From Helen and Buna – Hola mis amigos y familias!

Our fourth day in Nicaragua was such a jam packed day that we had no time for yesterday’s blog post.

Here’s what went down:

We started off at 5am sharp to make sure we were able to do everything on the agenda. Per usual, we had breakfast at Buffet Estelí, but we had a surprise of Fruit Loops being served, giving us a little round taste of home. You are probably wondering why we woke up this early – well, the news is, we went back to school today! The Global Glimpsers had the wonderful opportunity to visit Escuela de Wanda and shadow Nicaraguan high school students. We were able to see the differences between education back home in the Bay Area and here in Nicaragua. The highlight of the visit was when we formed small groups with the goal of helping them with their work while also bonding. That was definitely an amazing experience as the students and ourselves had a lot in common. This goes to show that students are just students anywhere in the world, and our new friends are proof of that. It was definitely an eye opening and fun experience and hope to see them again during our trip. 

After a quick stop at Hostal Tomabu, our next destination was El Fabretto, a Children Education Foundation. Here, we were able to engage with third grade students in some singing and games. They showed us their adorable recital of Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes which definitely brought our energy up. Of course, we weren’t just going to watch them all day, so we were invited to join them outside and recite the song together. We even showed their class a new song – the Hokey Pokey! Then came the game of Duck Duck Goose which made the students and ourselves engage in some running and laughing. That really brought us closer to the students and made it difficult for our goodbye. There were a lot of emotions, even tears of joy, and you could just tell how a visit from us made the students happy. Sadly, we got on the bus and went back to the hostel to prepare for our first English tutoring session. We are not going to lie; it was a little crazy at the beginning of the session. From expecting about 100 students and having 200 show up, you can say we were all caught a bit off guard. Though it definitely got better from there as we started to settle down and organized our groups. All the Glimpsers gave an amazing lesson to these students that knew little to no English. Afterwards, we gave the students homework (yes homework) and cleaned up the space provided to us. During our return trip to the hostel for the end of the night, we stopped at a market, which seems like something we will be doing after each session, hopefully…

 

The nightly meeting commenced, and we passed off the torch to tomorrows’ leaders of the day. It was a fun, fulfilling, wide-ranging, educational experience, and now we can’t wait for our adventures tomorrow!!!