Updates...finally

Well, most of what we've been doing is work. It has been interesting though. We've now visited 3 different telecenters. Managua, Masaya and San Carlos. We are back in Managua for this last week. We'll probably be at the hotel for most of it working on our presentation before we leave and preparing for our little press conference. We do get a little break on Thursday when we will be headed up to Mozonte, which I keep pronouncing as if it were Brazilian (with a 'che' at the end.) In Mozonte, there will be an opening of an additional telecenter in which we will be attending and it is being opened by the president of Nicaragua. I don't know if or how much face-time we'll get with the President but it should be interesting.

Our trip to San Carlos was pretty enlightening. The fun started before we even got there, we had to cancel our boat trip of 14 hours, which was described to us several times as a puke-fest, so that we could do the 45 minute flight instead. The flight was new to me though as well. It turned out to be a 14 passenger flight (including pilots.) From where I was sitting in the first row, I could have just leaned forward and played with the controls myself. The landing strip looked as if it was a ski slope in the summer. It was a bit freaky flying into the side of a hill but we ended up alright. San Carlos itself was as hot as Managua which is always in the mid-90s but it was even more humid. Our hotel had showers but I never could get water to come out of mine. After 6PM the town was swarmed with these ugly flying green insects that you couldn't escape from. They had people and cars going around blowing this insecticide that probably was worse than the insects for us. It was crazy. I won't be going back, unless I have to.

As for fun, we finally saw a volcano and a market last Saturday. Last Sunday, we went to a beach on the Pacific side. It is always fun to play in the ocean. I tend to get bored doing beach stuff but waves are always fun for part of it. Yesterday, we saw Grenada which has been the best city we've been to so far. We also hit another market. Today, a few of us went to old town Managua and saw the old Cathedral. I took too many photos of it. It was sort of eerily amazing to me in the way it just stood there in ruins. It really looks as if it could collapse at any time.

I've got less than a week left and it looks as if most of it is going to be work, work, work. We'll see though.