly, staring at me while I ate. I gave her some of the sandwich. (This could partially account for my hunger later on...but then again, I am always hungry.) Just looking at the dog made me almost start to cry. I wanted to feed her, clip her nails, worm her, and nurse her back to health...the vet tech experience runs deep. Although I was photographing the people all day (and some of those kids had really amazing, debilitating, disfiguring conditions) it is with the animals that I feel like I could actually help. My photos of the kids will be useful...to tell a story about our experiences here, and perhaps help by bringing awareness to other people...people that otherwise would never know that Bradley House was here, and that they need grants and donations to survive. But I can't help the people. I am not a nurse, I am not a doctor, I am not a therapist. I am a photographer. A photographer that had a previous career as a vet tech, and knows exactly what the animals need. And so, I get teary when I see these dogs. It's something I can relate to in a much more concrete sort of way. Anyway, on with the rest of the blog...more photos from the work we did today...
Today, we were taken into Managua for the official "city tour". As you enter the city, and pause at redlights, you are approached by a variety of people. Some, like the one above, clean the windshields of the cars and hope for some kind of payment/reward afterwards. Some are hawking sunglasses, bags of water (yes, bags), cell phone accessories, car parts, and snacks. At some lights, we were surrounded by 3 or 4 different vendors, all clamoring for attention. They are persistent. 
