Paseo en Esteli

Once again, apologies for not writing much this week. Things have been really busy with work and traveling, but it's keeping things interesting.

Yesterday morning I took a bus to a city 2 hours north of Managua called Esteli. We have a school here, and we are attempting to do a pilot of our menu in this school next. I had meetings with the cooks and administrators here, and they were pretty receptive. I also met up with one of the other volunteers who I have been working with on this project, and it was good to be able to work in person for once rather than over Skype.

The second half of our day was a bit of an adventure because we are in the process of trying to find some new suppliers for all of our schools for things like chicken, eggs, vegetables, etc. It's not an easy process when you have to base the search on word of mouth and guesswork at the market, but I think we did have some success. The big chicken supplier here in Nicaragua, Pollo Estrella, has chicken and eggs at lower prices than we are getting now, and they will deliver to all our northern schools. So hopefully that was a win.

We also stopped at a cigar factory here in Esteli because the cigars here are some of the most famous in Nicaragua. It was a strange little place - they had lots of pet monkeys and birds, and you could see people rolling the cigars through one of the open doors. There was a picture of Arnold and Stalone smoking with the owner, so I figure they must be pretty good - I bought a few to sample.

Next we went to dinner at a Cuban restaurant in town that is very famous. Apparently there are a lot of Cubans in Esteli who fled here during the revolution there, so the place was very authentic. We met up with one of the English teachers who used to work for Fabretto there, and she was really cool. Then we all went to the movie "He's just not that into you" (Simplemente no te quiere) at a theater here. The theater was pretty much like one at home, but it was fun.

Unfortunately, the trip ended with me getting sick (really sick) from something I ate. I can no longer boast about my perfect track record! It's been an interesting day since I'm trying to get back to Managua but don't want to get on a 2 hour bus back until I'm sure it will be uneventful. That's enough details on that topic, though.

Have a good weekend, and I'll try to be back in full force next week!