The theme of the day was education. After a semi early wake up time, we made the slow morning drag and went to breakfast at the comedor, where we had a lovely breakfast of whole mangos and other fruit with granola and yogurt.
Later on, we listened to a seminar led by Valeska and Jennifer. Our main question to think on for the day was: Is universal access to education possible given the constraints of a developing world? It was definitely a lot to think about. To give us a better picture of the power education holds in our lives we heard a quote from the recently passed Nelson Mandela, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Knowledge is power. But, not everyone has access to this gift. Knowledge gives us opportunities that we may not have had otherwise. By sharing some statistics about education in Nicaragua, we finally realized the difficulty these children go through just to get a good education.
After finishing a lovely lunch of chicken, more plantain chips, guacamole, and aveja: an oatmeal drink with a little bit of cinnamon (kind of like horchata), we headed out to Laguna de Apoyo (a HUGE crater lake) where we got to play a few English learning and gardening activities with the kids from the Peace Project ( a group we will be visiting and working with few more times led by Ramon and Chrissy). We also had Carlos the soccer star who couldn’t stop playing with them. Finally we took a walk down to the lake, and easily said, the view was breathtaking.
P.S. And happy birthday to Kseniya’s dad, she hopes you had a great day and she really misses you!
