Hello! Our names are Amara Kioni Abdullah and Henna Lopez-Spears and we were the first student Leaders of the Day for this trip. Today was community day. We had a great time playing with the children in the community, Sonido del Yaque. They even taught us some Spanish! Our favorite part of the day was definitely the river (Yaque del Norte). The water was very fresh and we were able to find some very pretty rocks. It was nice for us to be reminded that we are kids too and we also need to play.

There was a little bit of pressure on us as the first student Leaders of the Day but we are glad that we had each other as well as the Global Glimpse staff. We made sure to lead with confidence and also allow our peers to have fun at the same time. There was one hiccup in the morning with the wake-up situation; our alarm clock device was not working, so we were thirty minutes late waking everyone up. The students on the trip took this as a plus and a minus because they were able to get an extra thirty minutes of rest but they also only had thirty minutes to get ready. On the bright side, we did end up making it to the community on time.

While we were at the community, everyone enjoyed their time there. Once we got there we had the opportunity to buy some of the souvenirs handmade from some of the ladies in the community. These souvenirs included necklaces, bracelets, bags, and wallets. After this, we were split into three groups where some of the members of the community assigned us tasks to do. The first group mopped, dishes, sweeping, and scrubbed some of their beautiful rocks. The second group shoveled dirt and carried buckets of dirt to the back of the house. The third group, the group we were in, swept the leaves, raked the leaves, and picked up trash from the pathways. These tasks taught us responsibility, consistency, and how to follow directions. Each of these tasks helped the community become more presentable for the community members as well as their guests. Accomplishing this task brought us to lunch where we ate delicious food made by the community which included rice, beans, regular salad, grain salad, potato salad, and chicken.

When we finished eating, we were able to partake in a bonding activity with the children of the community. The children painted on our arms and legs, and the girls from our group as well as the girls from the community painted one anothers’ fingernails. Afterwards, we had the opportunity to go to the lake which is called Yaque del Norte. (Fun fact, the community is named after this river! Their title, Sonido del Yaque roughly translates to Sound of Yaque!) We went to the river thinking that we would just put our feet in. However, when we arrived, the water was so alluring that we all wanted to jump in and play. We were in the water for over an hour because we were having fun; it felt like much less and sadly, our time came to an end when we had to tell the others we had to go.

Walking back up the mountain was a challenge for some people but with one another’s support, we made it back up. We were tired on the way back to our accommodation because of all the fun we had, so we rested and then introduced our Community Action Project to the group. When this was done, we had more free time, ate dinner, had our nightly meeting and now we are blogging! ¡Buenos noches de Amara y Henna!