Today was politics day! We dressed in our nicest clothes and began the day with breakfast; mangu, eggs with vegetables, and fried cheese. Then we had an academic seminar about different perspectives in Dominican Republic politics. After the seminar we had a guest speaker, Gabriel, a young politically active public defender. He was born to a political family, and is shared his critical perspective of politics with us, motivating us to be involved in order to change the current system.

In our free time after the presentation, Sia and Urbe took us to a local super market where we purchased snacks. For lunch we ate chicken, rice, with a salad on the side. Shortly after, we had an English teaching lesson. We learned the basics of teaching English as our first class is tomorrow!

We then took a walk down to the city hall, where we met Armando, who has travelled to the US to represent the DR in the Model UN. He played the role of the President of the model United Nations, and the students took the role of delegates of Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and the United States. We were posed with the challenge of finding solutions to the problem of immigration between Haiti and Dominican Republic.We spoke in formal language for over 2 hours as we made statements and questioned those of others. Here’s an example of DJ’s opening statement on video: https://youtu.be/ofWC8w7Uzwc

In the end, we learned that the point was not which country won the Model UN, but to propose solutions among all of us. I really feel like our proposals could make a difference to the controversial topic, but I also gained an appreciation for how difficult the decision-making process can be when you are representing so many people with different needs and priorities. We ended the day with pizza for dinner and spent time with the ambassadors.

 

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Gabriel with students.

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Model UN