Thanksgiving Pictures

So here are those pictures I promised! Sorry it took me longer than I thought... I ran out of space on the blog and had to buy more!!!

Dinner Table at the Ambassador's house!

Yessica and Carlos enjoying their meal

US Seal on the coffee cup!

Me, the Ambassador, Yessica, and Carlos

Me and the US Ambassador to Nicaragua Phyllis Powers. She was so nice!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hello World,

First of all I apologize for abandoning my blog again! But I hope that you will forgive me after I tell you what I have been up to! But first of all, Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you all had a wonderful day and were able to spend time with your family and friends in whatever part of the world you encounter yourself.

This year, I felt even more thankful than normal as my time and life in the peace corps Nicaragua has taught me a lot about how fortunate I have been in my life so far, and how thankful I should be and am for all of the blessings I have received. I was lucky enough to spend the afternoon with some amazing people, fellow peace corps volunteers, volunteers with project Mana, staff from the US Embassy, and the Ambassador herself! That's right! The Ambassador of the US in Nicaragua was gracious enough to open her doors (and refrigerator) and fed about 40 people total! The food was amazing, the company was excellent, and it made me incredibly thankful for the time I have spent here in Nicaragua. I hope to be able to post some pictures soon of the lovely dinner.

In the meantime, let me tell you about the most amazing, awesome Small Business Plan Congress and Competition that I was privileged to attend and more importantly coordinate! We held the 10th annual National Business Competition and the 1st ever and hopefully-to-be-annual Congress at the Hotel Camino Real in Managua and in my opinion, as well as the Ambassador's, it was a great success! The students and teachers that attended learned a lot and in most people's opinion, the quality of the presentations on competition day was much higher than the previous years.

I will try to write more soon, but the triptofan (sp?) from the turkey and the exhaustion of the previous week's worth of work has made me very tired. So I will leave you with some pictures of the event, with the intention to post more soon!

Love you all! Make good choices!

Check-in at the hotel

Already decorated for Christmas

A Gingerbread train in the hotel restaurant

The lobby of the conference area

The courtyard to the conference, this tree had Christmas lights at night

Getting ready for check-in

Final details before we got started

Team Emprende ready to check people in!

Checking in the teachers!

So excited to get backpacks!!!

A quick snack before we start...

PCVs checking in!

Me presenting a student with his backpack for the congress

Student groups presenting themselves

SUPER APCD Georgia giving the opening remarks

A Professor Sharing his thoughts...

Crema de Chocolate con Mani #2

The second place group is called "Delicias" Crema de Chocolate con Mani.

For those of you that don't speak spanish, thats Chocolate Cream with Peanuts. And lordy does it taste awesome. Think the Nicaragua equivalent to Nutella... but with peanuts. These girls actually stumbled upon this product when their prototype wouldn't harden to make a chocolate bar. So I suggested just changing the name and calling it a cream. Dang its good. Very sweet but awesome! Plus they have access to some of the best cacao in the world here, as it is grown in our region of Matagalpa. Seriously how lucky am I? I live in a place where cacao and coffee are grown!

Here are some pictures of the girls from their school competition!

Their display of basic ingredients peanuts and cacao, and their product in 5oz. cups.

Their logo and slogan

The girls during their presentation at the local level.

These girls will also be attending the Regional Competition with me, so please feel free to donate via Paypal!!!

CuMix ~ Cuajada con Vegetales #1

CuMix is the name of the team that took first place at the municipal competition in Matagalpa this year. It is essentially a fresh cheese (cuajada) that they have added vegetables too. Think goat cheese with herbs, or veggie cream cheese.

Cuajada is a cheese that is consumed in quantities in every Nicaraguan household. This group has taken that same product and made it taste soooo much better! Their slogan is "Giving health, flavor, and color to your life" (it sounds much better in Spanish "Dando Salud, Sabor, y Color a tu vida") Here are some pictures from their local competition so you can see the product and their display.

Yummy Yummy!

Their original logo

Different ways to try the cuajada

The Team!

The new logo, that was actually designed by the 8 year old brother of one of the group members... I put it into its electronic form though ;)

Feel free to support these awesome students through a $5 or $10 donation! Just go to paypal.com and donate using my email address! Thanks for your support in advance!

Municipal Competition Pictures

Here are pictures from the municipal business plan competition we held this past Wednesday. I figured it would be more interesting to see rather than read!

