Almost Done

Me and the President of Nicaragua
Originally uploaded by apete.

I leave for the airport in about 3 hours. I probably should be sleeping but I am just trying to catch up on stuff and packing.

Yesterday, was kind of exciting. We left for an indigenous community, Mozonte, at about 7 A.M. It was about 4 hours away. The President of Nicaragua was opening a new telecenter there. The ride up there was interesting. Because we had to work on our presentation, all four of us had our laptops open until they died on the way. The first thing we did was to head to the telecenter to get them charging when we arrived. It was pretty entertaining because we were by ourselves and we just talked our way into the telecenter which was surrounded by cops because that was where the ribbon cutting and lunch was going to be. At least they looked through our bags.

Time in Latin America isn't so punctual so we waited for an hour and a half for the president to arrive. During that time, we listened to a couple of songs sung by some Nica reality TV show winner named Michael something or other.

The president finally arrived and after an hour or so of speaches we were off to the ribbon cutting and lunch. Edwin, who is our client and the Secretary of Youth, introduced us to the president of Nicaragua, Enrique Bolaños. Then we posed for a photo. After the official photographer took a photo, the prez tried to move on but I held his shoulder in place and asked for a photo with my camera which he stood for. It was weird because I am not usually a celebrity chaser but this was different. I don't know why. Oh and the lunch which was done by the local women was the best typical Nica meal that I had.

Today, we got up early again; we had a press conference in which we talked about our project and the importance of telecenters to Nicaragua and then continued into a workshop for the coordinators of the existing telecenters. It worked out well. I had a few sections which I tried to do in Spanish...I really don't know how well I did. I was a little nervous and embarrassed because my Spanish sucks.

Back to the states...