Hello!

My name is Carol Alcazar and I had the honor to be leader of the day for CAP 3. CAP stands for Community Action Program where we do a community service project for Rio Blanco, a place in the mountains. Today was a very challenging but very interesting and fun day. We all woke up at 6 am and had breakfast at 7. After breakfast, we all stepped up our game and worked together to finalize our plan for our big project for Thursday, Friday, and maybe partially on Saturday.

After ¨finishing¨ our presentation we had to present our plan to the teachers. They gave us so much constructive and positive feedback. So of course we went and made changes to our project and we had a second chance to present it. It was a bit more hectic the second time presenting because we only had about 30 minutes to make changes. Of course, we did the best we could and our best was more than good enough because afterwards we went to Rio Blanco and presented our plan for our project. Our main goal is to make a very small park at Rio Blanco into a more fun park. The park only has a sand box, a swing set  and a few building blocks. We want to add a lot more things to the park. So we told the community leaders that we are planning to build a merry go round, as well as finishing up a see saw. We are also planning to put padding on the floor so that the kids won’t get hurt. Then we are planning to decorate the walls by painting a giraffe and adding educational things to it like a multiplication table. The community leaders loved our plan and are extremely happy that we are doing as much as we can for the kids of Rio Blanco.

After about 8 hours of pure planning, we got a big chunk of time to relax. We had free time for about an hour and a half. A lot of students went out for a treat, others went to make phone calls, others went to get a haircut, and some of us just stayed at the Fundacion. Then the best part of the day came. Dinner!!! We had Grilled sandwiches with seasoned  and some of us french fries with a very cool cup of orange juice. We all ended our night with full stomachs. About half an hour later, we had our nightly meeting and discussed things about what we can do better whether as a group or as in individual. It is a great learning experience that we will all use in our futures.