Students from INEP explaining their product to a teacher

Don Limon relaxing before their presentation

Crema de Chocolate y Mani ~ Delicias They won second place

Getting the puppy ready for the dog salon presentation

The judges working hard to review business plans

Natural Shampoo

Chilero del Norte's Presentation (They made a lime based vinegar)

Questions from the judges

Mochibolosos "Be Cool" This group made a reversible backpack/shoulder bag

Modeling the shoulder bag

I actually have more pictures, I just need to get them from a fellow teacher. My camera battery died mid competition, but I will do a special feature on both the first and second place teams (those I am taking to the regional competition) now!. Keep making good choices! Love yas

Competition Season!!!!

Well its that time of year again, the leaves are changing color (getting greener from all the rain), the nights are getting cooler (again from all the rain), and my students are complaining because of all the work they have to do, including finishing their business plans for the end of the year business plan competitions.

I have also been working rather hard to make sure that the students are prepared and that there are as few holes as possible in their plans, so they might be able to attend the 10th Annual National Business Plan Congress and Competition. It has meant lots of extra hours of work at the library, but I am happy to say, that I have been rather impressed with some of the groups this year. I am also happy to report that the competitions have gone well and that we are now moving on to the regional competition in Jinotega which will be held the 30th of October! (All I have to do now is figure out how to get the kids from Matagalpa to Jinotega and back. I am looking into chartering a school bus and hopefully only having to pay gas and lunch for the drivers etc. We shall see what I can come up with in terms of donations here. I have been working for the past few months casually selling chocolate chip cookies, but I might need to step that up this week to get some more money to make this happen! (Unless some of you readers out there would like to donate (I'm talking $20 here and there) then shoot me an email and we can discuss how... I recently opened a paypal account!)

I plan on spending some time updating my blog with pictures from the events and a few more success stories tomorrow so stay tuned! I need to get back to work at my NGO in San Ramon! Love you all and make good choices!

It's Been a While...

Well, well, well, I bet you all thought that I had either given up on my blog, or I had given up on the Peace Corps. The truth is neither.

My life as a business volunteer has cycles. Moments when I am searching for projects to work on, and moments when I am so busy, I can’t even make it to my favorite coffee shop, let alone to use their internet and write my blog. The past two months have been busy for some very good reasons. Let me fill you in on my life…

About a month ago there was a 7.9 earthquake off the coast of Costa Rica (luckily casualties were virtually nil) and then one of the bigger volcanoes in Chinandega, Nicaragua erupted spewing ash over a large part of that department (luckily casualties were also nil, perhaps a cow or two). Interestingly enough, I cannot blame either of these events for my not writing my blog as I live in the center of the country in Matagalpa, and did not feel the earthquake nor did I see the ash cloud. My life continued as normal, and as busy as always.

It is getting to be the end of the school year here in Nicaragua; in fact, we just started the fourth quarter. With that being said, it means that business plan competition season is upon us, and I am busily trying to get my students ready for them. I am now working with them both Tuesdays and Thursdays at the local library for two hours in the morning, and then continuing with classes as normal. I am also working with an NGO in my rural community to promote their café so they can raise money to support their programs. We were able to design and implement a market study and then created a flyer that we will distribute to hopefully bring more people to the shop and bring in more revenue.

Explaining how the business plan is assembled

Starting the "Stock Selling" exercise compete with fake certificates and money!

My most recent project and one I am most proud of is a teacher’s workshop (that had to be rescheduled twice) that I held for 22 teachers from the city of Matagalpa. We were able to do some great activities and I even designed a puzzle to be used as a teaching tool. Unfortunately, a teacher’s budget is very tight here, and schools do not do much by way of providing materials or books, so I have been working on creating inexpensive, replicable tools that I can use in teacher trainings and they can use in their classes. We had a full day workshop, and then had a follow up session with the teachers at the monthly all district teachers meeting (Tepce). All of the teachers had been assigned to groups and were assigned a topic they needed to prepare a short class for. The goal was to see how well the teachers had learned and accepted the tools I shared with them at the first training. I am ecstatic to report that almost all of them were able to successfully use the tools, and it made for a very interesting and interactive meeting (which is normally very dry).

A few teachers working on the Business Plan Puzzle

The completed puzzle

That’s my news for now! I will try to do better and make sure I post more regularly, but the month of October is going to be crazy as well. Be patient! Keep making good choices! Love you all!