CAP Day 1 – Complete!

Today, we woke up at 7 am to start the work day. We made sure everyone was awake and then at 7:30 gathered everyone for breakfast. Our amazing chef Diego made us banana pancakes, scrambled eggs, assorted fruit, and orange juice as well as coffee to drink. Very delicious! We then had a mental warm-up meeting where we reviewed the schedule, quote, and question of the day. This was a great way to get our minds focused and ready to complete the many tasks associated with our CAP (Community Action Project). We walked to Escuela Santa Rosa, about 3 quarters of a mile away, from our base house. Most of the walk was uphill and it was very hot outside. The sun was out guns blazing! ´When we got to the school, we met Carlos, a local handyman who admired our drive to help the community. He is helping us throughout the CAP project to teach us how to do certain skills as well as complete any parts of the project we aren´t skilled enough to do on our own. We divided ourselves into 2 groups of 10, Kennedy and Olivia taking separate groups, and one group cleaned a wall to prep it for painting while the other removed rocks from an area to be able to plant trees. Then we reminded the group every 30 minutes about water breaks and re-applying sunscreen. May I say, lots of sunscreen and bug spray were used and A LOT of water was drunk. This labor was about 6 hours split into two sections of 3 hours with a one-hour lunch break. During the work, lots of kids came up to us and spoke to us in Spanish so we could practice our Spanish. A couple of the Glimpsers played soccer and danced with them. During our lunch break, the school cafeteria workers served us lentil with chicken and lentil stew with rice. During the rest of our lunch hour, we headed to the mini-market next door to pick up snacks. We finished the remainder of the work day in good spirits and got to start painting and plastering walls a bit. We started the walk back to the base house around 4 pm as it started to pour down. We arrived home 10 minutes later, and everyone hot-tailed to the bathroom to wash off all the dirt. Then, many took naps while OLIVIA JUMPED IN THE POOL (fully clothed) as a dare (¨encouragement¨) from Bri our GGL. We gathered everyone for dinner where we ate Pastel de Yuca con Carne (cheese, mashed yuca, beef, spices, and vegetables). This meal was similar to shepherd’s pie. It was SO TASTY!  We had our nightly meeting to end the long day of bossing people around and looking fly in our dirty clothes! All jokes aside, the day was very great as we got lots of work done. We enjoyed being LDDs.

Peace out,

Olivia and Kennedy

Erin, Bri, and the PCs will continue to post pictures in our Google folder. To see pictures from any day, here’s the link.