Hello everyone I am Leonel Terrero. Program coordinator for San Juan De La maguana. Today I had to model how to be an effective “ELDD” El lider del dia for our amazing second delegation that just arrived yesterday to The DR safe and sound.

Today as I said we had our history day that we started really early, yesterday the students  landed in Santo Domingo which is the capital of the DR. Our wake up call of today was at 6:00 and by 7:00 we were heading to San Juan De La maguana, 3 and a half hours travel in our guagua “The Bus”. Once we got there we did room assigments and went right away to Onaney’s for lunch.

The first academic seminar was on  history and was performed by our GGLs Dominique and Lauren. The students were really in to it, asking questions all the time, and taking notes on their travel journals. The seminar consisted of an introduction of what they were about to experience later which was the city tour.

The city of San Juan the La maguana has lots of parks and monuments representing cultural aspects and historical moments.  We started at “Plaza Caonabo”, they learned about him and his fight against colonizers, how he defended his people and died because of that.  And also La plaza ceremonial indígena, which is the exact geographical center of the whole island (including the two current countries: Haiti and DR). Isn’t that great?

After that we went to La UASD, the public university and met the ambassadors, young people just like the students who are voluntarily collaborating with Global Glimpse. They had presents for the glimpsers.

We walked together to the next stop which was Orlando Martinez’s monument, a Journalist who was killed because he was against the government back in the day.

And I would say that the most important moment of the city tour was when we got to the “Parque Duarte” and we knew everything about the founding fathers of the DR and the power they represented. They were 3 so they represented: the military power, the economic power, and the religious power. Our glimpsers understood everything right way because of the previous information in the seminar.

Our last stop was La catedral San Juan bautista. The cathedral was the first structure made of concrete in the town.

After that, the ambassadors came with us to have dinner. The food was delicious and as it was our welcome dinner, we also had cake as dessert and we all danced to Bachata, salsa and merengue!! We ended our day with the nightly meeting where we all shared our first thoughts and big loves!

It was an amazing day packed with activities but really enriching!!!