Today we woke up at 6 am, still tired from waking up at 5 am and living off a dollar the pervious day, but we all pulled ourselves together to be early to breakfast which is a miracle for 16 teenagers. For breakfast today we had a simple egg omlette with a slice of bread and a glass of carrot juice, yummm. After breakfast we traveled back to 1st grade by playing “heads up 7 up” for the team builder, then we transitioned into the morning seminar where we discussed the question of the day “what are the positive and negative impacts of aid in the developing world.”  What is aid? What are positives? What are negatives? How often is aid given? Do people advertise aid well? And how aid influences and could hurt development?

So the real activities begin when we travel to our first destination which seemed like 20 minutes of circles within a 10 block radius, we understood how aid is used or how it effects communities when we went to visit with speakers at FUMDEC a organizations originally our speaker was Marisole a director at FUMDEC but unfortunately she had other business to attend too , fortunately we ended up with Eva a Peace Corps volunteer that has worked in nicaragua for 2 years helping teach women and girls to show dominents in the house, in business and economy. Eva showed a slide show telling us the significants of FUMDEC in a growing country like Nicaragua , for example “femicide” where husbands kill their wives who disobey them, so expanding on ways to gain freedoms of speech and action will soon stop severe femicide, give equality and actually help the economy. at the end of the visit and after the many in depth questions i presented the speaker gift and gave a speech of appreciation.

Another bus ride.. together my Global Glimpse brothers and sisters can make anything fun so we began the hour long bus ride to our second location, everyone started to fall asleep or stare out the windows, personally i can not allow that so we put a cd in and started obnoxiously singing songs including “i love it” and “i’m yours”, until a sudden stop when everyone jumped out of the bus to try and help a car that went off the side of the road by the time we got the car others who also stopped to help had already pushed it up but honestly its the thought that counts.

Arriving to aracely’s home and business in a rural community, we witnessed first hand the positive effects of FUMDEC because aracely has a small cheese and milk business which inspires the town and other women to overcome gender roles and start becoming more independent. Aracely even created a small restaraunt for her neighbors and the community. For those who chose to they were able to form cheese, it was a little later in the day so the cheese was in its last stage, we juiced the cheese, broke it down added salt and balled it up. It was very messy but it was a new experience and for the other glimpsers they found entertainment in a parrot they found but someone wasn’t so lucky to miss the parrot’s bathroom break. So after the laughter and washing of hands we had a nice meal that consisted of chicken, boiled veggies, rice and beans with boiled passion fruit for the drink. We did a quick tour and ran into cows, pastures, and beautiful views. On our way back to the Aracely’s the small street was covered with terrifying looking giant cows so we had to weave and rush through the cows which excited all of us. but then it was time to go and i had to give another speaker gift i expressed how we will always remember and we appreciated her taking time out of her day. As we were leaving she said “her heart and home will always be open and waiting for us to visit again”.

When we arrived home we had about 2 1/2 hours of free time so everyone was allowed to go shopping, walk around town, or anything else. While gone we all ran into each other, had laughs, and appreciated some relaxation. When the relaxation was over we had to get everything ready for dinner and school. Rushing all over the house for clothes, school supplies, and miscellaneous objects had us staggering out the door, but after a nice meal of enchiladas and sweet tea, we went to school and everyone seems to be enjoying class and really getting the hang of teaching english. This leads us to the dreaded nightly meeting where the children become zombies and the time seems to becomes longer. We discussed aid and i handed off the torch to Seraphina where her talent was “imitations”  needless to say we all had a good laugh before going to bed at 9:30. today was a privilege to be titled as “the leader of the day”.