El Dorado – Let the Cleaning Begin!

After serving lunch to all the kids, we all grabbed a garbage bag and a pair of gloves to do a community clean up.

We started off cleaning inside of the GK complex. As you can see above, it was relatively clean. It wasn’t until we went into the core of El Dorado that we really started to see the big difference between their standard of living.

We couldn’t believe hot small and tight everything was.

And no running water or electricity in individual homes.

Unlike the GK compound, the homes here were made out of any scrap materials they can find.

We really got so see how our life was so different in Canada.

The cutest thing was that the kids followed us around during the entire clean up and acted as our tour guides.

The neighbourhood kids got right in there too, helping us pick up garbage and debris.  They were so helpful and positive.  For them, it was like a game and it made our work fun.

We worked in 4 teams and took different routes and some very tight places.

We made it back to GK compound and Mike’s dad bought everyone ice cream.

We’re going to miss these kids.

What a great day to start our service work in the Philippines!  It was hard to say bye.