Success!!

All of a sudden, it’s begun raining. While I was in the water, I did observe a thick mass of dark clouds that had blotted out the sun, but I didn’t think there would be a storm. In the span of twenty minutes, it’s begun pouring. I think I’ve seen the heaviest rain here in Nicaragua, where storms in the wet season begin out of nowhere and end ten minutes later. The rain is coming down so hard that it sounds like people are drum rolling on the roof. To add to the cacophony, there seem to be a host of tropical birds that they keep in the hostel who were squawking by the time I began my shower, but now are wailing and shrieking like banshees. Whereas the beach was littered with street vendors and tourists before, there’s virtually no one on the roads anymore, a picture of desolation and abandon. 

In about 45 minutes, we’ll be giving the workshop on the power of ideas, entrepreneurship, cost-benefit analysis, and goal setting/planning. As I was making my way back to the hotel from the beach, I spotted Jamie, the teacher who has been spearheading the whole effort to get us here, riding a bicycle with a little boy perched on the handlebars. Her eyes darted to my face and then away in a split second, so I’m almost sure she recognized me. I hope she doesn’t get the wrong impression - that we’ve been chilling all day only two hours before the actual presentation. 

The swim however, was amazing, barring the fact that the sun ducked behind the clouds permanently only about ten minutes in. Our hostel is right on the beach, in a great central location. From our bedroom window and the perpetually open doors of the main space one can see the beach and the bay. All I needed to do was put on a bathing suit and hop my way over the fifty feet to the beach. The water was the warmest I had ever seen 

I find it amazing how much work here is done by hand. In the US, we’re used to, and oblivious to the fact that, a lot of work being done by machines, as part of a mechanized, standardized process. Right outside the hostel, I watched men paint by hand yellow lines on the side of the road, whereas in the US, we have machines that paint out a perfectly straight line at who knows how many feet per minute. Here, these guys were doing it by hand and some string. The roads are often paid with individually laid tile and the grass mowed with machetes, by hand. Then again, that’s not to say that Nicaraguans are extremely on top of everything; they’ll put in the hard work and sweat to get what is needed done (like cutting the grass, laying roads) but what ain’t broke, they feel perfectly complacent to leave in its natural state. 

Anyways, we’ve been working all day on our workshop and I’m fairly confident it went amazingly well. Although we kind of halfheartedly practiced (probably because we were so sick of saying the same things over and over again) when it came to the final delivery, we kicked ass. I think we sounded better than the script (I might be kidding myself there, but we definitely have improved our Spanish by a mile since coming to Nicaragua). Unfortunately only about 15 people showed up for the workshop because it got rained out. The rain (especially the kind I described above) is the equivalent of a Nicaraguan snowday; people generally stay in, because one can get sick, because one will get wet and then sick, etc. Optimistically then, we had good turnout considering the circumstances. 

The feedback we got was overwhelmingly positive as well. We ended the workshop with a poster of a vase of flowers, with the words “miremos florecer nuestros sueños” (let’s watch our dreams blossom”) and everyone filled out a sheet of paper with a goal/dream, folded it in the shape of a flower, and stuck it on the poster. The poster looked way better than I expected, and although the workshop was for adults, the students all seemed receptive to the idea. Jamie, the teacher, is keeping it behind her desk. We also had a hilarious skit between two of our group in which, genders switched in the skit, a man tries to ask a girl on a date as an example of goal setting and planning. Peter went all out, stuffing paper up his shirt and saying ridiculous things. The audience ate it up, oftentimes roaring with silent laughter. 

To celebrate, we went out to Iguana’s, which seems like the happening place to be on the beachfront. Iguana’s has two floors, the top one of which is the largest and functions as a eating space, bar and dance floor. I finally got my craved after chicken fingers and danced the night away to a surprisingly number of American songs that were blasted on speakers all around the top floor. After six or so hours of sleep, it was off to Playa Maderas the next day!