Hello everyone at home! My name is Matthew Louie and I am from Mills High School. I was the leader of the day today for politics day. We stayed the whole day in the hostel where we had the first guest speakers of the trip. From the current government in Nicaragua, the Sandinistas, we had Damaris and her daughter Lujan. They explained the current situation in the country as well as the current president, Daniel Ortega. We learned that they were common to the socialist party. It was super interesting to learn everything about the Sandinistas. Also, the daughter spoke as well. She showed us the four pillars of self-esteem. There was baja(low), alta(high), relativa(relative), and inflated self-esteem. To me, these mean to always think highly of yourself instead of always staying down. Next, there was Mario Prado from the Liberal party. In comparison, the Liberal party is concerned with the benefits of the whole community as a whole. They want to improve the situation of those living in poverty to hopefully improve their status. These two political parties are big in Nicaragua. They will both have candidates for the 2016 election. Just a fun fact now, the presidential terms in the country are 5 years instead of 4 years and the current president is trying to change the limit of terms to unlimited.

After lunch, we had a heated debate over socialists and liberals. We were split in half with three topics to discuss: health care, education, and economy. It was interesting to see everyone say their own opinion and how everyone was able to defend their political party. I believe that in time we could all end up as politicians. Finally we were able to have some free time where we all told stories of our lives and bond more. I really feel as the days go on, we are becoming more like a family.

In about an hour, we had two seminars discussing what we will do tomorrow total (this will all be in the blog tomorrow). These lasted for two hours. To our surprise, we had a movie called The Wave. The movie was based in Germany but focused on the idea of dictatorships and fascism. The movie had a class where the teacher taught autocracy. He tried to make the class unified, but they went too far. They tagged the whole city as well as segregated those who weren’t a part of their group. At the end of the movie, the teacher showed them what they became and how a dictator could change a person to do what they want.

Today was a great day filled with many new ideas and political viewpoints. More to come tomorrow! 🙂

Guest Political Speakers