Day 1

Today will be the beginning of quite an adventure. I got up early to say goodbye to my parents and now I'm clearly just trying to avoid packing. I have about 3 hours to get ready so I should be fine. The purpose of this blog is chronicle my trip to Nicaragua for what is called a social venture internship. The premise of the internship is to help the people in Chinadega, Nicaragua create and develop simple business ventures that will not only allow these individuals to improve their standard of living, but to also have a positive impact on the overall economy of the country. It is a tall order, but something I'm definitely looking forward to.

My traveling companion is Paul Rowley. He is also a first year MBA student at BYU and we will be working together on this trip. He is a great guy and I think we are going to have a lot of fun together. We joke around that we are essentially the same person. We share the same name, both graduated from Murray High School, are from Murray, Utah, have the exact same phone, take the same classes, and he is married to a Canadian (I'm dating one).

The organization that is coordinating our efforts is called Cause for Hope. They have had a lot of success helping people throughout Central America. More about this organization and the area we'll be will going can be found on these links.

http://www.causeforhope.org
http://www.causeforhope.org/chinandega.htm