Hello papas y mamas y familias!

Today was wonderful, the GSE staff picked the leaders of the day who are writing this right now, so I guess that’s pretty chill. FYI this fantastic blog post is written Anna Watson, Alisha Nazar, Harnoor Sidhu, and Noah Packer. For obvious reasons, we were picked first haha. Our day started bright and early at 7:00 am. Breakfast was fresh baked bread, jam, butter, and bananas. After, we hit the beach, sadly not to swim, but instead we collected driftwood that we will be using in our projects later this week! We had fun picking out the right pieces in order to build tables, chairs, and planter boxes.

We were able to fill up a whole truck with driftwood! Looking forward to making some awesome stuff with this 🙂

Loading up the truck with Marcelo, the local program coordinator

After that we (the leaders of the day) started a game of Zap, which everyone seemed to enjoy. We then went back to the hostel and got to go buy snacks the air-conditioned store, which was a welcome relief from the heat! We took the bus to Doña Rosa’s for lunch, which was delicious fish with rice. After that we had a really interesting and meaningful discussion about cultural norms in different areas in the world, as well as our experiences with different cultures. We then walked to Fanny High School to work with the Eco Club kids to make planter boxes, plant trees, compost, and make chairs and tables. 

Before we got to work, we got matched up with an eco-club students and introduced each other to the rest of the group after chatting a bit.

Dylan and Cecilio dug too far and hit a water pipe, getting themselves soaked, which was one of the funny highlights of day. (Don’t worry we fixed the pipe 😉 ) Communicating with the Eco Club kids could be difficult but was so rewarding, and everyone seemed to enjoy their conversations. After all the hard work, we all bonded by playing a game of basketball and a game of soccer with everyone.

Then we walked back to the same place we had lunch for dinner, and ate rice with lentils and fried mashed potatoes. We took the bus back to the hostel afterwards, and talked/debriefed about our experiences of the day related to our expectations for how the trip would go, and what it’s actually like. With that, we’ve caught up to present and we’re writing this blog post! Excited to hear from all of you, and looking forward to seeing you Sunday to tell you all more about our adventure!

Fabricio with the layup

— Noah, Alisha, Harnoor, and Anna