These are the before pictures of the area and they organized the tires by size.

These are the before pictures of the area and they organized the tires by size.

Farmers

Farmers

English tutoring pictures

English tutoring pictures

More English tutoring

More English tutoring class

Hi everyone! A huge thanks to all of you who have been following our blog; hopefully it has been able to offer a taste of the incredible experience we’ve had here in Nicaragua. I was so excited and honored to be ELDD for such a special day: day 1 of our community action project, also known as CAP. For those of you who are unfamiliar with CAP, it’s the project us Glimpsers complete at the end of our trip to make a lasting mark on the community we’ve been exposed to these past couple of weeks. The project must be realistic, sustainable, and benefit/engage the community. I am so happy to announce that for our CAP project we will be teaming up with Eco Kids and Sonati. When we visited Mujeres Ambientalistas earlier on our trip, they expressed a need for a meeting area for the children of their Eco Kids program. Not only will we be constructing tables and benches made sustainably with tires, we will also be making hopscotch out of tires and a tetherball set for the kids to play.

After our 6:30am wake up call, we started off the day by gathering up clothes to take to the Laundromat and then headed to breakfast at Buffet Estelí. We then stopped at a hardware store to pick up some of the materials we had bought the previous day and also bought sand and sand bags. Next we drove to Sonati and loaded 50 tires onto our bus. It was quite the group effort.

Lupe looking at the tire layout, Crystal testing out the hopscotch, filling in the hopscotch, Leeza with the kids

Lupe looking at the tire layout, Crystal testing out the hopscotch, filling in the hopscotch, Leeza with the kids

Unfortunately once we arrived at Mujeres Ambientalistas I felt very sick and had to sit out for the rest of the day.   However, the rest of the group was busy at work sorting and organizing tires and digging holes for the hopscotch. By the end of the day they had gotten the hopscotch completely ready to be cemented the next day. After, they returned to the hostel and headed to Vida Joven for English tutoring. Then they enjoyed dinner at Buffet Estelí and later came back to the hostel for our nightly meeting.

At the nightly meeting there was a special surprise: a piñata and cake for Carla’s 17th birthday. Everyone had a great time and even went a little crazy fighting over candy. One of the reasons that this blog post is so delayed (sorry!) is because at our nightly meeting we spent a long time discussing the CAP project and how we could better use our time tomorrow as we did not complete as much as we had hoped to today. We all agreed that communication and organization would be key for day 2 and we’re all really excited for what tomorrow will bring.

Happy Birthday Carla!!!

Happy Birthday Carla!!!

Thanks so much for reading, please keep the comments coming! Also, just a special birthday shout out to our girl Carla- we love you and even though you could not be home to celebrate today with your family, as your second family we felt lucky that we could share today with you. That’s all for now, hasta pronto!

~Clara Chiu