Hello, this is Madi and Johnny and today we both had the honor of being “Lider del Dia” for our very first CAP Delivery Day, which was a stressful but rewarding task. Since the CAP is solely the responsibility of the Glimpsers, we had to organize the purchasing of the materials along with delegating roles to each of the students. Now Johnny will give his POV on this mornings events.
There was a lot to do in the morning. We had a 7:30 wake up, however we received some bad instructions and woke up everyone 15 minutes early…They weren’t too happy. Everyone was on time to go to breakfast, which is pretty rare for us. It brightened everyone’s morning to see we were having pancakes with honey and fruit, instead of eggs and the dreaded Gallo Pinto. After breakfast, we needed to figure out who was going to buy paint for the school, and who was going to price the school supplies. After a 5 minute meeting we divided and conquered. My group who went to price school supplies while Madi and her group went to buy the painting materials. After meeting up at the hardware store, we discovered that they were out of blue paint. Our group went in search of paint and school supplies while the others took the purchased materials back to the hostel. I was coming down with something and my group ended up walking around for about 3 hours . By the end of the morning, we had our materials and still came in under budget (we had 8,000 cordobas left!). We ate at Comedor Deja Vú, and had lunch buffet style. Everyone was avoiding Gallo Pinto and Queso Fresco. I was thirstier than ever from that walk. I drank my juice and the contents of my water bottle. Now I’ll hand this blog off to Madi.
After lunch, we met back at the hostel so that the next leaders of the day (Alice and Jamarc) could have their leadership meeting while the rest of us took a much needed nap. At 1:30, we boarded the bus with all of our supplies and headed off to La Goyena (the site of our CAP). The bus was boisterous as the anticipation built up to finally begin our CAP. When we arrived in La Goyena, Johnny and I divided up the group. While most people worked on beginning to clean the insides of the classrooms, others cleaned off the desks and old painting materials from the previous GG delegations. I soon found myself running around from group to group, working on various projects while simultaneously checking on everyone and giving out jobs. However, we quickly discovered that the minimal cleaning supplies that the community had (approximately 6 brooms, a mop, 2 rakes, buckets, and some laundry detergent) would not be able to strip the layers of dirt and glue that covered the walls. Despite these issues, everyone pulled together to get the job done. Some of the boys sacrificed their shirt sleeves to use as rags, while members of the community pulled together to gather more materials. By the end of the day, the group was left slightly unsatisfied. Although we did accomplish some good work, we all knew that we had a lot of improving to do for the next day.
On the bus ride home, the music blared as usual as many of us partook in singing along to Brayan’s various song choices. We came home excited and hungry for a dinner reminiscent of home consisting of pizza and juice. The meal left the whole group content as we went off to our last English tutoring session – which was a bittersweet moment for many of us. Most of the groups took a break from their usual lesson and took the time to get to know their students on a personal level, while other played various games to send off their classes on a positive note. After saying our goodbyes, we went back to the hostel and had our usual nightly meeting, and passed of the torch to our next leaders of the day, Jamarc and Alice.
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s blog to see how our second day of CAP goes, and thanks for reading!
Madi and Johnny