Hola from the boonest city in Nicaragua!

To start off our day of living like a local, we woke up at 6 A.M with a simple breakfast of just gallo pinto, a bread roll, and water. After breakfast, we took a bus ride to a poor, small local community nearby Matagalpa. We stopped at a school and watched the local children play outdoor games such as tag while we were split up into pairs to be placed into a home.

We got to spend part of the day with our host families and got to experience their lifestyle. Each home consisted of about an overall 10×10 foot wooden structure.  The interior contained a small table, a bed, and a stove made purely from stacked rocks and wood. Throughout our experience living in their homes, we helped our host families with their daily chores and had the opportunity to ask them questions about their lives. Some of the chores that we did included washing clothes and dishes with a bucket of water, rolling out tortillas, sweeping the dirt floors, and retrieving water from a well 15 minutes away. We ate lunch with our host families, providing them with a nice meal and some juice. It was sad saying our goodbyes knowing that it was our first and last time being able to see them.

The biggest takeaway for many of us was how genuinely happy each family was with the little that they had. The members of the community were all very kind and giving, and even the children with the little that they had, offered to give us small gifts. This experience open our eyes, leading all of us to realize all the little things that we take for granted in our daily lives, including running water and the wide selection of food available in our country.

Back at the hostel, we worked on our Community Action Project (CAP) proposals and presented them to the leaders of the organization our project is directed towards (ADIC). Our delegation proposed the ideas of creating a garden and a mural to beautify their community center, and their leaders gave us feedback, approving our plan for the project.

We finished our day of living like a local with another simple meal of gallo pinto, bread, and water. Although many of us felt exhausted from the full day of work, we still had lots of fun at English tutoring, seeing our students again and continuing our journey in teaching them English.

Living on approximately $2 a day by showering with a bucket, using flashlights as our source of light, eating simple meals, and more, ultimately taught each of us an important lesson about the realities of living in poverty. Today was a very life changing experience, and we are all excited to continue learning about poverty tomorrow for Deconstructing Poverty Day.

Today is our halfway mark, can’t wait to see all our friends and family in a week!