Hi everybody!

Earlier today, we began our morning with the usual morning routine. We enjoyed a plate of delicious breakfast, which was scrambled eggs and pancakes. We also enjoyed a delightful cup of strawberry juice. Once we finished our breakfast, we headed to the meeting room for our daily mental warm up. We discussed important concepts based on poverty and differences between international poverty and poverty in the U.S. Then, we headed to a dump which is known in Spanish as “vertedero”. This was a very impactful afternoon for most of our fellow Glimpsers. Many were unable to fully process the visuals displayed in this area. Despite the traumatic and meaningful scenes many of us saw this morning, we managed to narrow our perspectives and turn it into a eye opening experience. After our trip from the dump, all of us gathered ourselves in the conference room to fully discuss our opinions, reactions and thoughts. The conference room is a very secure area and gives us an outlet to express our feelings after emotional trips. This was especially needed after the trip to the dump.

We then reunited with everyone to begin our lunch meal. For lunch today we enjoyed eating rice and beans with beef and a side salad. Our Glimpsers then prepared themselves for a wonderful afternoon to the local school called, “Cecaini”. We met the head coordinator whose name is Jacinto. He was the most courageous person that we met so far. His passion for educating younger children has influenced his ability to teach and lead in many positive ways. His devotion to his career has inspired him to teach younger children that education is the most important concept. After our insightful meeting with the head coordinator, we spent time playing with the students at the school. Some played basketball, catch, jumped rope, sang, and danced with every kid at the school.  Our shout outs goes to Elena and Sarah. They both demonstrated a strong effort in engaging children who might have been left out during our trip to Cecaini. They truly outshone each and every one of us. They went above and beyond in order to display the characteristics of courage and kindness with each and every one of these local students. The smiles on the children’s faces uplifted us especially after the morning. We came to a realization of how precious these children are and we’re excited to help them. We said our heartwarming goodbyes to the children and headed back to the hotel for our CAP seminar.

The Cap seminar is the Community Action Project. Our Global Glimpse Program Coordinator, Mabel, had us brainstorm a new topic on which we will begin our final project for this trip. Our purpose is to show gratitude by displaying our hard work and talent. We will demonstrate community service to these local places and perform an act of duty. After the CAP seminar, our Glimpsers spent their afternoon with free time. We (Alyra, Anahi), Elena, and Aylin spent their free time singing and dancing with the grandson of the hotel owner, Edwardo. There was music and he was teaching us his dance moves and invited us to sing along with him. Others played cards or spent their time reading a book. After our free time, we had dinner. Dinner consisted of mash potatoes, fried cheese and vegetables. We enjoyed our meals and spent dinner with a couple of jokes and laughs. We then headed to our nightly meetings. All of our Glimpsers, elaborated more on how our day went by. We spent our meeting by spreading out Big Loves and truly learning how to express the concept of gratitude. We truly are recognizing the deeper meaning of courage, love, and kindness by communicating our thoughts and feelings. It was nice to pass the torch to our new leaders of the day for tomorrow; Jocelyn and Yasmin. Each day we find something to enjoy and as the days go by our connections are constantly growing stronger and stronger.

Big Love,

Alyra and Anahi

Anahi’s Shout outs: OMGGG, Hi mom! I miss you all so much and happy birthday to David! I miss home so much. I’ll see you soon.

Alyra’s Shout outs: Hi mom, Tyler, Marcus, Wella, and Kenneth. Hope all is well and that you miss me tons. I’m doing well and making great memories and friends on this trip. NO SPOILERS PLEASE: hope all is good and entertaining with my TV shows/movies which include: Stranger Things, P-Valley, Big Brother, Thor, and anything else I missed. Tell Titi Best I said happy belated birthday and I hope you had a good day even though my presence wasn’t there. Love you all and I will see you very soon!