A great, long, full day!

We got to sleep in a bit today.  I didn’t have to wake up until 8:30a! yay!  I had more fruit and eggs for breakfast.  The others tease me, but I am sooo happy to have fresh fruit again!  It doesn’t really bother me either.  They have decided to help me find some bananas!  We went on a boat tour of Lake Nicaragua. There were some really nice houses on the islands.  One I really liked was the Pelas family.  They are the family that seems to own EVERYTHING in Nicaragua.  They are the ones behind the famous Flor de Cańa Ron (rum). They also own banks and other major parts of the economic infrastructure.  There was another Nicaraguan family that had a multimillion dollar home where they apparently only go twice a month.  The rest of the time, the groundskeepers had full reign. 

It was interesting to see the huge houses and then poor individuals fishing for their food.  The guide talked about how 40% of the population lives below the EXTREME poverty line.  That was quite interesting to me, especially after seeing all the wealth in those homes.  The divide between rich and poor must be quite large.   We came back to the hotel and went out for a lunch.  I had a shredded beef with some really good grilled plantains.  I was surprised at how good they were!  I had so many fried/dried plantains in Ecuador that I don’t really like to eat them.  These ones were really good!  We came back and I napped really really quick before heading to our first school.  The first school was on the outskirts of Granada, it serviced both the urban and rural kids.  They have a setup where the primary kids come in the morning, and then the secondary kids come in the afternoon.  There are only 5 staff members there.  They get around that by having the secondary kids tutor the primary kids.  It makes it more of a community oriented school where they learn and then give back almost immediately.  Neesa told us that most families in the area live on about $1.25 a day.  I was floored.  It gave more weight to how I viewed the cost of food in the tourist areas.  Our guide that morning had pointed out that locals tend to not eat in the tourist areas. I can see why, since 1.5L water is around a dollar.  She also talked about how the need to make school a priority isn’t really a concept here, but that a lot of students enter and then drop.  She had said that over 50% drop before secondary school, although their retention rate for the last year was 97%.  She was very happy about that, and made us know that it took a lot of work for them.  We then set off for a rural school.  It was a very rough dirty ride out to this school.  The students and families were there waiting for us when we arrived.  We were able to play a lot with these kids after giving them backpacks.  The first school, they were kind of paraded through a little room where we gave them backpacks, but this one was just a big open room with plenty of freedom.  We even went outside and played a bit. 

I am always in awe when I see kids like these.  They have so little that even they have to work on top of going to school, yet they are so happy.  I wonder about the kids I know back home.  Does having all that we have available to them make them less happy, or is it more that they have a steady feeling on content that makes them upset if it diminishes in any way.  I haven’t decided about the kids here.  Are they always happy, or is it mainly that they have attention when volunteers come around that they are so ecstatic?  I want to think that they are always happy, but I think that just might be because I don’t want to think of these kids any differently then as they were when I was playing with them.  They have to have a tough life.  Neesa was talking about them going to work and working 3-4 hours BEFORE school.  Doing all their school work, doing their homework, and then possibly working for another couple hours.  Their life is tough, so do they struggle with feeling content, or is ignorance truly bliss?