What is life without a little fun? This global glimpse trip is about a life changing experience, and seeing the adversities in this brand new world we call Bonao. We see how hardships really affect ones life and it humbles you and brings you down another level, and makes you appreciate the things that you have. With that being said it can not be all about having these humbling experiences, sometimes you have to have fun and see the beautiful side of these struggling countries.
Today our delegation woke up and assembled into the classroom for a poverty seminar. During this seminar, we talked about what it means to be in poverty, how poverty is started, and what affects poverty. By doing this we discussed the 5 P’s: Place, People, Politics, Past, and Peace. We discussed different events and statistics that involved the Dominican Republic and what factored into the high poverty that many Dominicans find themselves succumbed to. Overall, it was a great seminar and prepared us for a very important and emotional day tomorrow.
After our seminar, we went on the bus to go to one of Bonao’s most famous sites: the waterfall. It was approximately a 15-minute ride to get there. Once we got to the site, I had the delegation split up into 5 different groups and assigned them to a specific Red Cross leader. As a group, we hiked for about 30 minutes on a trail to get to the first waterfall. Although it was very tiring, when getting to waterfall, we were all ready to jump right in. The entire group, including our GG Leaders, ran into the very cold water and swam for a long time. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as sunny as expected so the water seemed colder than usual. Once everyone was done swimming and dried off, we all changed back into our clothes and started our hike back to the bus.
Sisters hiking to the waterfall on our fun day!
Once we got on the bus, we went off to a different site that is also a famous place in Bonao. We picked up lunch from our cook and went on our way. The site was very different than the waterfall because there were a lot more people there, eating lunch or just hanging out next to the river. We ate lunch as a group next to the water, watching all the different people. What I was surprised about was that there were many people littering and leaving their trash on the ground, depreciating the river’s quality and scenery. It could have been a lot more attractive to tourists if it were cleaner. We hung out for a little longer and decided to get back on the bus and start our trip back to the fundacion.
When we got back to the fundacion, a lot of people went into their rooms, including me, to take a nap because everyone was very tired from swimming and hiking. After we all got up, we started playing cards and decided to order empanadas from a very famous place in the city. Once we ate our empanadas, we had a program seminar, where we decided what CAP project we were going to do to help the Bonao community and decided what groups each person would be involved in. We ate another round of empanadas, made by Lisalot, and then had a nightly meeting where we discussed today and tomorrow.
Nia, Rajanae, and Emily listening to ideas for their Community Action Project.
Overall, today was a very fun day and everyone in the delegation had positive attitudes. Everyone was very excited to swim and see one of the most famous sites in Bonao and is now ready to attack a very important and emotional day called Poverty Day.
Peace out,
Chayim (and co-leader Jordi)