Starting off Strong

Wow, it’s been such a busy week for us! We really hit the ground running after arriving late Sunday evening, meeting up with our host families, and enjoying our first dinners together. We started bright and early Monday morning for our session orientation, in which we participated in some ice breakers, learned about the culture here in Mexico, and discussed important issues about safety and taking care of one another as a team. It was informative, but it sure was exhausting! 

On Tuesday we started learning about our service project in the AMANC Yucatan organization and we had the opportunity to get to know each other a bit better. We participated in a team building activity to learn about the significance of overcoming obstacles and facing adversity, and this activity really opened up some rich discussion, as well as got us laughing. The group members worked together to wrap eggs and prepare for dropping them; 2 of the 3 eggs survived an enormous fall due to the ingenuity and creativity of our team!! Afterwards, we braved the heat for a scavenger hunt in the center of Merida; thankfully we were rewarded with ice cream at the end. Finally, our team members made some “escudos,” or shields, to represent themselves and their unique values that they are bringing to our service project. It has been a productive couple of days, but we are just getting started! Stay tuned…