¡Hola! Day 7 – Living Like a Local – C2A visited the Rio Grande community for LLAL day. When we arrived, we met the community leader, Mercedes, who showed us all the host families our group would be working with. Each host family, which were 8 families, our group had 2-3 people for each family. To truly understand what living like a local is, many did chores with their host families but also played with the kids. After the chores were done, we played a variety of sports like baseball, soccer, running, etc. While it can be a fun experience, at the end of the visit, our group had a firm understanding of what LLAL is. Seeing with our own eyes made us realize how truly lucky we are to be living in the United States. The lack of basic necessities shocked some of us, many host families do not have access to clean water or even electricity. It was hard seeing people struggle for things we take for granted. We learned how hard it can be for families that do not have access to basic necessities and the struggle they go through every day in order to make it through the next. Even though they go through these struggles, we saw how happy people they were. The women usually spend time at home cleaning the house while the men are usually outside of the house working hard. Currently there is a big high school that they are constructing in Rio Grande for kids who finish elementary school and middle school because the kids living in Rio Grande usually go to high school but to the high schools in Constanza and how may they get there you ask? Well usually they have to walk a long distance from Rio Grande to Constanza but it isn’t an easy walk because of the bumpy roads they have. That is why they are building a high school in Rio Grande so the kids won’t have to suffer walking long distances anymore. It was truly an honor to spend time with these host families because they basically adopted us for a day and gave us a big welcome to us which was something really meaningful to us. It was really hard to say our goodbyes to the Rio Grande community but these families will always be in our hearts for the kindness they did for us today as Living Like a Local.