Hello family, friends, and the Global Glimpse community,

This is Cynthia Tsang reporting about the Global Glimpse adventures for the second day of the implementation of our CAP project at the special education school. To say it was exhausting and exciting would barely encompass the emotions that our delegation experienced. We slept in a bit today by waking up at 7 o’clock, proceeded to get ready for the day, and then head out to breakfast at our favorite restaurant at this point: Comedor Imabite. After breakfast, we walked back to the hostel for a money exchange and then we got on the bus to continue on our CAP Project.

If you have been keeping up with our blog, then you know that we are working on three main projects at the special education school: renovating the bathroom by inserting tiles and repairing the leaking roof; planting fruits, vegetables, and flowers to both brighten and benefit the school with produce; and painting two classrooms with chalkboard and regular paint so students can draw on the walls with chalk. Yesterday we had started on the basic components of all projects, but today was the time to get down and dirty and really create an indent on the work we had ahead of us. The gardening crew finished planting all of the trees and created rows in the garden space to plant cucumbers and onions. It was unfortunate to discover that the plant shops the crew visited to buy seeds were closed tomorrow, so the crew will continue working on maintenance around the gardens as well as planting the remaining plants. The bathroom crew adhered the tiles down and ensured that the roof was complete from the mason’s work the day before. They still have to paint the walls of the bathroom. The painting crew finished cleaning and painting the second classroom and began doing the detailed crevices of the first room. They focused on creating clean lines and coating hard-to-reach corners. Tomorrow they will continue this meticulous work and finish up by scrubbing the floors clean of paint stains.image

Today, our group learned about how truly hard we have to work to complete this project. With the heat and the long hours, we were worn out by lunch time, but all of the groups persevered until the end of the day cleaning, planting, and helping each other. Some of the highlights of the day included the bathroom group coming to help the painting and gardening groups when they could no longer continue working on their bathroom because they had to wait for the tiles to dry. They put in as much effort and time into our projects as if it was their own. I was so happy to see them take initiative and instead of slugging around, they decided to help their peers.image

Being El Lider Del Dia today was a bit daunting because I understood that all of the Glimpsers would be tired by the end of the day and that I had to keep my energy up to keep them excited, but I found some hidden storage of energy and it actually turned out great. During our energizer upon immediate arrival at the school, the group got really into the game and got excited to work! Yesterday when I was preparing to take on the El Lider Del Dia position, I was very anxious because I was not very confident in my leadership skills, but after today and the Pluses and Wishes that are given to the ELLD every nightly meeting, I feel much better about being a leader. It made me uneasy to lead the very peers who had used eyeliner to draw “I love rice” and an extended unibrow on my face or who I had exchanged funny toilet stories with. In the end though, I led the group on a productive day that was filled with tired moans and many laughs. I led them on another great day.