The final goodbye.

Hola familias,

We are the leaders of the day, Daria and Jhoselyn. Today we started our day at 6am waking up the lovely children so they can start or finish packing. Today they all wanted to wake up at different times, some wanted to wake up at 6am others wanted to wake up at 6:45 but everyone needed to wake up at 7am to eat breakfast at 8am. For breakfast we had fried yuka, fried chicken, watermelon, and pineapple lemonade juice. We then had our closing reflection seminar where we started off by sharing significant moments and lessons we learned during the trip. After this, we then separated into two groups in which one sat in a circle of chairs facing the people standing up. The group that was standing went around to tap the shoulder of those they felt the prompt fit the most. Some of these prompts included, “someone that you’ll miss, someone that motivates you, and someone that makes you laugh the most”. During this activity, those sitting left their eyes closed in order to not know who had tapped their shoulder. After two rounds of rotating seats, we then all stood up and looked into the eyes of those we felt the prompt fit the most. The next activity included three sections of start, stop, and continue. This activity included writing statements which advocated for habits to continue, start, or finish that we learned from the trip. We then sat back in the circle where we were given sheets to write our names on. On these sheets of paper, each individual would write something about the person to show big love ❤️ to them. We were given only 35 seconds to write about for each person. The papers which included the names of each person were rotated counterclockwise within the circle. Once everyone got their own paper, we were given a minute to read every comment left on our papers. Some started crying (like Daria) from reading the comments left on the paper or started laughing. We then had about an hour and some change to give big love. During this activity, many people started crying (including us) with having to say our last big love to everyone in the group. We also had to say our last goodbyes to the coordinators, Mateo and Mauricio since they wouldn’t be joining us to Panama City and the airport. Due to this intimate and emotional moment, we went over our scheduled lunch and started eating an hour later at 1:00. We had chicken soup with rice and pineapple juice for lunch, During that hour we ate and brought our suitcases to the front desk and loaded it into the Pink Panther (the pink bus). Due to our late departure at 2:00pm, everything we planned went out of schedule and we hit traffic, highway changes, and a rainstorm. We took a stop during this 7 hour bus ride to get last minute souvenirs such as plushies, magnets, bracelets, keychains, and more. We also had a snack stop because we were all really hungry and the Pink Panther needed gas. After these stops, we then had our phone calls to home and a whole bunch of naps. After 7 hours in the bus, we made it to our hotel Ojos Del Rio which was the hotel we first came to on the first night. We then arrived to the hotel at 10pm and went straight to dinner where we had rice, french fries, and roasted chicken. After this, we then had lights out at 11pm and we are here stuck writing this blog for all you lovely people. We’ll be waking up tomorrow at 4am to leave at 5:30 for the airport where we will be heading back to New York at 9:45am. We’re so excited to see you soon and thank you for following us on our journey to a new country and getting a taste of this culture. This will be our last blog for CH1E, we are grateful for all the love and support from your comments.

Darie y Jhoselyn