Day 9: Fun Day! (No. 2)

Hello from Xoie and Lebron!

Today we woke up at 6:50 and got the speaker from Liz to play music during our wakeup call this morning! We ran around to the different rooms and woke everyone up with some salsa music and a little dancing to start the day off right. It is “Fun Day” after all! 

We then went down for breakfast at 8 am and ate some pancakes (with some chocolate ones this time!), eggs with bacon, and our daily fruit. It was a 10/10 breakfast, especially those chocolate pancakes! Those hit! We left Rancho at 9 and got onto the Wa-Wa and made our way back to San Pedro De Marcois by 9:30. Everyone broke back into their shopping groups and hit the town to fulfill their special shopping lists. 

Some of the key items we got were keychains, mugs, snacks, shoes, t-shirts, jewelry, and a bunch of snacks! We were in town for about three hours and made our way back to the Rancho for lunch. Our lunch was veggies, steak and peppers, rice and beans, and fruit. The steak was delicious and definitely Lebron’s favorite by far! After we ate, we were supposed to go to the beach, but Mother Nature had other plans. She came in full force with a tropical thunderstorm, so everyone went their own ways and took advantage of the free time!

Everyone raved about the three-hour naps with the rain hitting against the roof, lulling us into a much-needed rest. Others spent some time in the pool before the thunder had started.  Honestly, we view this as a blessing in disguise because everyone got a bunch of rest before our first day of the CAP tomorrow! We know it will be challenging and intense, both physically and mentally, but we are all ready to persevere. 

After our break time, we ate dinner. Our dinner was ribs, rice and beans, fries, fried cheese, and macaroni salad. It was all delicious! We then had our nightly meeting where we recapped the day, presented the design plan for our project tomorrow, and shared our roses and thorns for the day. We loved hearing that almost everyone viewed our rained-out beach day as a positive! Additionally, some of the feedback we got was that we were some of the most enthusiastic LDDs of the whole trip! We really kept the energy going and were told we were a great example of how we should all act during our CAP project!

We learned that one of our biggest challenges for the CAP tomorrow is keeping up with the momentum. Liz and Holli prepared us that one of the biggest challenges is more mental than it is physical. We are prepared for the next few days to be incredibly challenging, but we know that by the end of this, we will have made an incredible difference in the lives of two families. While we are only struggling for three days out here, our discomfort is making a huge impact and will be remembered forever. 

We are super excited for tomorrow, but of course, we are a bit nervous. We are excited for Wythe and Demarcus to take over our roles, and we are confident that they will be great leaders and look out for all of us while we are working in the heat.

We are so excited that our trip is coming to a close and that we will be seeing all of you SO soon. We are busy soaking up the last few days here and hope to learn as much as possible during this experience. 

Talk to you all soon!

Xoie and Lebron.