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Hi, it’s Claudia from Evergreen Valley High School!

We started off the day today with waking up at 5:30 in the morning to work like a local at a cucumber greenhouse (invernadero). Our amazing kitchen staff had us start off our morning with a delicious papaya smoothie and a ham and cheese sandwich. After boarding the gua-gua (our bus) we were off to start our long and successful day of working like a local. We arrived at the greenhouse and we were greeted by the greenhouse staff singing their national anthem and then we returned the greeting by singing our national anthem, even if some of us didn’t know the words. Each one of our glimpsers were paired with one staff member who guided us on how to harvest cucumbers and really demonstrated how hard they work each and every day. We were told by our coordinators to ask as many questions as we could to learn about the lives of the staff. What surprised us the most were the hours and wages, every staff worker works an average of 8 hours a day and they only earned about 8 dollars a day while the women earned about 7 dollars a day just because they are a women.

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I was proud of our group because the greenhouse was extremely humid and we all were dripping with sweat when we were done but they still continued to keep a positive attitude throughout the whole day. The most inspiring person we met was Jeffery who was the supervisor of the whole greenhouse, he attended school to study in the agriculture field. Jeffery is only 22 years old and he oversees the production at the greenhouse and showed us how they mix the various chemicals for fertilizer and irrigate the greenhouse.

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Later throughout the day we experienced rain in Constanza for the first time and although we loved it, it had us change the schedule multiple times which overwhelmed us. When the rain began to clear up we headed out to our next field trip which was the packaging factory where they were preparing to package the cucumbers we had harvested that day. This was the Global Business part of our day.  We were happy to hear that the workers at the packaging place, in addition to making about 8 dollars a day, also received 3 meals, health insurance, and transportation home.

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Being leader of the day today was a big responsibility that had me stress throughout the whole day. Through the stress I learned that it was okay to make mistakes and that being El Lider Del Dia was supposed to help you grow and help prepare you for the future. During the nighty meeting I became emotional telling the group about the struggles as well as the positives that comes with being El Lider Del Dia. Although we have only been here for a couple of days, we all have so much love for each other that I am thankful to be a part of this global glimpse family. We’ll talk to you guys soon!

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