Life in Leon

 (I apologize in advance for the extreme lack of organization in this post) 

Everything has been going very well here in León! There as been a lot going on, and I've started taking afternoon naps everyday, because I'm so exhausted. Since the 11th, we have been doing about 6 hours of training a day, at Mateo's house. The training includes a wide variety of topics. During the first couple days, we learned a lot about the history of Amigos de las Americas, the program I am in, and what sorts of expectations we have. Since then, we've mainly been focusing on our role as a leader in the community. What I think sets Amigos apart from other travel/volunteer organizations, is that there is enormous emphasis on volunteers being the catalyst for change that can continue when we're gone, rather than doing one thing for a community and then leaving. I learned a lot about our Community Based Initiative, which is a project that each of the volunteers must implement in the community. A CBI is something that uses the current assets of the town to create something that will benefit the community. The goal is to get the entire community invested in this project, so they become passionate about it and young people can lead it themselves, when we're gone. We have also been making a lot of lesson plans, and all the steps to implementing our project (there are a lot!). Tomorrow we meet at Mateo's house with our agencies and host families that we have been placed with, and we will present a formal outline of all the steps we think are necessary to carry out our CBI. In addition to that, we have also organized some games and ice breakers to get to know them- all in Spanish! I found out at dinner two nights ago (through an extremely hard puzzle) that I'll be placed with an organization called Asociación de las Huelas Juviniles which is an after school program for kids. I also learned that I'll be living in the city of Corinto with my host parents, host sister who is around my age, and 6 dogs and 4 birds. I can't wait to start and meet them!

Although a great deal of my time is spent training and preparing for my internship in Corinto, we have also had a lot of time to relax. Today we went to the beach, which was absolutely gorgeous. There was almost nobody there, and although it was cloudy, the water was very warm, and the waves were gigantic. The current was also scarily strong! 

Last night we ate dinner at Mateo's fiancé's house with her entire family, including her siblings significant others, which was a lot of fun. We were able to test some of our games in our lesson plans with them, which was very helpful for our planning purposes. After we got back to the hostel, we met a guy from DC who had been studying sea turtles, and after hanging out and playing cards for a while we ended up going to a bar that had some great live music. The performers were a lot of fun and very talented, and we even met some other Nicas that we talked to for a while. Earlier in the day we had a scavenger hunt, which was a lot of fun and it allowed us to explore the city more. Examples of tasks on the scavenger hunt include talking to 3 students (León is a huge university city), finding our way to various places around the city, such as certain churches and post offices, buying a fruit we had never tried before (we got dragon fruit) and asking Nicas to take a picture of all of us jumping, the latter of which was very funny for both us and the women taking the photos.

The city is so beautiful, and the locals are so friendly- it was so nice to ask a question or request directions and see people have such positive and friendly reactions. 

The next time I post, I will most likely be at my family's house!