Today is our 5th day at the hostel in Nicaragua and its like everyone knew each other before coming on the trip. Today was definitely a day that everyone is going to remember and grow from. This morning, we were supposed to wake up at 6:00 AM and since my clock broke in the middle of the night I had to continue waking up to look at the security camera time. However, after everyone was dressed we found out that it was still 6:20 AM and it was way too early for breakfast (silly me).
We had breakfast at 7:00 AM and we came back to the hostel as soon as we finished eating breakfast. We had an academic seminar on how people want to help others with only thinking about the positive things that they are going to spread rather than the negative things that they could spread in the place that they want to help. The boys and girls were separated into two different groups and we got two scenarios that we had to act out. The girls got a scenario that would affect the people in a negative way and the guys got a scenario that would affect the people in a positive way. The guys were showing how people do things for others without thinking about the negative things while the girls were showing how people do things for others and actually think about how the people could be affected in a negative way.
After the academic seminar, we went to visit the school in which we have to work on our Community Action Project. At the school we had to look and brainstorm on things we could do for our project, but while brainstorming we had to think about the things that could be taken care of by the people who we are leaving the project with.
After visiting the school for the Community Action Project, we went to Café de Sonrisas and we met with our speaker Tio Antonio. Tio Antonio was one of the best speakers of this trip so far because he was very inspiring. He spoke to js about how he decided to open a shop with workers who are deaf mute and also spoke to us about his hammock business and how he wishes to make the longest hammock in the world. We ate dinner and then we started with the activities. 1st activity was “welcome to my world” and we had to put in earplugs and we basically experienced what deaf people do. 2nd activity was where the mute people gave us nicknames and they remembered me through my smile. 3rd we did a piece of the hammock so that we could say that we participated in creating the longest hammock of the world. My experience at the Café was amazing. I was smiling the whole time and I was happy that I was able to make these people happy since they barely have any people to talk to.
After the Café, we came to the hostel and had free time for 2 hours. Then we had a CAP seminar in which we spoke about ideas for the Community Action Project. We had another free time because the next leaders had to have their leadership meetings. We left to dinner and had chicken sandwiches and then our self reflections. Everyone showered and now everyone is getting to bed. Today was definitely memorable.
