Day 5

This is the whole group that we have been here with. They are all leaving on Monday morning and Paul and I will stay. Three more weeks, may the adventure continue!

I’m clearly losing my mind. I wish I could say it is the heat, but I think I’m trying so hard to understand what people are saying to me I don’t have much brainpower left to keep track of things. We ran all over the city this morning putting the finishing touches on our project. We had to get Erick some paint for the sign we bought for him, and we also needed to print out the pages for his little marketing catalog we are making for him. We had to go to several different places to get what we needed. We did get the stuff and it looked really good. He was very excited about both and I really think the things we have done will help him grow his business. To the right here is a picture of his brother and the sign we bought the materials for so they could build it and use it to advertise what they do (not quite finished yet, but our fingers are crossed. Anyway, we got back to the hotel and we had to make our presentation. We made a short power point presentation and a little report. I didn’t have much to do with those parts because I had done so much of the talking and translating. We did our presentation and the leaders said they were very impressed with what we were able to accomplish. They probably said that to everyone, but hey, I’ll take it. As soon as we were done I came back to my room and realized I didn’t have my backpack. Of course my passport is in my backpack and we had been all over the city. I was a bit concerned. After about 15 minutes of searching I found it in a different hotel room where we were working early. Sigh of relief.

Essentially the project with the BYU athletes was over at about noon. We had lunch and then the athletes put on a clinic for some of the locals at one of the stake centers. There were probably about 150 Nicaraguans there and they really seemed to enjoy it. It was kind of fun. After that someone suggested we go to the beach and so there we went. The beach wasn’t exactly the stuff dreams were made of, but it was still OK. I can only imagine the water we were swimming in isn’t the cleanest, but it was still the ocean. We did a little body surfing. Afterwards it was back to the hotel for some dinner and relaxation. I’m really tired. I think it is a combination of the heat and all the Spanish. I think I’m doing as well as can be expected with the Spanish but I really feel like I have to concentrate to understand. I’ll be fine.

Tonight they announced the winner of the competition and it wasn’t our team. There were 5 groups who worked with businesses. I think we did a good job nonetheless. I’m still really enjoying this experience and I feel like I’m in a totally different world. It absolutely fascinates me to observe everything that is going on and what it all means. There is definitely an existing economy here, but it is so much simpler than the what we know in the states. As I said, it really intrigues me.