Happy Thanksgiving! a little late...

Traditionally, Americans spend Thanksgiving eating Turkey and watching football. Thanksgiving as a Peace Corps vounteer can be a bit different. There are several options, you can stay at home and forget about it happening altogether, you can go have dinner with an employee of the US government that has been kind enough to extend an invite to share the holiday at their house, or you can go to an entrepreneurship conference and become reinspired all over again that there are business owners and students in Nicaragua who want to change their lives and those of their fellow countrymen for the better. Guess which one I was able to do?

That's right! I was able to attend the Red Emprende Congress in Managua, and it was two full days of lectures and break out sessions with young and old entrepreneurs. It was a great experience, and I will say that being around so many motivated people really helped me recharge my batteries, and gave me a new inspiration to keep working. It's easy to be discouraged sometimes, when things just don't seem to go as you have so carefully planned them. I also met some coffee farmers from a very small village in the Northern part of Nicaragua, and I am pretty sure it may have been their first time to Managua, let alone their first time to a shopping mall. That's right, we went to a shopping mall on Thanksgiving just to walk around and kill some time before our dinner was ready at the hotel. They stopped in front of the Rostipollo fast food restaurant where they stared at the rotisserie chicken for a good 5 minutes. They all wanted to know if they would be able to make that back in their community. It was a truly great experience, to see these men who were working so hard to make their community a better place, and experiencing so many new a different things. I was honored to have been there.

Last Friday I headed to Masatepe, my old training town to spend the weekend with Mama Cleo and her family there, along with fellow volunteers Yessica and Carlos. We had a great time, hanging out, playing a board game I had gotten from the entreprenuership conference. The game is to educate kids to learn to manage their money. It is like monopoly but instead of buying houses and hotels, you can buy chickens, pigs, cows, etc. It was so much fun that Ruth, my adopted 9-year old sister wanted to play everyday we were there, multiple times a day. Haha. Also while in Masatepe, we were able to catch up with one of our former youth group members, Kevin, who not only had participated in our youth group, but also signed up for the next youth group formed by the most recent group of PCVs. He was able to use his business knowledge and create a business making key chains and picture frames out of recycled materials. I was so proud to see him and see that he is doing so well.

Sunday I came back to Matagalpa, but in the most roundabout way possible. I took a bus to Masaya, then took an express mini-bus (aka a mini van) to Tipitapa (at one point this minivan had 25 people in it, I swear it's true) then saw all the buses going to Matagalpa were packed and were going to take 3 hours, so I took a bus back into Managua, hopped right on an express bus and was back in Matagalpa after only 6 hours of travelling. All of this could have been avoided of course, had I decided to get up at 4am to get to Masaya for the 6am bus to Matagalpa, but 4am just seemed so early. Granted after 6 hours of travel craziness, I should have gotten up earlier. Oh well we live and learn right?


Here are some pictures from the conference and the weekend in Masatepe!

One of our breakout sessions at the conference

Participating in the activity

Other participants working hard!

General Session

Food Security Fair that just happened to coincide with my time at the conference!

Closing Ceremony Dancer! So Nicaragua

Pizza Masatepe Style!

Meeting with a small business owner to discuss development strategies (look how profesional we all look haha)

Free ice cream from a new store in town! Oh and Kevin from our Youth Group!

Playing "Educaccion Financiera" (in English that's Financial Education)

Big money big money no wammies no wammies

The game ended with the student becoming the master, Kevin WON!

The board game

The traditional no-smile photo, I seem happy though!

Mama Cleo making Bunuelos (delicious bits of fried sticky sweet goodness!)