Hello from Keven and Dion! My name is Dion, I’m 16 years old from San Francisco, California, and I am the shortest student on this trip. I’m blessed to have been given this opportunity to experience a completely different culture from the one I have grown accustomed to. I am Keven from Boston, Massachusetts. I am 17 years old and I attend Fenway High School.

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We had a blast as the co-leaders for our final “free day” of the trip. We slept in until 8:00 AM, had breakfast at our favorite buffet, and had our first free time session from 10:00-12:00. Leading up to this free day, we had planned to run loose around the city, looking for souvenirs and meandering around the hustle-and-bustle streets of Esteli.

However, that was not the way it turned out. During our first free time session, half of the delegation went to La Casa de Cultura to get a head start on our Community Action Project, gathering more information about materials we would need and even starting to scrape off paint from the walls. As the time approached to start heading back to Buffet Esteli to meet up for lunch, we realized just how time consuming this upcoming project would be. Previously we had been told that we would only have two days to carry out our CAP, and our working hours were 8:00-5:30 PM, with a break for lunch. Seeing how this was not nearly enough time to get all the work done, several Glimpsers came up with a petition for our Global Glimpse leaders and coordinators to extend our working hours. Every Glimpser signed the petition, and as a whole we presented to the leaders during lunch.

Unfortunately, as it turned out, La Casa de Cultura is a government building, hence it closes at 5:30 PM everyday, and we are no exception to the law. Even though our efforts to petition to our leaders did not turn out the way we wanted it to, it touched our hearts to see all the Glimpsers come together as a whole and be willing to sacrifice precious time and energy for the betterment of the community.

After lunch, there was another free time session from 1:00-5:00 PM, and the people who hadn’t already stopped by La Casa de Cultura headed over and continued the work that their peers had started. Meanwhile, others finished their souvenir shopping and got ready for the last English tutoring class, which was to take place later that night. We met at 6:00 PM for dinner at Buffet Esteli (yay!), and then went to Las Bomberos for our final English class.

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Most of our time that night was spent taking pictures, exchanging Facebook information, and saying our last farewell wishes to our students. Although we only had 7 full sessions, it felt like we had known them for much longer. We had witnessed our students grow exponentially with their English skills, broken language barriers, and formed friendships with our students.

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All in all, it was a day filled with joy, companionship, generosity, and souvenirs. On the way back to the hostel, you could tell everyone was really happy because the air was full of conversation and laughter. We were content.