Hello families and greetings from San Cristobal!

Did you know that your favorite Glimpser is an amazing dancer? Well today we discovered the inner dancing queen in all of our incredible students!

Today we have a fabulous day filled with history, culture, and lots of movement. Today’s focus was culture of the Dominican Republic, and what better way to learn about the culture than to dance?! We spent the day at Sol Naciente, a cultural center Sainagua where we learned about the intersection of the rich African, Spanish, and Ingenious cultures that make up Dominican culture. We started our exploration through movement and danced hip-hop and traditional Merengue. The merengue moves involved us stepping on the beat, turning with our partner, and changing sides with our partner. Every one of the Glimpsers got their groove on with the locals and danced like professionals! Make sure you ask your favorite Glimpser to show you their merengue moves after the trip :).

After having a delicious traditional Dominican Lunch, we got to explore some of the African and Taino roots of Dominican Culture through music and dance. Nelson Rivera, the president of Sol Naciente, and his group of talented musicians performed Atabales for us, which is a traditional Dominican genre of music with deep African roots. Atabales, also now as “palos,” involves homemade drums that are made from hallowed tree trunks and the guria (a metal cylindrical scraper). Nelson told the story of Palos and how it began, and included some amazing Glimpsers (shout out to Renee, Armando, Celeste, Prashneet, and Nikhil!) to act as the gods and goddesses.

Back at the accommodation, we reunited with out youth ambassadors and started to plan our first English lesson for Thursday. Send the Glimpsers some love and good luck on their teaching! They are going to be FANTASTIC!

Keep leaving the comments- we started reading them and miss our loved ones terribly!

Big Love,

Allie & GGSC!