Written by: Tanner Linhard
After enjoying another 15 extra minutes of rest, our group trekked out to Violetta’s for breakfast. This consisted of pancakes with chocolate syrup, and fresh cantaloupe and orange slices. And of course, coffee. Needless to say, we all left with full stomachs to start our day.
Team 1 (Seamus, Pablo, Reagan, and Vincenzo) headed out to San Antonio where they sanitized and prepped shelves for their kitchen space and finished painting one of their classrooms.
Team 2 (Morgan, Makynzi; Sean, and Yorlan) finished painting the classrooms in Santa Maria De Jesus and began moving all materials back to their original spots. Sean told me to include that he did the majority of the heavy lifting, but I decided against that. As for Team 3, consisting of myself, Hannah, Mackenzie, and Nathan, we continued our work in Jocotenango. Our mentor, Ahvy, had the brilliant idea to catch a chicken bus to our normal pick-up point; the open-air market. I am proud to say that, despite the initial difficulty in acquiring a bus after a thorough reconnoiter, we successfully cut our commute down. After this sense of pride faded, we climbed aboard our usual bus and made our way to our site. For today, we managed to finish painting yet another room, before removing nearly 30 boxes of a turkey spread called, “Spammy.” I had never heard of it, never tried it, but I do know that those boxes can get heavy after a while. We ended our day with moving and installing drywall. It was a first for me but I am proud to say that I basically knew what I was doing. Shortly after installing the first piece of wall, we were greeted by the presence of Professor Cadwalader, who offered to drive us back to Violetta’s for lunch. A welcome break indeed. Once we reached our destination, we hopped out and were met with steak, pasta, beets, and pineapple juice. It certainly wasn’t a bad way to recover from our work day. Trekking back to the Purpose Hostel, we grabbed our homework or “tarea”, which I managed to complete coherently, and began our routine of Spanish Class at 1330. After 3 hours of one-on-one teaching along with a few vocab games mixed in, we finally headed back to the hostel. After a brief meeting with Professor Cadwalader, everyone was set loose for the night. A few members of our party came down with miscellaneous illnesses, but nothing that can’t be fixed with strong ambition and some Pepto Bismol.
