Hola! We’re Alain and Umu, your leaders of the day!

Umu would like to give a shout out to my mother because I know she misses me and to my niece, Savannah!

Alain would like to give a shout out to my little brother, Daniel because he has to do all my chores while I’m away!

Our day began by waking up extra early to wake everyone else up extra early because we had a goal in mind to finish our Community Action Project before noon! We had a nice surprise for breakfast – a delicious fruit salad with toast and jam. Then we headed to Los Pipitos to finish our garden project. No one wasted time today and we all got straight to work when we arrived. After we finished the garden and cleaning up the weeds, the staff and students at Los Pipitos threw a celebration for us and the Boy Scouts who helped us with the garden. We had not one, but two pinatas for our group, blasting music, and excited spirits! We laughed a lot as in Nicaragua, you have to dance in order to get the pinata to come near enough to hit – we were impressed by everyone’s moves today (especially our PC Tania!)

Then we received our welcome sign and the signs for our plants, which had been well painted by Julio – the local artist we met last week who has painted many of the murals around Esteli! We were happy to use part of our donation money for our CAP to pay Julio for his work and his paintings turned out beautifully! We took a group photo to celebrate our accomplishment and then headed back to the comedor for a much needed lunch.

   

After lunch, we prepped for our last English tutoring session and we even had enough time to have free time! Today was the first day we were allowed to go out in groups without our GGLs – many of us went to the bakery to get treats for our English students, some of us went and got our nails done, and others went and got a local slice of pizza. After free time, we had dinner and headed to the last English tutoring session.

The atmosphere at the tutoring center was full of joy, accomplishment and sadness. We got to spend our last session with our students by getting to know just a little bit more about them, playing their favorite sports with them, and taking a bunch of photos and snap chat stories together. They gave us their contact info so we can communicate with them when we get back to the states. Some of us made plans with the students to hang out with them tomorrow on our free day.

   

After tutoring, we came back to the hostel and had self reflection on our CAP project. Then we had our nightly meeting and reflected on our day. Today involved a lot of emotions – nothing bad, all good – but an emotional day still. We’re feeling happy to be here and happy that we had an impact on people’s lives – like our tutoring students and the students at Los Pipitos.

One of the students drew me a picture, which made me feel appreciated. Our students were telling us how much we helped them and how much they loved being in our class. – Umu

I felt loved by my students. One of the students wrote me a letter telling me how much they learned from me and how I made them laugh. – Alain

Big love! Until tomorrow!