Hello Readers,

Bryson: I woke up at about 4 am to make sure that I would be up early to wake everyone up. The thing is… the beds were so comfortable, that I fell asleep when I laid back down. I woke up again around 5:50 am and stayed up, even though it was a struggle to get up because of how good the beds were! I got ready for the day, and around 6:58 am, I woke up all the boys and woke the girls up after. I had to do it about three times for the boys and twice for the girls because of how comfortable the beds were. We all made it up to breakfast and had scrambled eggs, cornflakes, and some fruits like mangos and cantaloupe. It was a really good breakfast overall. We then walked for 15 minutes to the beach. We made it to the beach, and the water was so clear and beautiful. I took good pictures just for you, Mom. I had other students with me try to teach me how to swim. I floated for a little bit but didn’t learn how to swim, but I will continue trying to learn how to swim by the end. I was the Deader of the Day (LDD), and I was pretty much an organizer and made sure everyone was safe and drank some water because it was hot. We had some chocolate wafers and a juice box as a snack. It was a 4-hour drive to our base house, and it was fun because we got to shop at a little store. We got to the base home and just chilled out till we had dinner. We then had our daily nightly meeting where we started it up as today’s LDDs. We did roses and thorns in which we tell one good thing that happened that day and one bad thing that happened. Mine was that everyone was really cool and tried to help to swim, but my thorn was that I swallowed about a cup’s worth of saltwater throughout the day (I’m fine though!).

Noura: Today, I started the day early thanks to Bryson for waking the girls up on time.  After getting dressed with all the girls while chatting and making jokes, we enjoyed a very good breakfast. Then we headed to the beach which was a 15-minute walk from our beautiful base house in Juan Dolio. Everyone got the chance to enjoy the beautiful view and cool water. I ended up not going in the water all the way, just enough to feel the water and walk around the beach with the other girls just to enjoy the view and have nice conversations. After a while, everyone enjoyed some snacks and juice to help keep our energy up. I took some cute pictures of me and the other lovely girls on the trip, then we headed back to our base house where we enjoyed a little time in the pool before having some lunch and heading to the bus to begin our 4-hour drive back to our base house in Jarabacoa. While driving back, we all enjoyed the music and company of each other. I took a nice 2-hour nap which was needed after surviving the hot weather at the beach. After getting to our base house, we all got dressed into more professional outfits as we presented our CAP (Community Action Project) idea to Olmedo, a leader of the community we will be helping out for the next couple of days in building a sustainable water system to bring water from the river to the homes in the community. We then spent some time getting to know some visitors who are a part of Global Glimpse’s board and enjoyed a nice dinner. We ended the night with our nightly meetings where people expressed their highs and lows of the day with the group and spread love throughout our time together.