Day 6- July 1st

This morning we all met at El Tambo after breakfast with our host families. We continued our work on the playground and made lots of progress. Today we focused on painting the slide and the monkey bars, but the rocks and bits of trash that seemed to appear from thin air demanded out attention as well. I was on trash duty for the first bit of the morning, but later I painted part of the slide, which was a task that left us all covered in splashes of blue, yellow, white, and red paint by the end of the day. In addition we added monkey bars to the playground and painted them with alternating white and red stripes. As we were leaving the school the kids came out to play with us; they brought puppets out with them and we also played many games of catch with our football when they weren't too focused on watching the construction on the playground.

We reconvened after lunch with our families to organize our workshops. I'm working with Claire, Mims, Grace, and Ivana on an arts & crafts workshop where we learned through trial and error not to let the kids use paint. We had two stations today: bracelets (pulseras) and drawing. The bracelet station definitely gained a more widespread popularity, as each of them got to choose their own colors and finish them at their houses. As we were heading back to El Tambo for our meeting we saw about five kids  all in a line with their bracelets taped to their backs, trying until the last minute to finish them before they reached home.


The soccer workshop and the games workshop finished early to watch the US vs. Belgium game, but my group returned in time to watch overtime and see the amazing goal that prevented a shutout. We were all yelling at the TV so loudly each time we shot on goal that I'm positive our neighbors could hear us.

Overall, we had a productive day of working on the playground and with the kids in our workshops, and, although we were upset by the outcome, we had a great time watching the game together this afternoon. I'm looking forward to our project tomorrow and getting to know the children at the school better.

-Allie