Hola familia y amigos! Nosotros somos Carlos y Shelby desde Sebastopol, CA de Analy High School. Today was the commencement of our Community Action Project (CAP) in the breathtaking Laguna de Apoyo, forty minutes outside of our host town, Granada. The CAP is a sustainable project aimed to aid a specific community in some way or form; a gift from us to Nicaragua. A garden seemed more than suitable for the isolated community of Laguna de Apoyo, allowing the students and their families at the local primary school to learn about healthy ways to eat and create a self-sufficient system to grow their own food.
Today’s overview: We began our day at six in the morning with a lot of aloe vera in attempt to heal our painful sunburns that we received to day before. We knew from the start that today was not going to be easy. After a quick breakfast of liquified beans and homemade tortillas (yum?), we met back at the hostel to figure out the supplies and budget for our project. This was particularly difficult due to our lack of knowledge of the area in which we would build, paint, plant, and create or garden. However, after much discussion and teamwork, we sent our shopping teams out and got the job done! From plants to seeds to paint and paintbrushes, we prepared ourselves for a day of hard labor. We hopped on the bus and were off to the Laguna! Eager to see our work space, we arrived at La Escuela de La Laguna de Apoyo, with little elementary schoolers running around the mini campus. To our surprise, we were presented with a 5×10 ft space of rocks and dirt to build our grand community garden… to say the least, we were a bit disappointed. However, we were ready to make the best of our situation and got to work. Despite some frustration and disorganization, we were able to stick it out and set up for what will be an amazing project. Using our ripped biceps, sharp shovels and teamwork we started our project by removing a concrete pillar from the center of our workspace. Success. Little by little our project started to come together, from weeding, planting and painting the already established concrete planter boxes to painting and constructing our own planter boxes. We set ourselves up for a good day tomorrow. We left the laguna, and came back to the hostel to prepare ourselves for dinner and another day of English tutoring. After waiting at the comedor for forty minutes for our food to be ready (they forgot about us), we scarfed down our fried frijole (bean) and carne (meat) empenadas in order to be on time of our 6 o’clock tutoring. Despite the power going out for a brief moment, our classes were successful and excited yet disappointed for our last class tomorrow. We ended our night with a lovely nightly meeting and are all pumped for or CAP delivery day tomorrow!
Through a bit of chaos and disorganization, we, as a team, learned the importance of flexibility and teamwork and were able to act as a unit, listening and complying with one another. As the Leaders of the Day, we faced some minor hardships and exercised what we knew best as glimpsers. We all functioned as a family and are very excited to see what we can produce tomorrow as our finished CAP project! We are on the home stretch and miss you all!
