Today we woke up at 6:30am and had an exciting breakfast of Dominican radish and sausage links along with some fruit. Soon after, we were on the bus heading to our second day of working on our community action project in La Cañada de Los Gatos. We then went to work helping the locals mix cement and lay cement blocks. Every hour or so we switched groups of who was shoveling and who was helping to build so we could all get a chance to try everything. One of the challenges that we faced today was convincing the locals that the girls in our group could work just as hard as the boys could. Once we showed them what we could do, they let us work along side them. Then came another challenge, the hardware store called with some bad news regarding the materials we had ordered. Apparently, they had sold them to us without having them in stock but luckily a store farther out had exactly what we needed. Since the store was so far out we needed to find a way to get them delivered and that’s when the local community stepped in to save us. They drove some of their trucks to the store and came back quickly. We worked from 8 am to 1 pm then had lunch. We had lunch with the community in the church and shared some delicious beef, rice and vegetables. After we said our goodbyes, we loaded up to go back to the hotel.

After we arrived back to the hotel, we had the options to either shower and rest or go out and explore the city with one of our ambassadors. We had around roughly 3 hours of free time so many people decided to do both. 

When everyone returned by the curfew of 6:45pm, we got ready for dinner. We ate some amazing hot dogs topped with chili, corn and cheese along with fries and soda. Then it was time to wrap up our day with the nightly meeting which handed over the leader responsibilities to Vanessa and Michelle for tomorrow’s big day. 

To top off a long day of working, we all gathered to watch Mulan and have a nice movie night. We shared popcorn and other little snacks while we all sang the songs to the movie. We´re looking forward to finishing the project tomorrow!