Greetings from Hailey Cortazar,

Today, we began our Community Action Project (CAP). The day began with a wake-up call at 7:00 am. We consumed an exceptional breakfast cooked by the one and only Isabel. As Painting Captain, I had to clear up a misunderstanding with our providers once we arrived at the site. After receiving sufficient materials, we were able to begin murals alongside the therapy room renovation team. Unfortunately, during lunch at approximately 1:00 pm, the therapy room group was to disband due to insufficient sponge installment materials. On a more positive note, this meant that our painting groups were granted additional support in our endeavors. Therefore, a great quantity of progress was made in painting the first mural and planning the second.

Hi, it’s Jacci here! When we first got into the dark room, it was very daunting. There were nails, spiders, and webs everywhere; it was just a mess. It took us a while to get everything off the walls and ceilings, but we made it work. After sorting out and taking out the trash from the room, we got straight to mopping the floors, which also took a while. We may have gone a bit overboard with the bleach and the water, but then again, the space really needed it.

When we learned that we had to disband during lunch, a lot of us were sad about it. But we quickly found other things to do to help out the remainder of the group projects. One group painted beautiful murals on the walls which included bright pictures, letters, numbers, and words of affirmation written in Spanish. Another group painted a pathway in colorful stripes. I volunteered to help repaint tires. It was a messy job, and I accidentally painted my shoe green, but that was a fun mistake to make. While tomorrow I go back to painting the tires, it still hurts that we can’t finish the dark room the way we intended. Despite this, it was still a fun and hard-working day. On the bright side, we are going to donate all the materials for the dark room and give our plan to the facility so they can carry it out in the future.

We concluded the day with another extravagant meal blessed upon us by Isabel. The night was extra special because we celebrated Vanessa’s birthday. Isabel made a delicious birthday cake and many of us didn’t wait until dessert time to eat it. Nightly activities followed, including our nightly meeting to receive constructive feedback on our leadership and pass the “torch” on to Saara and Ethan. For their talent, Saara showed us her film project, and Ethan, being one of the athletes in our group, showed off by doing one-hand pushups. Afterwards, there was cup pong, card games, interesting conversations, and (hopefully) showers.

See you soon!