Hey everybody, Thuy here!

Today’s day was called Working Like a Local. Everyone started their day with a wake up call at 5am from Kathy and I, since we were El Leader del Dia for the day. Breakfast was served with a bowl of fruits made out of bananas, papayas, pineapples, and watermelons. Once everyone finished their breakfast, we headed to Mercado Alfredo Lazo, a outsidemarket. We then got paired up into twos (one group had a pair of three) and was placed at a stand. Since there were multiple stands, there were groups selling shoes, vegetables, cheese, and more from 7am-12pm. I was paired up with Rafay and we were place at a vegetable stand, owned by Norman. When we first got to the stand, we ended waiting for Norman to come, since he just got backed from another city. At first I was a bit embarrass of yelling out Spanish phrases, but that feeling washed away as I got into it. We learned the names and prices of the vegetables, and techniques to keep the vegetables looking fresh and delicious. As minutes pass by, Rafay and I started yelling out “verduras frescas” meaning fresh vegetables and other Spanish phrases to try to get customers to our stand. As we were working, we had competitions, such as Sarah and Cameron. They would usually walk near our stand and try to advertise for their shop. We then made a counterattack by making signs like them. The competition went back and forth, Sarah and Cameron would go to our stand, and in return Rafay and I went to their stand and advertised. As hours passed, our feet were starting to hurt, however we didn’t take a break and continued to advertised. We finally took our break at 12pm when we had our lunch. Cici and Taya came over to where Rafay and I was working and had lunch together. I couldn’t help but think how hard life is for the venders. They had to wake up at 5am or probably earlier to go to the market and sell, without knowing how much money they make a day or if customers will come to their stand at all. At around 12:45, it was time to say goodbye to Norman. Norman might look mean and scary at first glance, however he is actually the opposite.

When we got back to our hostel, everyone separated to take care of different business. Some students were working on the CAP project, some were working on their English lesson plans, and some were taking a shower getting ready for the CAP presentation. At 3:40, a representative from UCA Miraflor arrived to our hostel and sat down to listen to our CAP presentation. Once we finished presenting, it was time to hear the feedbacks from the Miraflor representative. She liked the idea of building a fence around the school and painting a mural on the outside of it. She also liked how we decided to add chairs and tables for the kids and teacher. However as for the bathroom, it wasn’t going as well as we planned it to be. She said that we would just need to fix two bathrooms and that if we were over our budget, the bathroom is the first thing to go. Once the lady left our hostel, our group talked about the things that we had to go buy and went out to buy some materials, in groups of four.

At 4:45, everyone started to head to Vida Joven, the English torturing place. After English tutoring, the group headed to Downing Burgers to have our dinner, because today was American Night Out. At dinner we had a mini nightly meeting where we talked about our thorns and roses for Working Like a Local. Once that was finished, we had feedbacks from the leaders and had our El Leader del Dia challenge for Hirmine and Shenese!