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Location: Savanna Bay, Virgin Gorda
Hi everyone! Today was our first real service day, and it could not have been better. A few kids from ActionQuest joined us, and we took the dinghies to the dock of Virgin Gorda. We were warmly welcomed to the island9-year-old-old Dorie, a local whose mother has set up “Green and Clean VI,” a program to help promote and facilitate recycling in the islands. Dorie led us to one of the three elementary schools on the island called Valley Day. We helped clean up the landscaping around the school by raking, shoveling, and painting. A couple of us traveled to the local recycling center with the collected garbage to help sort and collect materials for our main project. We made floating gardens for lettuce and other crops to put in the back of the school. There were a ton of tree roots we had to clear that were extremely hard to dig out. One of them even took three hours! The labor wasn’t even the worst part of the digging; it was the huge tarantulas would crawl out from the holes! They were pretty cool; we saw a lizard devour one right in front of us, which was kind of sad. After visiting the school, we went back to the boat to change into swimwear and then traveled to a beach where swim lessons were being taught. We got to teach a bunch of local kids to swim and play with them in the water. A couple of us took kayaks around, and the kids would jump on and off, it was really fun. After the long day, we came back to the boat to shower and eat a yummy pasta dinner. Now we’re learning to tie knots and then heading off to bed! Overall, it was a great day.