Our First CAP Day!

Hey everyone! Today was a very challenging and exciting day for all of us, as this is our first CAP (Community Action Project) Day. We started the day with breakfast bright and early at 7:30 am, then we started getting ready to pack our supplies for the day. The plan was to go to the school to paint the fence gate covering the basketball court and place wet concrete on the ground to make a new platform for the kids to eat in! As the Leaders of the Day, we wanted to make sure everyone had what they needed, such as sunscreen and water, so nobody got hurt from the sun. The day started off with the sun beaming down on us, as any regular day in Costa Rica, but that didn’t stop us from anything. We knew we were going to complete a decent amount of work for our first CAP day. Eventually, we reach the school where we were going to work with and get started around 9:00 am – 9:30 am. We started by getting a tour of the school. It was beautiful, as each room was filled with color and what looked like much care. We all meet up inside the basketball court to get started with the project. As we were waiting for our supplies to be ready, we start playing a group game together. The game was interesting, we all were in a circle and had to put our heads down. When the person running the game says to look up, we all need to look at someone and if they look back at you, you lose the game. This kept us entertained as we were playing for quite a while! Eventually, we were separated into two groups: one group to paint the fences and one group to start mixing the concrete. Neither of these tasks was made to be easy and quick, yet we all still had an amazing time and bonded well together. The tasks were all about teamwork and playing your part, which everyone did and made easier for all of us. As we are taking our lunch break, we all gather inside the teachers’ lunch area for a delicious meal around 12:00 pm. The food was amazing, as always. We ate pork with pico de gallo, rice, beans, and fresh corn tortilla chips on the side. Once we finish lunch, we started back on our hard manual labor, then take a break around 2:00 pm and got a couple of volleyballs and basketballs to play around with. It thankfully starts raining later in the break so the weather cooled down a bit as a treat. We finish our project for the day at around 4:00 pm with smiles, concrete, and silver paint on all of our faces. We knew we all made a small change in the community and it was an amazing way to start off the first CAP day.

Best Wishes – Catherine and Logan

P.S. A new Turrialba picture was received! Memo is taking the spotlight, as always.