Peanut Butter Delight

Hello,

This week was busy like usual. We had to do workshops on Friday and Saturday. The workshop on Saturday included a guest speaker that was a former volunteer in Nicaragua. He spoke to us about the business climate in Nicaragua and the foreseeable trends, political functions relating to trade and commerce and what he considers should be the main focus for this country to lift itself out of poverty. The workshop on Saturday included both the agriculture and small business groups. The workshop was to promote inter group resourcefulness and cooperation and collaboration. We worked on food processing and storage techniques that included: canning, dehydrating, sterilizing, pasteurizing, smoking among other techniques. I found this to be a pretty interesting and useful class. the remaining 3 hours of class were really fun. We made jam from the local fruits, crushed peanuts, salt, honey, sugar, and oil to make incredible peanut butter, homemade pesto from some leaves that apparently grow anywhere in Nicaragua and are scientifically one of the healthiest plants on the face of the earth, gram for gram when looking at nutritional content of potassium, iron, vitamins b, c, d, calcium and others I'm sure, but cannot remember. We also made banana fritters and some soy products. The day was a tasty treat.

Today - I'm going to do homework, since I have to prepare for a class on wed. I meet with my counterpart on Monday. Other then that nothing out of the norm. On Wednesday we find out where we go for our site visits. This is not where our future sites will be, but rather the sites of current volunteers that we will follow for 4 or 5 days so we can see what being a volunteer is all about.