Hola Everyone! Our names are Nylexis and Natasha – the leaders of the day! Our theme today was Poverty and Aid & Development. Today we had to mentally prepare ourselves for the things we were going to see. We did this by first preparing our fellow Glimpsers during last night’s nightly meeting by explaining what to expect when we visited the city dump and how to deal with our feelings while there. We began our day with a little alarm clock problem and we accidentally woke everyone up an hour early, but we quickly sent everyone back to bed for another hour. After getting off track, we prepared our Global Glimpsers for the day by eating breakfast and leading a mental warm up.

Our first trip was to the city dump where we met Dona Fransisca, who was a leader of the community who lives and works at the dump. Our first impression when we got off the bus was that we felt speechless at what we witnessed. In the dump, we saw a dead horse, burning trash, dogs with fleas, many little children, and many adults who live and work within the dump. Although they are in this predicament, many of them strive to make their living situation for themselves and for others better. They are a community who takes care of each other, and Dona Fransisca takes care of them and advocates for them. Despite Dona Fransisca feeling under the weather today, she still took time to meet with us and share her story. Our experiences at the dump helped us learn to be grateful and more appreciative of the things we have, even if it’s little things. At our nightly meeting, we discussed the difference between sympathy and empathy. Sympathy is feeling sorry for others while empathy is trying to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Dona Fransisca and others like her don’t need our sympathy, they need our empathy. Dona Fransisca shared that she has invited Global Glimpse to the dump for the last 5 years because it is important to spread awareness of conditions of poverty.

     

This afternoon, we visited Los Pipitos, a school for children with disabilities. This is where we will be doing our Community Action Project next week. We met some of the mothers who founded the school and still work there and they shared with us what our CAP will be, the materials we will need and what we can do to help the school out. We learned that 30 years ago, it was seen as a curse to have a child with disabilities and it was very shameful in Nicaraguan society. Los Pipitos has helped to change that stigma by establishing a school to make those with disabilities feel welcome and not like they are a disgrace. We met one of the students who attends the school and who will help us make a garden at the school next week. His name was Judy (we’re not sure how to spell it) and he was very friendly and gifted us with mangos!

After Los Pipitos, we prepared for our second day of tutoring English. We then went to an early dinner and headed to the school to meet our students! Even though it was only the second day, our students were happy to attend and we made them feel welcomed! We all connected with them more and had a fun night getting to know them better. All of the tutoring groups’ lessons went really good and we feel we made a lot of progress today.

     

During our nightly meeting, we summarized our day and debriefed what we learned about Poverty, Aid & Development. We discussed how we can apply what we learned today to the society we live in back home and what changes we can make. Our GGL Shannon taught us a slogan from her camp she helps run: “I can make a difference in this world! I can! I will! I must!”

After a long day, we are all headed to bed early to get a good night’s rest and prepare for our day tomorrow: Living Like a Local.

Buenos Noches! xoxo