Hello from the San Juan delegation!

My name is Evelyn Sanchez and I was the leader of the day today for the 2nd day of the CAP project. We started our morning at 7 am then at 8am we walked to Onaneys restaurant for breakfast which is always amazing. After breakfast we all headed to Sabaneta, which is a 45 min drive from San Juan. As our bus pulled up to the Ludoteca, we were greeted by about 40 cheering children! That energized us and we got straight to work because we all knew we had a lot to get done within our committees inside the ludoteca and outside.

We had four committees in total. The first committee was the education board made up of Jd, and Alex. They started to sand down their table and book shelves and also started to paint them. The second committee was park and rec. They got a lot done outside the ludoteca, working with the boys in the community to clean the field. It was super hot and everyone was sweating like crazy. The last two committees were the cleaning committee and the painting/mural committee which I was in. Neha and Ellie did a super good job cleaning the ludoteca while others were busy painting the inside and outside of the ludoteca.

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Parks and Rec hard at work!

Our goal was to get the inside to look as if you were under water. We had little kids paint fishes and had a lot of glimpsers draw under water creatures. We also painted the outside with green mountains and the kids painted all kinds of flowers. On the front of the building, we made two trees with the handprints of all the kids in the community as leaves! JD and Joe took turns lifting the kids up in the air so they could reach their painted hands to the tree’s branches.

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That’s me and Ginny painting!

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Official permission to cut trees for the enramada shade structure outside of the ludoteca

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We left and the community was still hard at work to finish the enramada!

 

At first I was really scared we weren’t going to finish on time because we only had like around 6 hours to finish everything. But as soon as 3:30 came along which was clean up time, I realized most of us finished on time. I know we all worked very hard throughout those last couple of hours! Around 4:00 pm we finished off with a closing ceremony in which each committee gave a little big love to the community members who helped get things done because without them it would have been impossible.

 

So after all that we head back to our hotel where we all got the chance to have free time. Some went out to buy snacks and ice cream. After that we walked to dinner and basically after that came back to the hotel to have our nightly meeting. It was a very hard working day but at least everyone had fun! Our days here are coming to an end and we will see you guys soon! J

P.S we will be arriving in SFO on the 25th around 6pm and also happy late birthday to my younger sister Stephanie!

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The education team and their finished products!