Hola friends and family, my name is Lindsey Bogott and I am a rising senior at Summit Preparatory Charter High School located in Redwood City, California. Like all big projects, especially community based ones, difficulties arise and frustration is granted, but the end result tends to be filled with a sense of pride and satisfaction. That sort of mentality is what occurred today during our second day of our Community Action Project. Like yesterday, conducting the project was quite stressful and frustrating, but looking back, I can clearly say that we made huge progress, and we are well on our way to making a huge impact in the San Ramon community as well as Maritza’s small jewelry business, Las Mujeres del Plomo.

Today we woke up with the roosters at our typical time of 6 a.m. and as the minutes clicked by, all Glimpsers were happily devouring their freshly cooked pancakes and chopped up fruit by 6:45. Soon after our delicious breakfast, we rounded up for a quick meeting to talk about the CAP project, going over goals, materials, and other concerns that the day may bring. Followed by a quick and fun energizer led by Jorge, one of our Global Glimpse Coordinators, we all piled into the bus that would take us on a few quick errands to the woodshop and various hardware stores to pick up any remaining materials that would be necessary to complete our project before driving to San Ramon. By about 10:15 in the morning, all Glimpsers were hard at work. The team took on various tasks, from constructing and sanding a newly built fence to painting the inside of Maritza’s workshop to even playing and interacting with the children of the local community. By the time lunch rolled around at noon, we had a nearly complete fence, half of a room painted, and half of a table constructed. Yet when the thirty minutes of lunch were up, many of the Glimpsers lost steam, and turned their tiredness and frustration as an excuse to stop working and turn to socializing. As the Leader of the Day, this of course was very difficult to handle, and it didn’t help that the local carpenters had difficulty in allowing some of the students to help build and construct the tables and benches that we promised Maritza. Yet through two short meetings that dealt with some scolding’s on the teams’ behavior, the Glimpsers proudly finished painting the interior of the workshop, the fence, and one wooden table. However we were unable to construct the second table and the five benches, but thankfully, because we had an extra Free Day, we decided as a group to finish our CAP project tomorrow, that will hopefully continue to reconnect the community and allow us to follow through on our goal in helping Maritza’s small business.

After five long hours of working and frustration, we all gathered back on the bus and headed back to the hostel for some creamy cookie dough ice cream that would re-energize us for our English tutoring lessons, following a quick meal of meatballs and gallo pinto. Today we held our fifth English tutoring lessons at the nearby San Luis School where we continue to bond and enrich our students’ lives with our silly educational games and meaningful lectures. After two hours of teaching, we all walked back to the hostel to wrap up with our daily nightly meeting where we reflected on the CAP project and tutoring.

In conclusion, I must say that being the Leader of the Day is a very difficult task, especially when having to handle 21 moody teenagers through a community service project, which I did not anticipate. But if I had to take one lesson out of this experience, I would say maintaining a positive attitude throughout the day is one of the best things to have, because that way others can look up to you and be reminded of the purpose of being here, which is to enrich and learn about the Nicaraguan, and more specifically, about the Matagalpan community.