Hola from your Leaders Del Día (Yamila & Atian),

Today we started our day with an early, 6 AM wake up call. Everyone was exhausted but we pulled through it with a delicious breakfast at Nativa’s. We started our meal with scrumptious guava juice, scrambled eggs and traditional Ecuadorian dish, fried plantains. After our breakfast we prepared for our day of “Working like a Local”. We then took a 30 minute bus ride to Don Jaime’s Farm. At the farm it was very cold and he had explained to us how his farm is all organic. Next Don Jaime taught us how people from the past used a horn to inform the people of the community about specific events going on. We next were taught to saddle a horse with Esmerelda (mom horse) and Princesa (pony). Later we were taught by Don Jaime and Juanito how to specifically plant the ava seeds, in threes, 40 cm apart. The next step was to fertilize the seeds we had planted with a mix of panela (brown sugar), cow, chicken, and horse feces. After these two hours of hard working we all were exhausted and enjoyed a lovely lunch a Nativa’s. We first had passion fruit juice with, meatloaf and rice and potatoes, soup, and cake.

After lunch, we came back to the hotel and presented our CAP (Community Action Project) ideas. Our CAP will take place at Carlos Garbay, a school for students with special needs, and our presentation was for Mauricio, a teacher at the school. We are going to build a guinea pig (cuy) home, plant native Ecuadorian trees and plants to make a mini forest, and paint Global Glimpse murals. Each group presented a detailed budget and materials list as well as a plan of action and a rationale for the project. We both, as bilingual Leaders del Día, translated the presentation into Spanish for Mauricio.

We then spent the afternoon either shopping for the CAP materials or resting, in preparation for our first evening of English tutoring! After our free time was over, we headed over to Nativa’s for dinner. For dinner we had a leaf tea drink to give us energy, along with the yuca vegetable, shredded chicken with rice, and for dessert strawberries with cream. Soon after, we packed our posters, pencils and markers for our new adventure: teaching! We headed over to Pedro V. Maldonado, the local high school. The students being taught today ranged from the ages of 18-40. This was their second opportunity at a higher education. We were pleasantly surprised to find out that the students knew more than what we expected. They were quite advanced. Overall, our day was packed with new adventures and new experiences and the unexpected that we will remember forever. Looking forward to telling you all of our new found experiences when we get home!

Yours truly,

Yamila Medina & Atian Garcia <3