Our group is great. It is most people in their 20s and 30s and a handful retirees. All the people on the trip are excited about changing the world for the better and do some sort of service or advocacy work in their various fields. The weather here is amazing. The frigid tundra air that I have left behind was crisp and dry. Here it is pleasantly humid with the earthy smells of trees and bushes thick with mangoes, avocados and limes. Birds are everywhere in the canopy of the urban jungle that is Managua. So far we have met with a high up government minister who toed the line about all of his government´s policies. We also met with a top climate change scientist who presented issues that I had never considered before about the effects of pollution. For example, all of the plastic bottles and bags that are produced and thrown away find their way to the slums and dumps. And when it rains all the plastic fills with water and attracts many more mosquitoes than they have ever had. And these mosquitoes usually carry dengue or malaria and they infect the people who inhabit the slums and the people who pick through the garbage. That is one byproduct of our consumer waste that I had never thought of. We also talked to the director of Martin Luther King Jr University, an ecumenical college down here. Everyone we meet down here has congratulated us on our new president today, even people in the restaurants and on the street. Tomorrow I head to the west coast to an area of extreme poverty. I will not have internet access for a few days.