Well we woke up early to the alert system for tropical storm
Chantal that was spinning in the Atlantic.
That being said when I peeked through the window early in the morning
and noticed that there was blue skies,
white clouds and the sun was shining.
That being said, all the leaders got on their computers to monitor the
progress and the expected landfall for the storm was going to be later today.
After find that information we got ready to eat breakfast
and once the program manager arrived she told us that we would continue with
today’s schedule until there was an immediate threat and we couldn’t fulfill the activities scheduled. So the first thing we did was get our trunks
and athletic clothes because we were going on our field trip to Angela’s
Ranch. What I found interesting as we traveled
to the Ranch was that the sky totally changed color and turned grey and as we
approached to the ranch we also noticed that it started to sprinkle, but that
did not damper our day since it was our FUN DAY! We spent 5 hours at Angela’s Ranch
and we all had a blast. There was a
pool, a clubhouse with a pool table, dominoes, and cards. There was also a cover patio that looked like
a hut…it was really nice of Angela the owner of the Hotel to invite us to her
ranch free of charge. She even provided
lunch for us, which was yummy and very thoughtful of her.
We left Angela’s Ranch at 2 PM and make our trip back to the
hotel. We had some free time and a group
of students went out to get stuff with James…too bad while they were out it
started to rain quite a bit and once they made it back to the hotel they were
wet. We had a pretty lengthy downtime
due to the in climate weather being that tropical storm Chantal was approaching
so the rest of the day had to be modified.
We had our CAP seminar at 4:30 PM, met with the leaders of the
organization that we are partnering with and had a share of ideas as to how
each group can help the community.
Walking around and watching and hearing what they were doing was
amazing.
As the seminar continued, the GG leaders had to literally
revamp tomorrow’s day…unfortunately we cannot complete our second reality
challenge # 2 of working like a local.
We were supposed to go to the local market and help defeathering dead
chickens and prep them for sale, but because of the weather and the health and
safety of our students, this isn’t happening.
Instead, we had to brainstorm and write up an entire new schedule for
Thursday…even though it was crunch time we were able to pull it off, awesome
way to use team work! After the seminar was over we headed in the heavy rain to
eat dinner. Yup, you guessed it we had
our raingear and all but still got very wet as we make our trek to the restaurant. What made the trek worth it was the food…we
had beef for a change and potato salad with eggplant and rice with beans and
meat…can one say, “yum!”
After dinner we made our way back to the hotel, and yes it
was still raining, but not as hard the kids were acting up going bonkers and
having fun in the rain. We warned them
about getting to rowdy and getting hurt because of the slick concrete. Do you think they listen?!?!? No, so you can
guess what happened…one of our students slipped and hit his head. We are monitoring his progress and I am sure
he will be fine. Upon entering the hotel
we were remembered that we had a nightly meeting and since it was raining we
had to change the location to the 3rd floor restaurant instead of
the 4th floor balcony. It was
an interesting nightly meeting with some of the same old antics of some of the
students, but for the most part everyone was in high spirits despite the rainy
weather.
Once the nightly meeting was done, helped the student leader
of the day write her blog and it was during this time that the heaviest rain
came down, with strong winds. From the
looks of the tropical storm it looks like we will be “spared” per se and only
get gusty winds and a lot of rain. As
for Haiti, that’s another story.
I’m tired but at the same time stoked that I will be going
to bed before 11:00 PM which is a first for me this entire trip…YAHOO!
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