¡Tres Pisos!

The last few weeks have been busy as we've been moving into a new office space! The now former Soccer Without Borders office had been home to our programs for about a year and a half. Although it holds a special place in T.E.A.M. Granada history, the space itself had become too small for our activity nights. So a few weeks ago we moved down the street to the office space, which is affectionately called "Tres Pisos" (three floors). The building is a former hotel and offers ample space. On the first floor, there's a coach's office, intern office, kitchen, and bodega where all of the soccer equipment is stored. On the second floor there is ample space for the pequeñas and four bedrooms which will soon be inhabited by Larkin, myself, Cesar and Chepe. The third floor is a wide-open space where the grandes have their activity nights.

The former SWB office.

The move is very exciting for many reasons. The space itself is a lot bigger and more comfortable. Every room has a fan and there are many windows, which help ventilate the place. It's been really nice to have so much space available while running the activity nights. Now that we have a kitchen, we're hoping to host some sort of holiday dinner for the girls and their families and also have a Nicaraguan feast at the end of this month to conclude the month of the patria. All in all the hope and expectation is that Tres Pisos will become much more of a community center than the former office ever was. The old office was only ever consistently open for the activity nights. Now that we’re in Tres Pisos, the office is open much more regularly and we have made available office/drop-in hours for the girls throughout the week.

The excitement throughout the Soccer Without Borders community surrounding the new office has been impressive and given me great momentum. We probably average around 30-40 girls at our activity nights, but at the first activity night in the new office more than 70 girls showed up! It was really chaotic but a lot of fun.

Tres Pisos.

In October, Larkin and I will be moving into rooms at Tres Pisos. I'm pretty excited for that. Living with Doña Chilo and the rest of her crew has been generally fun, interesting and a good introduction into Nicaragua, but I am looking forward to having a bit more privacy. Although it sounds counterintuitive, I think having my own space within the Soccer Without Borders office will create more of a separation between a home life and work life.