The day for us Glimpsers began bright and early at 4 am. I enthusiastically woke everyone one up by belting “Do you want to build a snowmaaaannn!?” Once we were all up and ready to go, we all loaded up on the bus and headed to a unique college for Nica youth that specializes in agriculture called La Bastilla. La Bastilla is located in a Nicaraguan rainforest and teaches Nica youth valuable agricultural skills that they can take away and apply to their own lives as they pursue a career in agriculture.

The 14 of us spit into two groups, group 1 was able to visit the baby chicks, milk cows, and collect hundreds of eggs from chicken coops; others got to make cheese and clean the cow stables! Personally, I was in group 2 (along with Tristan and Amanda), and we were taken a little higher into the mountains and had the options of working in the veggie garden, mucking the pig stables while playing with piglets, or working in the bakery! We chose to visit the vegetable garden first, and we were able to water baby tomato plants, fertilize the carrot garden, and extract weeds from the strawberry patch. We didn’t have a translator with us, so we relied on each other and mostly Tristan’s English-Spanish dictionary to help us work our way through conversations with our guide- who claimed to speak no English (we later found out he totally understands English). We then switched and headed back down the mountain to collect eggs from the chicken coops. I have a fear of chickens, so being surrounded by hundreds of them mos def put my courage to the test! After collecting eggs and cleaning them, Tristian, Amanda, Oscar, Sam, Cynthia and I hiked all the way up a steep mountain to meet up with the others for lunch. During lunch, we were able to speak with some of the students of La Bastilla and have conversations with them while eating the delicious food they prepared.

After lunch we were able to hike up another incredibly steep mountain, to the hotel that the college runs. While we were up there, we were able to see the entire rainforest and the coffee fields. The view was absolutely breathtakingly beautiful; it felt as if we were on another planet. After taking a couple of pictures, we hiked back down, and headed back to the hostel for some dinner and English tutoring!

Today, our little family got a little glimpse into the lives of the locals here in Nicaragua, which reminded us how extremely lucky we are to be able to come home to a beautiful, easy going home and life.

We miss all of you, we’ll be home soon!

Hi bae aka Matt! Hi mommy and daddy and mother goose! Ily!

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