Hey, family and friends! I’m Mallie Sovan-Soeung and today I had the opportunity to be El Lider Del Dia for the second day of our Community Action Project (CAP). I really had to step out of my comfort zone by projecting my voice and leading the pack to make this a successful and productive day for the whole delegation.

We got a chance to sleep in a little with a wake up call at 8am. We headed to the project site, Asociacion Ninas y Ninos del Fortin, after breakfast. We had a long day ahead of us, but we knew exactly what needed to be done. We had about a six hour time frame to execute our tasks for CAP. I was very pleased with the amount of work that was done today. I noticed that everyone was working hard and together as a team for a majority of the time. Everyone seemed to enjoy getting their hands dirty today and having a little fun by jamming along to the music from the small, portable speakers and an old iPod. Even the children who were there enjoyed watching us in anticipation of their new space to play and learn.

As we got closer to the end of the day, although we had a good amount of work that still needed to be done, everyone was feeling tired and materials were running low. For example, the group that was painting tables and benches and the group that was restoring the playground structure were running extremely low on paint. So once again, our team leaders for CAP will need to wake up early tomorrow to run some errands to get the necessary supplies for the execution of the project.

Lunch was delivered to the CAP site from our usual comedor. With our meal, we had our fresh mango juice packaged in little bags that locals call bolsitas. It was definitely a new experience for me, drinking juice out of a plastic bag. We were also surprised with desserts along with our lunch. We had fresh mangos and everyone’s favorite snack, a sweet, triangular bread called pico, from a local bakery.

For dinner, we were all again surprised because we were served a ham sandwich on white bread with a side of fries. I’m sure this is what got everyone in a good mood for English tutoring. It was a nice meal after a long, productive day of painting, digging, pulling, planting, watering, and playing that was done today. Tomorrow we will all finalize our Community Action Project and include all of the small details to show that we take pride in our hard work.Blog 14.2 (small)

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