Today was culture day, and we got a lot of it! The purpose of culture day is to learn what role culture plays in shaping people and the community. We had two big activities planned for the day.  In the morning, we made clay masks with a local award winning artisan nicknamed Gato.  He is known in Constanza as the master mask maker for the local Carnival Festival every year.  The Glimpsers had the opportunity today to watch Gato work, and make Carnival clay masks of their own.  It was great watching their creativity come out; even those that would not describe themselves as artistic. In the afternoon, we got to learn from another award winner artist named Paul who taught us the national dances merengue and bachata.  Paul demonstrated and pushed everyone to dive in, take risks, and HAVE FUN! Some Glimpsers felt a little nervous at first, and claimed they couldn’t dance; but little did they know, they had hidden talent!

Plain and simply, today was just pure, simple fun. The last few days have been spent settling into routines and getting to know each other, so it was great to finally watch everyone break out, let loose, and laugh a lot. We had some amazing meaningful conversations after dancing, and were treated to a delicious Lasagna dinner after by our gracious food provider Franklin. Our nightly meeting went smoothly and everyone shared some very insightful thoughts that pumped us up as the Leaders of the Day. Tomorrow we pass the torch to our first student leaders of the day, Nasheem and Yazmin! They are the first two students to be handed the all important task of organizing the group and making sure everything is running smoothly. We have no doubt they will be nothing but exceptional!