the end is here already?

In FOUR short days and I will be back in the United States. I can't believe how fast our semester   gone, really, but we did so much and learned lots in the process. This past weekend was spent finishing up final projects and papers and hanging out with our families. Today we had 2 of our presentations, our hour long partner presentation for history and our worldview presentations. Megan and I presented on Nicaraguan Immigration to Costa Rica and we had a lot of fun making our presentation and presenting it creatively to the class. The worldview presentations were based off of our 10 page papers that we had written and just had to be a 15 minutes of creatively presenting our worldview or what we have learned about worldview this semester. They were all a fun time, and I managed to win BINGO, pin the tail on the donkey, and Jeopardy...we had a good time. Tomorrow we will have our culture presentations in Leon and then Wednesday we will have our goodbye party with all of our host families. Wednesday is also a very important holiday for Nicaragua. Griteria (or Purisima) is a Catholic holiday where they pretty much celebrate the immaculate conception of Mary. People go around on the streets and sing songs and get candy. Pretty much thats what we have been told it is, but it will be interesting to actually see it. We've been told it can get pretty crazy as it is the biggest holiday of the year. Some of our families are not ok with this holiday because they are evangelicals and these two religions are not always fond of each other and often don't celebrate what the other celebrates. Its been very interesting to observe over these couple of months. Thursday we will get picked up around 9 am to head to the Nehemiah Center for a day of debriefing. Friday early in the morning we will head to the airport and then 3 long flights later we will be in the Sioux Falls airport by 7 pm. These next few days are going to go by fast but will be a good time to reflect on the awesome experience we have had here. I'm going to miss a lot of things (a big one is the weather because it is currently snowing at home) yet I am also really excited to get back home to a lot of things I have missed. It will be bittersweet leaving I know it, but I am constantly reminded what a great semester it really was! See you all in 4 days, I can count that on one hand :)

Cara.