Our first days

After a very long flight, we are now in Tuxla! During the flight from Mexico City to here, we saw many beautiful sights like mountains, beaches and canyons, like the Cañon de Sumidero (Drain Canyon) which we hope to visit while we are here. When we arrived in Tuxla, we looked for our luggage, but we had encountered the first problem of our trip. The bags were not on the plane! Without bags, we went to the Fiesta Inn and prepared to leave for Casa Telmex. On our way to Casa Telmex, we found a restaurant and had our first Mexican lunch, la comida corrida. La comida corrida is like a menu of the day and has 2 or 3 options for each part of the lunch and it includes a dessert as well. We arrived in Tuxla on Día de Los Santos Reyes, the last day of the Christmas celebration. On this day, Mexicans have Roscón de Reyes, a pastry with dried fruits. Inside the pastry, there is a little, plastic doll that represents Jesus and the person who finds it has the obligation to make or invite people over for tamales and atole, a traditional Mexican dish and drink, on the 2nd of February (el día la Candelaria). We were very lucky because Kyle found the doll and now he must invite us over for tomales y atole when we return to Boston! After lunch, we went to Casa Telmex and meet many of the faciltators. All were very friendly and nice and were really excited to work with us.

Today is our first day to present the leadership curriculum at Casa Telmex. We had a group of 6 students and the faciliators this morning and we did many fun activities to get to know each other. We began with icebreakers called "The Ball Game" and "The Big Wind Blows." The ball game is a game in which people form a circle and throw the ball to others while they say the name of the other person. That game was a good way to get to learn all the names of the students and facilitators. After that, we played "The Big Wind Blows" which is a game where everyone sits in a circle with one person in the middle. The person in the middle says, "The big wind blows for..." and finsihes the phrase with a fact that is true about themselves. All of the people who have that fact in common must find another seat. It was very fun and gave everyone the opportunity to learn a little bit about everyone else. After the icebreakers, we continued with an activity about leadership. This activity is called "The Anatomy of a Leader" and the students created a drawing of a person and add symbols that represent characteristics of leaders. The purpose of the activity was to encourage the students to begin thinking about what a leader does. The drawings of the students and the facilitators were very good and the presentations interesting as well. Our last activity was to write a letter to ourselves saying what we wanted to learn about in the program, and in what ways we hoped to change as well. We thought this activity was very important so they could reflect upon it at the end of the program. The letter was a way to have what everyone thinks a leader is, what kind of leader they want to be and their own definition of leadership. We had a little extra time at the end of this activity, so we played "Animals." En this game, everyone forms a circle and chooses an animal that they want to represent. Everyone in the circle creates a rhythm by slapping their hands on their legs and clapping their hands together and when it is someones turn, they make their own animal motion and then that of someone elses. It is a little bit difficult and we had many problems in the beginning, but it was very fun in the end. The first day of the course was very good in our opinions and we are very excited to continue with the leadership program at Casa Telmex.

We also decided that we needed to maintain an official count of the tortillas that we have eaten. I think that until we all have our bags, we need to add a count of suitcases as well!
YeSeul: bags - 1/1 tortillas - 7
Taylor: bags - 1/1 tortillas - 7
Lauren: bags - 0/1 tortillas - 8
Dave: bags - 0/1 tortillas - 5
Kyle: bags - 1/1 tortillas - 8