Day 7: CAP project begins

Hello Everyone! This is your day 7 leaders of the day: Arianna, Marfil, and Natalia.

Our day started off with opening our eyes at 6 am to prepare ourselves to wake everyone up at 7 am. Marfil was determined to wake up the boys and made sure to do so by screaming into their villa, and they woke up for sure. When it was the GGL’s turn to get woken up, our trip coordinator, Daniel, scared us through his window before we could figure out which door was his and knock. We gathered everyone for breakfast, where we had grilled cheese sandwiches (Dominican-style breakfast sandwiches) with ham, lettuce, tomato, and mayo and ketchup. Once everyone was finished, we did a last-minute chore and made sure everyone had their dirty laundry gathered to get it washed. Finally, it was time to head out on a fun ride on a safari truck to our worksite for the first day of our CAP. So, what is CAP? CAP stands for Community Action Project, where, in this case, we are mixing and dumping cement so that the construction workers can lay it for a new house foundation for a family in need. We started our project in the morning and took a pause at noon to return to the villa for lunch, which we had rice+beans, steak, salad, and some fruit on the side. We were also kindly given a liter of Coca-Cola by one of the community members who was nearby, watching us do our project, which we all enjoyed with our lunches! We then got back on the safari buses to go back to the same CAP site to finish the entryway and porch of the house. It seemed like we all got into the flow of the project and working together because we finished the foundation with 30 minutes to spare! We really enjoyed watching everyone work hard and check in with each other in the heat we were working in. We all took turns mixing, shoveling, getting water, and bringing the cement to the foundation. Everyone made sure to switch with each other when someone got tired, which made the process so much more feasible.

With that extra time, we were able to squeeze in a last-minute grocery store run, where we were able to buy more snacks and a bunch of other things as well! Following the grocery store, we made it back to the villa, where we had some time to freshen up before starting our daily program seminar, where we had the chance to write a letter of appreciation to sponsors, thanking them for all of their support towards the program.

After our seminar, we had a delicious dinner, TACOS!!! Which Marfil (I had been craving them for two days now) and many others were very excited for. We had both tacos de pollo y de res with lettuce, pico de gallo, and guacamole. And lastly, during the nightly meeting, we ended the night by sharing our pluses and wishes for the day, which were all positive, especially from the guys when they thanked us for waking them up. And to conclude the night, we got an amazing talent show performance from our new LDD’s, Valeria, Nadia, and Aron. You will hear more from them tomorrow for CAP day 2.

– Big love from your day 7 LDD’S: Marfil, Arianna, and Natalia(aka the triple threat, aka M.A.N.)