Well today has been a long day. I usually sleep pretty well, but last night sometime around 1 Oclock in the morning the electricity went out as it often does. This occurance prevoked all of the stray dogs in town to go after one anothers food supply. The result was obnoxious dog barking and fighting that lasted more than two hours. I obviously was not able to sleep through the chaos, and in the window of time that I was tossing and turning I started to have a neurotic, incoherent, internal monologue in spanish that ultimately kept me up until almost 5 am. My alarm was set for 5:45, so you can imagine how excited I was to go catch a bus to the neighboring town where we were to recieve our lessons this morning. The first words out of my mouth this morning were "No Dormi Nada!" "Yo voy a tener un mal dia" "I did not sleep any" and "I'm going to have a bad day". When you set out with that kind of attitude it can be difficult to change things, but after teaching my 2:00 class this afternoon I felt like a million bucks. There is something that just feels right about taking a group of kids that don't know much about business or creativity and showing them that they actually know more than they ever imagined. I started my lesson by talking about products like cell phones which now have camera's, stereo's, and computers in them. I showed them my book bag which has a water cooler attached to it, and explained how all of these products were a result of someone's creativity. After doing my best to teach them about product development they all recieved a blank paper cut out of a shirt, shoe, or hat. Each student had 20 minutes to design their own product and then sell me their product in the market, and explain to me how they used their own creativity to inhance their product.
Sometimes it can be a real challenge to get the kids to think for themselves. They are very accustomed to just copying the ideas of others, or taking exactly what their teachers give them and writing it down word for word. The "La Empresa Creativa" course that we are teaching is geared towards a new style of teaching and pushes us to expect more from the students. The truth is that if Nicaragua has a future it is in the hands of the kids that are in our classes. Over 60% of the countries population are under 30 years old and less than 5% of the countries population is college educated, so we have to start now and show them a path to a brighter future. After leaving my class I felt renewed and made my way up to the soccer field to get into another game of pick up. There is just nothing like unwinding on the soccerfield with the everpresent Volcan Mumbacho staring at me as I soak up the last bit of sun on a Wednesday afternoon.
