Hello to all the friends and family of all the Glimpsers!

After a week of hard work learning about Nicaragua’s culture and people, we all got to experience our first free day!

Here is how the day went,

At 8:00 am, everyone woke up and got ready to start the day. After everyone got ready, we left the hostal to get breakfast at 8:30. 9:00 am was when the first block of fun started. We split into two groups, one group with Kiki and the other with Matthew. The groups went their separate ways and explored the city of Leon. Because we were split into groups, I personally cannot tell what both groups did.

First, we went to the supermarket and got snacks and drinks for when we hang out at the hostel. After the supermarket, we stopped by an appliance store where we saw a TV that would cost around $7,000 in the US cost around $100 over here. After we got kicked out, we headed to the plaza. At the plaza, we bought souvenirs and hung out for a few minutes. Then we headed to the smoothie store across the street. At the smoothie store, some of us experienced the best smoothie of their lives. This smoothie was called the “volcano”. It included a chocolate, banana, ice cream mix. After the fantastic smoothies, we had an hour before we had to head to lunch at 12:30 pm. We decided to go back to the hostal early and hang out there.

After the lunch served to us, we split into the same groups and  headed out for our second block of free time at 1:00 pm. For our second block of free time, most of us wanted to visit the thrift store. What surprised us was that the thrift store was closed today, but we got ice cream after that. After the fantastic ice cream, we visited the Cathedral seen in the photo. After taking that photo, we went back to the hostel to work on the presentation for our Community Action Project and our next English tutoring lesson. After the exhausting work, we went out for dinner at 6:30 pm. When dinner ended, we went to the hostal and had our nightly meeting at 7:00 pm. At the nightly meeting we had to answer the question “What did we learn here in Nicaragua this past week?”

For me personally, this past week has taught me a lot, but I feel like others may feel the same way. Learning about Nicaragua’s educational system, visiting the dump and visiting the community yesterday taught me a lot about the privileges we have as citizens of the United States and how grateful we should be to have those privileges. For example, seeing how the people in the community have so little, but stay so positive taught me how grateful we as US citizens should be grateful for the things we have. Because in the United States, many people feel like that they need to have the latest technology to be happy, whereas here in the community, they are happy they at least have a working TV that broadcasts in black and white. The experience I had this past week has taught me a lot about the privileges I have as an American and should be grateful for those privileges. I also feel that I will always keep this experience close to my heart.

After answering the question, we gave our thorns and roses, our pluses and wishes, and then it was time to pass the torch to the next two leaders of the day. And now, here I am, writing this blog post to you all.

Good night to all of you!

-Brian