Today was an amazing day for me and everyone else that is part of this amazing program! I had the opportunity of being the Lider del Dia on CAP 3. I usually wake up very tired, but today I woke everyone up before their wake up call with a positive attitude to motivate them to put their hearts into this amazing project (sorry guys, but it was necessary to get everyone on time on the bus to arrive at Jinova and give it our best :)!

After eating Charlie’s delicious food, we were all on time on the bus and did not make Jochi, our amazing bus driver/father, wait. We were so optimistic about this project and arrived to Jinova with an end goal in mind. I enjoyed seeing everyone talk about their next plan and their end goal for the CAP delivery. It was amazing seeing everyone show out their talents such as labor work (shout out to the two boys and hard working girls), the artistic group (for showing how well they love to draw and design posters with full love with every ones’ names on it, (including the actual community workers and our amazing bus driver, I am sure they feel like they were part of this as much as us Glimpsers were!), and our classroom team that had our amazing leader, Liz, use her teaching and classroom skills to apply them to this project to better help the Glimpsers see what a true teacher needs in a classroom environment.

After a few hours of hard work, we started seeing noticeable changes in the Community Center. The whiteboard and posters were complete and colorful. The walls were halfway done and very resistant. The classroom had so many decorations around such as curtains, paper hand-made decorations, and painted tables for the kids to enjoy during class time. In addition, two little girls joined us to help and they seemed super happy about what us Glimpsers were able to do for her community! The working environment was also really good, the communication team did a great job at translating for the non-Spanish speaking people. I enjoyed watching the non-Spanish speaking people communicate with hand signs, smiles, and using some Spanish words that they learned from asking their peers how to say certain phrases.

And….of course, the limonsillos nunca faltan! One of our community members, Sandy, climbed up the tree and cut off branches to get our favorite green rounded sweet fruit for us. I can not lie, it helped to stay motivated and interact with the workers more on our 5-10 minute breaks. At the end, we delivered them a Global Glimpse gift and took pictures of the end result as well as pictures of the Glimpsers and the community members to keep that memorable moment in our hearts forever!

Finally, we departed from Jinova sweaty but very happy. We arrived at our accommodation, and freshened up to enjoy Explore time around the city. Some of the groups ran into each other at the ice cream shop, markets, and the center of the city! We ran into Charlie and his family and many other people that we have been interacting with for the past 15 days in San Juan de la Maguana <3