Day 6-Ahmed and Ben

 

 

  Saturday, 22^nd of June

 

       In the morning, around 7:00 we all had breakfast with our respective families and then headed off to the worksite around 8:45. The night before we had been split up into 2 separate groups; some of us went to the worksite and others to Ernesto’s restaurant to do some WLS reflecting. Ben and I were in different groups: he went to the worksite and I went to reflect first. At Ernesto’s we were asked to do an activity called story boarding where we essentially had to craft our leadership stories and read them out to another person.  At around 10:30 the groups switched and I went to the Worksite. At the worksite we continued to staple mesh and metal covers on the window openings to prevent the ungodly insects from breaking and entering into the future cafeteria. Once we were done, at 12:00, we went back to Ernesto’s to have lunch and watch a bit of the France- Switzerland game. When lunch was over, Mrs. London asked us to draw a map of the portion of the Mayan Center Village that we were exposed to and we were asked to add land marks that were relevant to our stay. After that we went to the cacao farm and the local chocolate factory and tried our hand at chocolate making using an ancient Mayan technique consisting of grinding the raw cocoa on a grinding stone. The resulting product was placed in a refrigerator for future consumption. In any case, we saw the different processes and realized that the various steps were influenced by Mayan and Heritage. Eventually we went into a temperament room that had an A/C and we soon wanted nothing but to stay in the factory with the beautiful cold temperature we had been in absence of.  Anyway, in the temperament room we saw raw cocoa butter and pure dark chocolate. After that, the tour was over and we headed over to the shop and bought our own chocolate. In the end, we practiced a Texan line dance to be shown at the gathering later in the night.  Once this was over we went to go gather our families at around 6 o’clock and headed to Ernesto’s to dine there. Ernesto gave a speech and we were prompted to begin eating. At the end of our meals we shared dances and songs with the Mayan people which made for a fantastic evening. We then dispersed and headed off to our respective homes and went to sleep almost immediately (for the most part) because we were all so tired. Ernesto’s speech showed us the level of leadership that he possessed which made us reflect on the conversations we had with other leaders the night before.

                In a situation where one person helps another and another is helped it makes one of the parties more superior or greater than another whereas in a situation where people overcome differences to work together makes for a greater contributions from all parties resulting in the best possible product. Working together makes sure that, essentially, every person has an influence on the end product be it something figurative or physical. This ties into the work that we did at the school because it was the community itself who told us that a cafeteria would be necessary rather than us think of something to do without the community’s input.

We hope that you enjoy Ben and I’s blog and we look forward to seeing you on Wednesday.

Don't Worry! Our Pictures will be up soon!!