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Today was an early day for all of us here at the hostel. We woke up at 6 except for a select few who decided to work out at 5:30 in the backyard. We left for the mango co-op, comfortable in the cool air conditioning of the bus. Even though it took us 40 minutes to get to the mango farm, it was worth the wait.

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The view was gorgeous and the house was simply lovely. We ate our banana leaf tamales on the porch and had a light pomegranate juice to wash it down. The representative of the co-op, Bismarck, and some others spoke to us about the agriculture and work they did with the fruits they grew. The main mango the grow is the Rosa. Apparently it has the biggest American market and is the favorite of our speakers. They sell their mangos to a fair trade company based in the US to be dried and processed. Their goal is to start processing the mangos themselves to cut out the middle man. After the speaker, we hiked in the farm area and worked up quite a sweat and got free mangos.

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Then we drove to la favorita and ate lunch which consisted of pasta, salad, rice, and plantain chips. Then we had free time. Some went back to the hostel while others got gelato and went to the internet café. Then it was tutoring, but we almost got lost because of a parade that was going on commemorating a Sandinista victory in the war. Tutoring was fun but everyone was excited for dinner in which we had plantain empanadas with a salad. We began our walk back to the hostel, but stopped to watch the performers we met on Monday. They lit batons and a hoola hoop on fire to perform a very dangerous looking dance of flames. We went back to the hostel and had our nightly meeting with Victoria telling a joke to earn the torch. Overall, it was a good day to be in Nicaragua.

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