Dan's here!!!!

Hello everyone!!!
This week has been wonderful as my good friend Dan Tewalt came to visit me! He arrived last Monday and will (sadly) be leaving tomorrow morning. Last week we worked alongside a high school group from Mississippi preparing the new community center, building a bridge, and participating in Young Life.
The first day he was here we took a trip out to Los Rotarios to visit the beaders. We had a big meeting with all of them to discuss where we're at, how everyone is doing, technique, and future plans for the project. All of the women are doing very well and are still so excited about the project.
On Saturday we headed out on a mini tour of Nicaragua... We left Chinandega, made our way to Managua, and then onto a little town called Catarina. There you get a view of a huge crater lake named Laguna de Apoyo. It is absolutely breathtaking. They have a bunch of little restaurants and shops. We hung out there for a while then went to Masaya. It is the artesian capital of Nicaragua. Several little stores and markets to buy artesian crafts, jewelry, and art. No doubt my family could do some major damage there! Very beautiful stuff there. We walked around town, stopped at a couple little restaurants/cafeterias, shopped in the market then made our way to Laguna de Apoyo to try and spend the night. When we got there we drove around for what felt like forever trying to find hostels that had room for the night but couldn't find a one. While on the dirt road circling the lake one of our tires popped! Luckily we had two strapping young men to change the tire (Chris and Jeremy) and we were on our way again. Since we had nowhere to stay, a bum tire, and it was already 5PM we decided it was best to make our way to Granada. There we got the tire repaired, and then set off to find a hostel. After a good hour, we found one that could sleep all 7 of us. We unloaded, showered and went downtown to get a good meal. While we had good intentions of staying out all night and partying, sadly we were all EXHAUSTED and had to call it a night.
The next morning we all got up and headed to one of the best breakfast places in all of Nicaragua. After that we headed back to Laguna and set up shop at a beautiful restaurant/bar/hotel there. We had an awesome lunch and some delicious drinks and relaxed all day. It was very needed break and so much fun to hang out with each other and without work! I'm also so glad that Dan got to see some other parts of Nicaragua.
This week we have a surgical team here from the States, including Dave Barbara! I don't know how I got so lucky with these two weeks! They started surgeries today and I squeezed Dan in for one so he could observe them at work. Since there is not a group here this week that I will be working with directly, I will have a lot of time to catch up on all of my projects and such! Last week we began the SNAC program in the Villa (student nutrional analysis and coordination). We are measuring all of the students' heights and weights to calculate BMI and assess their nutritional levels against the national averages. With the information we hope to tweak our feeding center menus and work towards making sure all of the children are nurished.
That's all for now, but I will update again soon! As always I'm thinking about you all and hoping that you're doing well!