Cindy – September 24th, 2020 Journal Entry #34

During these few weeks I have been constantly planning with Amanda a date for our next sale to fund for our Mexico trip for the cultural exchange. Today we reunited via WhatsApp call to decide the product we will be selling next and how we are going to make it. We talked about what we can do better this time based on our first experience and concluded that we will meet one of these fridays after school (at La Paz) in order to prepare “tres leches” and “enyucados” and see if they are the best product to sell next. We also calculated how much money we have and how much money we still need to collect. We are very excited because we are $67 away from buying both of our plane tickets. This highlights that even though the pandemic slowed down our process of funding, our skills managed to work great together to find alternatives and still be in the process of reaching our goal. We also scheduled a meeting with Frida Calderon which wants to combine our project with one she will do in Mexico, this meeting will be for discussing details about her project and how it will work with ours. Our project is moving forward because we are not relying on donations but creating the income by ourselves. It is hard to fund at this time, but we manage to keep our prices really accessible by not exceeding from $2 dollars per product. In relation to Youth Taking Action we wrote a message for Barbara’s Rescue Center in order to schedule a day where the 3 of us get to volunteer at her place. It has been hard to find options to volunteer but we clearly stated that it will be only 3 people and that we will follow the sanitary protocol, showing our responsibility and desire to help her. Our communication has been the key to success and the reason why we are still working at almost a normal rate by still planning and organizing activities. The only thing different now is the amount of people that can be part of our projects. We are looking forward to hearing from Barbara to start coordinating a date and time for the volunteering. I have been managing online school pretty well by taking screen breaks and changing places (I take a class in my room, the next one in the living room and the following one in the front corridor). Even with screen breaks being constantly on the computer slows down my motivation but I improve this by exercising after school which helps me feel motivated and it makes me relieve stress and feel healthy. I have been running a few kilometers because I lost my resistance by not running for months, so I am slowly coming back. Also, social interactions play an essential role in my mental health, so I tend to hike with my social bubble whenever it is possible and not raining. I have kept as a goal not slowing down my progress by finishing tasks as soon as possible and at a reasonable pace so I do not overwhelm my brain.