Day 8: Cap Day 3

Hola hola, this is Aidan Nguyen and Sophia Than as your LDD’s for today!

For breakfast this morning, we got Gallo Pinto, eggs with tomato sauce, bread, pineapple, ham, and papaya. After a quick game of infection tag as our mental warmup, we split up into two groups to finish up our final CAP day. Today was the hottest day of the trip with less wind and rain than usual, and we had to walk uphill for around 15 minutes before arriving.

One group had to paint two previous bus stops while the other started to clean a new bus stop. Group One led by Sophia used new metallic gray paint to coat the metal on bus stops. While painting, Colin played energtic music to start the day off in a high note. During our break, there was a nice local who gave us bananas to eat. Additionally, a few of us went to a house nearby to clean our paint brushes so we can use a new coat of paint. Even though there was new encounters of spiders and wasp, we were able to finish painting one of the bus stops before lunch. Unfortunately, our group ran out of paint to complete the other bus stop, so we had to grab more paint from the local store on our way back down to our accomodation.

The second group led by Aidan focused on cleaning the new bus stop in the morning. Since it was a new bus stop, we had to go further than usual, making us exhausted by the time we got there (but the view made it all worth it!). We had serveral people using brooms and brushes to scrape off the moss, dirt, and cobwebs while removing dull paint. The paint was starting to come off, so we needed to use our metal brushes to remove all the dry paint before we recoat it. Luckily, we were able to use nearby hoses to clean our brushes and the surrounding area. After a while of working and a lot of water breaks, we were able to not only clean up all the dirt and moss, but also started painting the walls and pillars. Because of how long it took to walk to our bus stop, we had to leave 15 minutes early so we could have lunch on time.

For lunch today, we had rice with meat, potatoes and salad. With plenty of free time after lunch, we headed back to the bus stops to complete our community action project. The two groups switched bus stops, so Group 1 had to walk to the last bus stop to complete the painting while the other group stayed back to finish the two bus stops next to each other. Group 1 had a chill afternoon with painting the metal on the roof and the sides of the walls since Group 2 did most of the work in the morning. Our group was able to finish the painting of the bus stop with plenty of time to hang out for free time. All of us felt good completing Cap on positive note because we were able to make positive impact to the community!

After Lunch, Group 2 had to finish painting Group 1’s bus stops and repaint the logo of the buses. Since most of the group was too short to reach the top, some people needed to use a bucket. Since group 1 finished painting most of the bus stop, we had some free time to talk about what we wanted to do when we got home and everyone’s home lives. We finished pretty quickly and it was raining, so we stayed under the bus stop and continued to bond. Once group 1 was finished, we both headed back towards the base home.

When everyone got back from CAP, we were able to make phones calls from home and after have more free time until dinner, which was nachos. Before the nightly meeting started, we watched an environmental video to prepare us for the speaker we will have tomorrow and prepare for the theme of the next day. Nightly meeting had us talking about our day, reflecting on cap, and sharing our big love to the group.

Link to photo drive: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Btbj68EeDnc9G4DS6