Hey guys,

My name is Sabrina and I’m from Berkeley, CA. Today I was “Leader of the Day” for our Fun Day, which I’m sure I can speak for all when I say that everyday so far has been a fun, exciting, learning day. For today’s fun day, we had an early wake up call by me. I woke up at 5:30 AM to wake everyone else up by 6 AM so we could get our day started (No time to waste when we want to have fun). We started off with our desayuno (breakfast) followed with a workshop where we got to learn about the indigenous Taino people from the Dominican Republic. We got to learn about their history and how Carnaval came to be such a big part of the Dominican culture. We had a guest speaker talk to us about how he makes masks and decorations for Carnaval. After we saw a few examples of the masks, we were able to create our own out of clay. We saw everyone’s creative side come out. Hopefully, if they don’t break on the way back, we all get to show you!

Later in the day we got to hike up to Los Saltos De Jima, a beautiful waterfall. Although it was a 30 minute long hike under the blazing sun, the experience of hiking through a forest in the Dominican Republic was incredible. When we got to the top, everyone threw themselves into the natural pool of water that was at the bottom of the waterfall. We got to swim around for a few hours and be able to just relax after a long hike.

Today being “Leader of the Day”, I started out pretty nervous because I was afraid that I barely knew this group of teenagers. How was I ever going to get them to listen to be for basic instructions? But in the end, and I can’t say that I wasn’t surprised because we’ve all become each others’ family away from home, it was so much easier than I thought. I’m so excited for the next weeks to come!

See you guys soon!

Sabrina