Day 3

Today we arrived in Chinandega. It was about a 3 hour bus ride from Managua so that took up most of the morning. I was a little worried about motion sickness so I took a Dramamine pill and it worked. Didn't get motion sickness and it made me drowsy. Anyway, the bus we rode in is the same bus the members here use to make an 18 hour trip the the Guatemalan temple. Pretty impressive. On the trip we also saw a smoking volcano. They must be live, but I don't think there is much of a real threat of them erupting on any large scale. That would be exiting though (don't worry mom, nothing will happen.

We hit the streets today in our small groups. Each group was assigned an individual with an existing business to try and help. Eddy was the individual our team was working with. The people in charge kind of rolled their eyes and said we had a difficult task ahead of us. He is a nice kid who is a return missionary. He has some welding skills he uses to do some welding and repair work. The reason it is challenging is that he is a "jack of all trades and master of none" I'm not exactly sure how to translate that into Spanish, but it would help if I did. We are going to spend the day tomorrow helping him put together some marketing materials that he can show prospective clients. He will actually go door to door telling people what he does when he doesn't have work to do.

The most challenging part of the day for me was the Spanish. I'm 11 years removed from this type of Spanish speaking and I'm feeling a bit rusty. It is coming back and the practice is great. I really could use a refresher course on not only ball bearings (Heidi will get this) and business words in Spanish. I'll be fine. The Internet only works in the hallway of the motel we are staying at and since it is open air and 85 degrees with a fair amount of humidity I'm going to head inside to some air conditioning, bad TV, and hopefully a good nights rest.