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Hi, I am Huiyin Lei, and I was the leader of the first free day of our summer trip. I was very excited, but also nervous about being a leader. Yesterday my fellow Glimpsers welcomed me with claps and cheers, and in that moment I decided I wanted to be a good leader. Every leader of the day must prepare the day before, which means we need to know what we want to do and form a plan. I remembered that if we did not form a good plan, then we would not finish the things we set out to do. My plan was not perfect, and so today we did not visit every place we decided to go, but we did have the opportunity to go to a few places.
We went to the Bakery, and everyone had fun there. I did not know a rain cloud was coming. Not everyone went out with their rain gear, so we were stuck at the Bakery for almost an hour talking, watching the rain, and passing the time. I feel responsible for not reminding my peers to bring their gear, and I probably should have spoken up a bit more. Our plan, although not perfect, was very detailed and I feel we could have done better at paying closer attention to those details.
I was very happy to have the chance to become the leader for the free day. All plans were in my hand, and I wanted to use the time to let everyone become closer and be like a family. I was worried about the Glimpsers dividing into separate groups and going to different places. It would have been very hard for me to keep the time and coordinate the next activity, but it surprised me that everyone wanted to go to one place together and had one goal as a big group.
After that, we took two hours of our free time to do the Community Action Project (CAP), which I was very proud of. Even though it was a free day today, and we did not have to work on the CAP project, during the Nightly Meeting yesterday everyone showed commitment by agreeing to dedicate time for the project. I knew that we were going to enjoy planing for the project because we all wanted to use our power to help the Las Flores community. In the CAP time, we also figured out some of the troubles we were having and the things we needed to improve on. That was the first meeting we worked without our GG Leader. I did not know how to start the meeting, I lead my team using more of a free style. I decided to let everyone just shout out their thoughts and what we thought we needed for the project. I had a writer to help me take notes. My English is not very good, so the writer did help me a lot. She also helped me lead the direction of the group.
Even though there were two of us, the meeting still got out of control. There was too much noise and too many people giving their ideas at the same time. We could not really establish a good plan. I would try to be more organized, but once I got their attention the group would get distracted again. That was a big issues we had as a group. Many of the Glimpsers realized this problem and decided to help me resolve the issue. Finally, we arrived at a solution. The group decided to pay more attention me as the leader of the day and be more organized.
I am very grateful to have the opportunity to be leader of the day today. My goal was to make sure that everyone had fun and become closer to one another on our free day. At the end of the day I believed I achieved my goal. I have always liked taking care of people and helping them using my strengths, and I had the chance to do exactly that today. Now the Glimpsers feel more like a family, and I feel I had a great part in that.