Ball is Life

Hello everyone, we’re Christian Mota and Jelani Hill. Today, we were the leaders of the day for the 2^nd free day on this trip. The first thing on the agenda was an 8am wake up call with an 8:30-9:30am breakfast, that included milk and cereal. The next thing we did was we planned our CAP project that is coming up these next three days in the community, Bejuco Aplastado. After that we had our first explore time of the day which included groups going to play basketball, having brunch at Mr. Coffee and shopping at the local souvenir store. We had to be back by 12:15 to be on time for our 12:30 lunch which everyone enjoyed. Following our lunch, we had our second explore time from 1:30 to 4:45 in which some groups decided to go to Freddy’s Pizza, Nuno’s Pizza and the group favorite, Bon Helados for ice cream. Prior to the nightly meeting, we had a 5:00-7:00pm free time which involved many heated games of Uno, followed by a fantastic dinner prepared by the fabulous Licelot. To finish the fun day off, we held our nightly meeting in which we passed the torch down to Leslie and Grace. All in all, today was a good day.

Enjoying Free Day

From today we learned that with all the right pieces and all the right attitudes, 25 strangers can become a close family in no time. We’ve all bonded with each other, been there for each other, and most importantly created memories with each other.  Compared to the first day when everyone was in a large group, today everyone broke off into smaller groups of different people they didn’t know on the first day. Over the course of the past week and a half, this group has learned a lot from each other and learned from the communities we’ve seen and experiences we’ve shared together. In particular, Chris and I have become so close, to the point we’re like brothers and have created a lifetime bond. To finish off this blog post, we would like to shine a light on everyone we´ve gotten to know in these 12 days, community members, Bonao locals, and inspiring people included. The things we learned have changed all our lives, for the better.

Playing Cards