As the first Lider Del Dia, I was a little confused on what I was supposed to do. However, I always had my camera on hand and captured some really good moments of the once in a life time adventures. Even though we are only three days in, We already have lots to tell.

We started off the day with me pounding on doors at 6:30 AM. No one was too excited, although everyone got up. After breakfast, we all got ready for the day. We had a guest speaker named Paul Ortiz who told an amazing story of the Matagalpan Culture, about a serpent that looked over the state and fought against the foreign invaders. The story was very touching and interesting because it depicted the way that locals lived and valued their environment.

Once we thanked Paul for sharing his knowledge and stories, we made our way out to San Ramon, to meet the Mujeres Del Plomo. The drive was about 30 minutes, and had a beautiful view the entire way.

The ride was amazing, and I got some astonishing photos, however my photo files are too large to put into this blog. Oh well…

Once we arrived to the Mujeres Del Plomo, we were introduced to the ladies and heard their story. They are a group of women who built a company out of scraps… literally. They own a handmade jewelry business, and they started off using seeds from of the ground to lace together unique bracelets, necklaces, and ear rings. Their intentions for this entrepreneurship was for the pursuit of education, and hopefully a better life for them and their children. They spent all of their proceeds on school supplies, or saving for the expansion of their business. They even saved enough to buy a storefront! (one bedroom home). They were very welcoming and showed us how they harvested the seeds and made the jewelry. They even let us customize  and make our own items!

Side Note: All of the pictures for today are from Aliyah’s camera

Here is the women teaching us how to make our own jewelry.

This experience was very heartwarming and made us respect the hard work and effort that the local people have with the hope of escaping poverty.

Once we finished our bracelets, we took off to our next location. We went to a local waterfall called Cascada Blanca, which was owned by a man who told us the story of how he fell in love with the place, and bought it so that he could call the beautiful landmark his. He also told a sad story about a young couple who took their own lives into the waterfall because of acceptance for the nature of their incest. :/

Here is a picture of approaching the waterfall, just before we all got soaked from walking under it to the cave!

 

The experience was astonishing and felt  surreal. Taking in the moment was very hard and we all felt as if we were watching an Indiana Jones movie or something, haha. What amazed me was the fact that we will literally never experience this again in our lifetimes, and the fact that we could go here was crazy. Even the big-leafed bushes and banana trees felt so crazy to see, considering that they don’t have those in the Bay Area.

After exploring the beautiful natural environment surrounding the waterfalls, we went upstairs for a GG Seminar, discussing the upcoming English tutoring classes that we will be teaching. We went over different ways of engaging local Matagalpans into our class, and teaching them a sevn day English course, just as we take year long secondary language course in the US. My Mom’s ELD teaching experience and tips really came into play here, haha. The seminar was on top of a building, and was a nice place to have a meeting, however there were multiple wasp nests right above us. Surprisingly enough, these wasps were’t like the ones that we have in the states; They were about the size of golf balls and had these scary black bodies.

Once the seminar was over, we went back to the hostels to have a wonderful dinner and watch the sunset from our amazing view. After the nightly meeting and Lider del Dia swap, everyone was tired and exhausted from our exciting day.

I am really tired and I am still working on this past “lights out” because of the technical difficulties from the photo situation.

The trip is going amazing and everyone is safe and having a fun time. The mosquitoes aren’t as bad as I was expecting, although they still exist along with a variety of other big, foreign bugs and animals.

Ok I’m going to end this blog because I have to wake up at 5:00 AM tomorrow to go to my first day of Nicaraguan Highschool 🙂

Cheers

-Jacob Leung

P.S. pardon any grammatical mistakes or spelling errors, I’m tired.

P.P.S. Shoutout to mom, dad, and Alison