Today was a fun-filled day filled with new smiling faces and engaging activities at several culturally significant sites here in Bonao. In our first activity we met Juanito at La Plaza de La Cultura, where we worked in teams of two and (literally) got our hands dirty creating our own personal clay mask molds. Juanito personally guided each student groups’ molding techniques to ensure they would be satisfied with the end product. Seeing him so comfortable with something so messy facilitated each of us being comfortable with it as well. We were all a bit taken aback to learn someone so humble had such an intimate relationship with the famous artist Candido Bido. A wave of comfort and relief swept over the group when we entered the air-conditioned room at the Juan Boch Library where we received the very entertaining monologue performed by the library staff. My personal favorite activity was when we went Piro Espinal’s workshop where he crafts award-winning Carnival characters to be performed by his world famous award winning performance group. Thirty seven cumulative awards! From the moment we entered his workspace, it was evident he knew how to put on a show, because we walked into apparently still puppets on display and were all shocked (some more than others) and amused when they came to life! In our final culturally immersive activity we participated in Bachata and Merengue dance lessons back at La Plaza de la Cultura taught by Christopher, where we were joined by our youth ambassadors. We started off moving on our own, then in partners, and by the end we were grooving with one person then the next. We felt not only the sweat pouring out but also the endorphins flying! When we returned to our accommodations students lead smashingly successful first English tutoring sessions. Elated expressions showed that some enjoyed it even more than they expected and will look forward to seeing their students again tomorrow.