Today was a wake up early day yet again for our last Sunday
in the DR. Today was the BIG day we have
all been waiting for…it was time to execute our Community Action Project. We got up and had breakfast that was hearty
and fulfilling. After our breakfast we
loaded our truck and headed to the Ludoteca where my group was ready to
implement their project. As we arrived and
devised the battle plan, it was great to see some of the English students
arrive to help out with everything that had to get done.
The students prepped the space by removing the toys and
stuff from the walls and placed them in the middle of the room. They then cleaned the walls in order to paint
them…the help of the volunteers was extremely helpful. As this was going on…another group of
students was prepping the outside, by pulling some weeds and cleaning the tires
so we could paint those as well. Once
all the prepping was done, it was time to commence the painting. We literally had a lot of painting to do and
it helped that we had volunteers. At one
point it turned out that we had too many volunteers and not enough painting
equipment to help us out. Therefore, we
sent one of the program coordinators and one of the students to get more
paintbrushes. Meanwhile, the group got
busy painting their hearts away, even though we had a lot of help, we still had
a lot to do. By lunch time we were about
three quarters of the painting done…but that of course was only the first
coat. Since we were painting on brick,
we definitely had to fill in the crevices and the grooves that the rollers were
not able to get. It was just amazing as
to how the students and volunteers utilized their resources and started
thinking outside the box to reach the 10 foot walls.
Around 12:30 we called it lunchtime and walked to the church
nearby to eat our to go lunches with our English students. After our brief lunch, seriously it was only
like 30 minutes if that, our group wanted to continue and wanted to finish at
least all the base coat and trimmings done.
As time continued to fly we were all working hard and got paint
everywhere…and I do mean everywhere, which means that we will have a lot of
cleaning to do tomorrow. We decided that
we would quit at 4:30 PM since we did not want to overt exert ourselves since
we would have half a day tomorrow to continue on the CAP project. Since we left early we headed to get some ice
cream at Bon and had some bonding time with our group and talked about what we
had accomplished and what we will work on tomorrow for our half day at the
Ludoteca. Once we made it back to the
hotel our group took showers and just relaxed, until dinner.
As for dinner, it was less than appetizing which was a
damper since I didn’t finish my lunch but oh well…guess I can’t have
scrumptious meals all the time. After
dinner we made our way back to the hotel and had the leadership meeting with
the next student leader of the day. We
then had our nightly meeting which was completely very comedic because of our
new student leader. We’ll see how he
does tomorrow.
Now all that is left is the nightly blog with the current
student leader of the day and then bedtime since it will be another exhausting
day since we’re back at work tomorrow.
Buenas
noches and hasta luego.
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