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Hello beautiful people of the world! It’s Lisa and Alexia here to tell you about our hectic yet rewarding final CAP day! Through the CAP project, there were many lessons learned and memories created. One thing that we think the whole group got a lot of practice doing today was teamwork. From the beginning of this project to the end, our teamwork improved tremendously. At first, there was a lot of chaos. People’s plans didn’t go as they intended to- some found themselves feeling tired and sick but we all managed to pull through and finish off strong. Since there were still some materials that needed to be bought, half of the group left early and half stayed back for an hour or so to buy materials. While painting the mural, a lot of us and some of the children from the community engaged in a paint fight and later struggled to remove the paint from our arms and legs. Some of us are still walking around with painted arms even after taking long showers. Both of us are even writing this blog with the most colorful hands ever seen! Anyway, our mural turned out fantastic with the help of the locals who swung by. It felt more meaningful to be working side by side with the people in the community, because it gave our project a stronger sense of impact.

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” One of our fellow glimpsers, Chelsea, mentioned today during our nightly meeting that this quote applied to our whole project saying, “We could’ve honestly just raised the money and given them the stuff to plant by themselves, but instead we got the whole community involved and we tried teaching them how to take care of it after we were gone.” After hearing this, we all agreed as a whole group because we actually could have just given them the money we had donated and saved ourselves a bunch of headaches, sore muscles, arguments, dirty clothing (and bodies!) but instead we decided to take the initiative and work together to make a space that looked like a large trash bin into something beautiful that a community could use and spend time in on a daily basis. As a result of today, everyone felt accomplished and proud seeing what we turned from a pile of mess to a garden of life. The pictures attached to this blog say it all! The hard work that was put into our CAP paid off when we realized how much of a change we created.

Later on in the day, we also had our last English tutoring class. We were all pretty sad to say goodbye to our students after getting to know them so well but we made sure to pencil down their contact info. Everything started off as usual. First, we taught them their last lesson, secondly, we all bonded over cake, chips, cookies, and soda (healthy, right??) and after all that good stuff, we handed out certificates to the students for not only coming to class these past two weeks but also the whole summer. Now, I don’t know about you guys, but I think that’s dedication right there!

So those would be the two highlights of our day. We hope you enjoyed reading this blog as much as we enjoyed writing it. We’re going to attempt scrubbing the paint off our hands, arms and legs for the fourth time now. Have fun looking at the pictures! See you in three days!!!!