Scratch that...

Sooooooooooooooo...........international travel is all about flexibility, right? Yeah. So we just got a "final" itinerary for the trip and apparently we are staying at the CGE house for a couple days (see pictures below). We will get to Managua late on the 22nd and have dinner and a general "don't lick the dirt" talk. The next day we'll have breakfast (totally crossing my fingers for fried plantains...*drool*) and get some basic history/economics info from a speaker. After that we'll go to the Free Trade Zone and a maquilla (sweat shop) which is probably one of my favorite parts of the trip. It's basically one afternoon full of smiles and lies. The best part is catching them in a lie or something so fantastically outrageous that they'll just flat out ignore your question. Last time it was in the maquilla when we asked if the workers were allowed to unionize (they aren't) and the manager guy looked straight at us and said, "They are so happy here they don't want to unionize." Sorry, buddy, but your credibility just went right out the window. After that hilarity we'll tour downtown and then dinner!! Can you tell I'm stoked for the food? Anyway, the next day is breakfast (!) and then we're off to Matagalpa and our host families. Still not sure if we'll get back to La Reyna or not but I'm hoping so. We're up to the 25th now, for those of you keeping track, so we'll get breakfast with our host families (yay!!) then some sort of community work and our itinerary says "soccer"...fat, lazy, out-of-shape American, let's think about this. We'll head back to Managua that afternoon/early evening sometime. Thursday we'll meet with three different groups and/or representatives from those groups. Friday is our relax/absorb/decompress day at Masaya Volcano and Lake Apoyo, little place called the Monkey Hut. Then back to Managua, dinner and the next day we're back on a plane. All in all the trip is way packed and sounds fantastic. I'm super excited and Cindy's super scared and it should be interesting!!

So...what's going on?

So this is for Jason and it's a long time coming...

Our dates were changed again so we are now flying out of Omaha on March 22nd and we'll be back on the 28th...too short if you ask me but send me down there for a year and I'd say the same thing. We still don't have an official schedule yet so all I can tell is what I'm pretty sure we're doing. We will not being staying in the CGE house again which is a bummer because I think they've repainted the murals since we've been there. Here are some pics of some of them...

**Note the term "Reaganomics"**

Instead, we will be staying at the Hotel Casa San Juan...these were the only pictures I could find of it and here's the link just in case you're curious... http://www.hotelesdenicaragua.net/en/directorio_det.php?idhotel=1168812167

While we're in Managua I think we'll get to kind of wander around the city, hopefully tour old downtown (the part that was destroyed and never rebuilt in '73 maybe?) I'm going to guess we'll have some speakers while we're there too but what they'll be speaking on could be anything from political corruption to Fair Trade coffee. Also, we will get the chance to visit a night high school that the Lutheran church helped set up.

We will spend one night in a coffee growing region of Matagalpa. We will probably do a cupping and have a tour of the facility. After that we'll go back to Managua and then it's a mystery!!

I wish I had more information for you guys but we're kind of flying blind here. I am a bit nervous because I think the professor and I have very differing views of the politics (specifically related to the revolution in the '80s) in the country.

Well, that's all I have for now, I'll update if we get any information before we actually leave ;)

16 days!!