Day 1

Phew! I'm finally here. Even though I slept on the plane, I was exhausted last night and this morning, but had a whole row to myself on the flight from Houston to Managua and slept well most of that flight, so I got more rest. The UAM student services person, Maricela, picked me up at the airport (with the driver holding a sign saying "Alyson Cote UAM"). She's 22, super cute, and very sweet. I instantly liked her and felt at ease with her. She dropped me off with my host family and left me to get settled in.

My house is in a nice part of town and has a shopping center nearby. My host parents are Emilio and Carmen. Emilio is 70 and Carmen is 63. They have three daughters, all in their 30s and out of the house. They are the sweetest things and I already feel right at home.

Cristof is another student at UAM. He's from Switzerland and is also living here. He's pretty funny--he just up and decided he wanted to come to Nicaragua and to UAM, so he got here and showed up at the school to sign up and then asked them if they knew of anywhere he could live. Hahaha...so he ended up here in this same house. There will be one more exchange student--the only other ISEP exchange student at UAM--living here as well. His name is Valentin (I think...) and he's from Finland. He'll be here about 7 ish tonight, so it'll be fun to meet him as well.

Tomorrow we have orientation and will register for classes, etc. I also found out that they DO, in fact, have a women's soccer team and they practice with the guys' team in the afternoons, so I'm hoping to get hooked up with that and get to play. Good thing I brought my tacos! (aka cleats)