The past few weeks have passed so quickly that summarising them feels almost impossible! But I'll give it a go. I'm now midway through my ReAction Experience in Mexico City. It's a beautiful city and I have loved exploring it in my spare time, as well as visiting different sites related to our projects with MakeSense. I'm so grateful to be working here with the other scholars, who are all such a lovely group of people. In fact, the opportunity I've had to get to know people from all over the globe has been one of the really special things about the programme.

If I had to pick one thing that stood out to me from the first two weeks in Mexico City, it would have to be the leadership camp we did on  Thursday and Friday of the first week. It was so encouraging to see how everyone in my team worked together to succeed in the activities - we all looked out for each other, and we made sure everyone's voices were heard. We had to build a raft to travel down the Las Estacas river, and through working together, we managed to be the first team to complete the race!

However, I think the most challenging moment over the past two weeks was actually not raft-building (though that was hard!). For me, I found my leadership skills were developed most in the first week, at a networking event through which we had to recruit volunteers for our projects. I did not feel particularly confident at all networking with a room of complete strangers, most of whom were much older than me! I honestly didn't know how I was going to manage, but by consistently putting myself out there and speaking to different people, it ended up being a great night. Not only did I recruit some volunteers, but I ended up in a long conversation with a couple of them and made some really great connections! 

The first two weeks here have both tested and encouraged me to develop as a leader. I'm really looking forward to the rest of my experience.