Hello everyone! Today, CAP 2, was our LDD day and one of the most tiring days yet. We woke up at 7, had some toast and eggs and went straight to Las Cruses community to further progress on our CAP project. After a relatively slow day yesterday, today we really got our momentum going, and we are nearly finished with beautifying the community’s new preschool. We began painting our tree mural and the adjacent wall (pictured above). We also painted the floor outside the room with hopscotch, butterflies, and other small paintings. We ate lunch and shared our leftovers with the dogs. After finishing the majority of our murals, we built cubbies for the preschoolers as well as a fence to keep the animals (pigs, chickens, dogs, etc.) from disturbing their learning environment. We returned to our hostel “El Chico” at 5 and had dinner followed by some free time. We wrapped up the day with or nightly meeting and went into some more free time.

Today,we learned how cooperative everyone can be when we have to get a lot of work done. In fact, both of us were shocked by how much we were able to get done in such a short amount of time. We are proud of how flexible everyone was despite a few setbacks, for example missing walls. Everyone filled in any job that needed to be done without complaining! Although we still had not completed our project, the children were super enthusiastic about the new additions to their community. Towards the end of the day, all of them started playing hopscotch and admiring all the paintings.

As LDDs it was important to remind everyone to stay hydrated and on task, given that we had numerous tasks to get done. I (Andrea) learned the importance of teamwork. Moreover, I learned how appreciative we should be of our education back in the U.S. The small kids here were so excited for the beautiful little space we are creating for them, and it warms my heart so much. I (Harsh) learned more about my leadership style. Since I’m not a naturally loud person, I had to become a leader in other ways. For example, I decided to be more behind the scenes and focus more on checking in with the GGLs about itinerary changes and updates.

We are excited to see the results of our hard work, and we hope the kids will have a much better future ahead of them.