I think my favourite thing about the trip was the first service project that we did which was renovating a school in the Amazon Rainforest, Tena. The children have to walk 2 hours to get to this school and many go to the grounds, even on holidays, as it can be a fun way to meet with their friends and get out of the house. However, the school is being threatened to close down as they do not have enough funding or pupils to justify the expense of maintaining the building. The adults and children have to eat in extremely poor conditions – dead rat skeletons in the kitchen, cockroaches in cupboards and many a spider in the playrooms.
We were there to paint the school and give it a breath of fresh air. All of us managed to renovate at least one room, with me working on the dining room. We managed to redecorate the room and make it look much livelier, including painting the benches, tables and wardrobe blue and painting the walls yellow and red. The community came to visit on the last day and they were all so grateful for our hard work.
