Hello family and friends of L1C, your first co-leaders are Kali Tagomori-Lai and Hillary Huang from San Francisco.

Today was our very first reality challenge, to experience life as a local. Everyone seemed hot, sweaty and exhausted but managed to pull through.

Blog - day 6.1 (live like local) - smallAs the leaders of the day, we had to wake up at 5:30 AM and get everyone on their feet in a timely manner. Due to the early wakeup call, breakfast was served at an unusually early time. Since we were living like a local, we were limited to gallo pinto and water. After breakfast, we made our way to the Punta de Plancha community where we spent four hours with our host families. It was very kind of them to have opened their homes up to us and allowed us to see what their lives are like on a day to day basis. We were fortunate enough to help with their everyday chores: sweeping, getting water from the well and playing with the little ones. Around the homes we also saw a lot of domesticated animals. The families in the communities seemed very happy even with their limited resources, which makes us appreciate what we have back in the states. After the long day, we surprised the whole community with a piñata and lunch. After having our meals with our families, we said our goodbyes and headed our separate ways.

When we headed back to our hostel, we broke up into our small teaching groups and began our English tutoring preparation.

Then we moved into a two hour community action project seminar. This was only our second seminar about our CAP project and we discussed the overall design. We decided on remodeling the playground, refurbishing the cafeteria and creating a small garden for the children at Los Ninos y Ninas Del Fortin school. Stay tuned to find out more about how our community action project turns out.

After that we headed back to Comedor Imabite to eat our final meal of the day, gallo pinto again. We had to eat fast so that we could make it to our first English tutoring. Mangos were falling from the trees above and slightly distracted everyone from the class. From what we heard, everything ran smoothly but not all the students showed up. The students seemed very hard-working and willing to learn English. Shortly after 8:00 pm, we headed back to the hostel for our nightly meeting and reflection.

Being co-leaders, it made it easier to manage the whole group. We were able to communicate our ideas and not overshadow each other. One advice that we personally took to heart was step up but also step down. This was super important for us as co-leaders. As the third leaders of the day, it was surprisingly easier than we thought. Everyone was super understanding and supportive of us. Thank you all for following our adventures in Leon, Nicaragua.