I don't care about money, I just want to BE WONDERFUL- Marilyn Monroe: Beach Clean Up

Last Friday I was lucky enough to join a group of high school students from a neighboring town on a beach clean up organized by the local government. I am working closely with the Red Ambiental of my province, which is an environmental group organized by the school district to promote prevention and discussion of social, health, and environmental issues. Working with this group is one of my main projects and I have spent the past couple of months getting things ready for the school year that just began. I am very excited to get to know the kids in this year's group and get started with the year's activities. The first event with the Red Ambiental groups from each school will be a series of World Water Day activities this week. While at a meeting last week to plan some of those activities, I was invited to Friday's beach clean up. This was a perfect way to get to know some of the teens and to find another one of La Libertad's lovely hidden beaches. Magdalena de Cao is a tiny town about a half an hour from my site. They don't have a Peace Corps volunteer right now but they have had them in the past and are very enthusiastic about PC, so I like going there. The pretty beaches and awesome ceviche don't hurt either ;)

Anyway, I went with 11 students, a couple of people from the municipality who had organized this, and the science teacher who is also the Red Ambiental advisor for this school. We collected trash and painted the restroom facilities, but still made time to catch a few jumbo shrimp from the stream and enjoy some fresh ceviche at the end of the morning. This beach is a nice little secret to anyone but locals and there is only one restaurant and a few 'summer homes' there, but not much else. The one restaurant was home to some very nice people who prepared the shrimp for the kids who caught them to eat while we were painting the bathrooms. The municipality (local government) is trying to let the secret out about this beach to generate tourism, and that is why their tourism committee organized this clean up. With Holy Week coming up, they are hoping to get some more beach traffic. Friday's activity was one in a series of 4 events they have planned to clean the local beaches. At the end of the month, trash cans will be placed on the beaches which makes me very happy :) There are three beaches in Magdalena de Cao besides this one that I hope to meet sometime in the future. For now, I will leave you with these pictures. Enjoy :)