Cindy – October 13th, 2020 Journal Entry #35

During this pandemic I have been using my time at home to create a new skill for myself. I have been more aware of things happening around me, whereas before they would go underseen because I would focus more on school and future tasks. Yet, this experience where stress, fatigue and isolation have played constant roles, helped me realize that I can develop a multitask skill where I am present with my family, keeping up with school and working on my hobbies and passions related to the environment and my community. Therefore, even when I am holding on to stress, responsibilities and tiredness I decided to incorporate a recent debate in the community for a privatization of a beach. I have been working on this representing my organization Green Power, where I stand against the claim of closing the path to the beach for the reservation of nature. 

Instead, I am part of a group that considers that the path cannot be closed (leading to privatization for a  Hotel standing in front of the beach) but that the entrance of vehicles can be regulated in a different way where other factors such as an ambulance getting there can have access. I believe I differentiate from others during this hard time because instead of being sitting in front of my computer for 7 hours and being rutinary, I decided to challenge myself and current skills in order to achieve a goal that will benefit the image of my organization and the community. Today I will be meeting with my friend Holly Cippa and Fabian Salazar in order to organize and plan methods to regulate the access of cars at the beach since we just realized that a new turtle came to Playa Penca 2 days ago. We are prioritizing that the eggs can be safe for 25 days (which is what it will take for them to be born) so we are planning periods of times where volunteers go check on the place and make sure there are no threats to it. Indeed, I am working in collaboration to give back to the community a hope of development in the area of nature in our beaches, as well as fighting for a natural resource where most of them go fishing to get their daily “bread”. 

Moreover, an event that sparked a period of personal growth and new understanding of myself and others has been going from a state of social interactions to none. I learned new things about me, such as how I cannot tolerate being inactive. I am a person that needs to be in constant movement or work as well as not being isolated. I saw the way my body and mind were reacting to this situation and came up with a plan of having someone related to movement to look forward to during my school day. In that way, I would be motivated during class and I would relieve stress during the activity after school. Some activities I have been doing are: hiking, running, biking and zumba. Afterwards, I get in a very happy mood and I spend my time with my parents to have some social interaction. I also realized that the amount of time spent on my phone and computer due to school makes watching movies or talking through video calls very unfavorable since it gives me headaches. Yet, I have managed my time to be able to talk to my family and friends that live far away from me. 

It can be said with no doubt that my CAS projects have pushed my motivation to a stable level where I want to keep working until I reach my goals. An example of this is how even though Barbara did not respond to Amanda, Kati and I for our volunteer day, we managed to come up with new plans and methods. We will have therapy sessions starting this Friday, where we will listen to each other, give advice and methods to keep up during this difficult pandemic. It will be via zoom because most people do not want to expose themselves, so flexibility had to be our key to success. On the other hand, Amanda and I are following protocols to meet this friday in order to prepare a sample of our next product that we will sell to get money for our Mexico trip. We have maintained a positive mentality on it and we create reachable goals with a realistic view. This is how we motivate each other and even our classmates, by showing them how even during a pandemic you can keep working on projects and fundraising as long as you adapt to changes.