My Summer in Nicaragua with EOS: Monday, May 21, 2012

Today was my first official day of my internship. I got up around 6am and straightened up the office. I swept the floor a little bit because there was dried mud all over. I also picked up the bathroom. Then, I did some laundry since my clothes from yesterday were filthy and a little smelly. I also was almost out of clothes, so I needed to wash some shirts. However, I didn’t wash everything because it looked like it was going to rain.

Then, everyone showed up around 8am for work. Ubania and Mili came with Alvaro also. The team had a meeting this morning about goals for EOS and everyone’s position within the group. It was really interesting and everyone is really nice. While we were having the meeting Ubania cleaned the entire office, including my room. She even made my bed.

After the meeting Salvador and Dennis took me to a nearby village to look at a biodigestor. It was in household of a richer woman it seemed. She had an industrial stove (aka store bought) instead of the fabricated one that EOS makes, so it had a great flame. I should explain that I will be working primarily with biodigestors this summer with EOS. A biodigestor takes organic matter (in this case cow manure and water) and uses microbes in a closed environment to essentially ferment the manure to create methane and a high quality fertilizer. The methane rises to the top of the bag and is piped out via PVC to a gas burning stove. The biodigestors installed by EOS provide 5-6 hours of gas per day for cooking. Manure is only added two times per week in this particular one. I will get more into my specific project as time goes by as it is easier to explain as I actually do stuff for the project.

Then we returned to the office where I worked on my blogs and work plan (in Spanish) for the rest of the day. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do for lunch until almost everyone had left to go home for lunch. As I was getting ready to leave to go the restaurant for lunch, the two secretaries insisted that I eat lunch with them at the office. They had brought gallo pinto, which is rice and beans, banana chips, and some sort of fruit juice. It was incredibly nice of them. For supper, Alvaro and I went to a pizza place near the town square in San Isidro. We took one of the motorcycles there. The pizza was pretty good, but they don’t use pizza sauce. Instead, you get some ketchup. It was really interesting. I was fine with my choice of food for the day though because I woke up around 4:30 with some really bad heartburn, and it will not go away. If it’s not gone by tomorrow, I will have to go the pharmacy to get some real acid reducers because pepto bismol isn’t cutting it.