Hello this is Haley Baugher and Zen Thumparkkul, and we were Lider Del Dias on free day #2.  First we will start off with a quick recap of the day.  Yesterday we wanted to stay committed to our CAP, so as a group, we decided to spend the first half of our free day completing our project.  The day started with us waking up our fellow glimpsers at 7:30am, followed by breakfast 8.  After we arrived at Carlos Garbay and delivered a brief motivational speech, we split the group up again into roof and mural committees.  Miraculously, the mural was completed mostly just in time with all four regions of Ecuador fully painted.

           

            

Although, the roof committee faced even more challenges, they managed to complete the plan for a fully safe ceiling, ensuring the protection of students. THey also hammered in a metal frame for the roof, despite only having 2 hammers amongst 7 students.  The rest of the ceiling plan will be completed by the next delegation.

We ended our time at Garbay with thank you and farewell speech to Maria, the director of the school who was finally retiring after more than 35 years.  Because we wanted to deliver the speech in Spanish, we asked for Kimberly, Dallana, Andrea, and Diego’s assistance in translating the speech.  Despite our inexperience with Spanish, our gratitude reached Maria and she was touched to the point of tears with our effort.

At 1pm we had lunch at our usual spot, Nativa, and then spent our free time visiting the supermarket and walking all the way downtown. So we only had 45 minutes downtown to try to call.  Sorry if some of us couldn’t reach you.

After meeting up at Parque Sucre, we took our bus back to the hostel and wrote letters of appreciation to our sponsors and donors.  Perhaps the most climatic part of our day was dinner.  To everyone’s surprise, A large platter of whole roasted guinea pig “cuy” arrived at our table.  Although reluctantly, most of us tried the foreign meat, and many agreed it had the consistency of duck and the taste of fish almost.

Following dinner was the nightly meeting and the much anticipated THE BOYZ concert: this group consists of all 5 boys on this trip.  They had been rehearsing for this concert for days.  The turn out was great thanks to the management team: Julia, Katie C. Maddie, and Meghan.

As Lideres Del Dia, the committment that the group had to the CAP touched us the most.  Not only did we sacrifice our last free day for the project, we also exhibited great camaderie throughout its completion.  Everyone encouraged each other to keep perservering, be it with “si se puedes” (yes we can)  or by supporting each other throughout the project struggles.  We hope everyone in our delegration can continue to positively impact each other throughout the rest of our journey and beyond.

 

 

Due to technical difficulties once again we cannot upload or write tonight we hope to finish at dinner tomorrow –

however I wanted to let parents and family know that because we all gave up our morning free time and Diego his day off we all didn’t get a chance to call .  We will try tomorrow – Friday around 4 Ecuador time which is 2 hours later than of California