Today the Global G’s experienced Convivir en familia (Exchanging families). Convivir en familia is when us, Global G’s, live the typical life of a local. In this case the locals were from the community of Bejuco Aplastado, which we visited just yesterday.

Today we were split into five groups, each experiencing the life of a local. Two groups worked by helping create trenches for the water pipes for the local community. This is very important to the community because they buy their own supplies for the piping system and, they also produce their own labor. The community works together so that everyone within the community can have a water supply instead of refilling a water tank supply for each family household.

While two of the groups were working with the piping system, the other three groups were working in some of the locals’ home, experiencing a typical house hold lifestyle. For example, one household was cleaning their garden, so the group helped with this particular chore. We all rotated after 30 minutes so that only two groups had to experience the hard, manual labor of the pipes while the other three did household work.

After working with the locals, the Global G’s had a fantastic meal that we prepared with the locals. After we were done mingling with locals, they had invited us to a game of baseball and dominoes. Of course, most of us were not as talented as they were, but we had a great time laughing at each other, talking with the locals, and learning about them and how they lived and how we had made an impact towards them.

Lastly, after a hard day of work, the Global G’s had a two hour English Lesson prep so they can learn how to teach English to the people who want to learn. We basically learned how to talk to the class who have not been exposed to much English. We also learned how to make the class feel comfortable instead of being afraid to speak English in the class. Lastly we prepped some homework for the students so they can practice their English at home and hopefully get better at English.

Being El Lider Del Dia (Leader of the Day) exposed me to the responsibility of 16 other kids, not including the adults too. It had also gave me a new respect to my past and future leaders in future events. I had to remind people to drink their water, refill their water bottles, make sure that they brought their travel journals, and most important, remember to intermingle with the locals and learn their way of life. This experience proves that it takes a lot more than just speaking to people, but also guiding them into the next step.