The leaders of the day today were Nancy Mejorado and Jasmine Montero. We started the day off early by waking up at 5:30 AM and waking the group up at 6 AM. The bus picked us up from the hostel along with our ambassadors and we were on our way to Palmar De Ocoa beach, eating breakfast along the way. After a two hour drive, we arrived at the beach and were greeted by Cesar and Maria Ramirez, who make a living from mining and selling the precious gem Larimar that is unique to the Dominican Republic.

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We found a dock by the water, where everyone hung out, played music, and swam around. The sand on the way to the water was really hot and burned out feet if we didn’t run, but there were sharp rocks on the ground too which made it difficult to run. After hanging out in the water with the ambassadors and everyone else we had a lunch at the beach. Then we had a presentation done by Cesar showing us how they shaped and made the Larimar jewelry. We were supposed to head back after that so we could plan our lesson for our tutoring session but since everyone had finished it we were allowed to stay at the beach for an extra hour longer. We hung out and swam some more and it was Screen Shot 2016-06-20 at 7.46.57 PMhard to leave when we had to. We got to the hostel with only 15 minutes to get ready for our tutoring session, we were all dirty and sandy from the beach which made it difficult to rinse off and change in time to make it to class in time. Then we left to go to school for our English tutoring session, barely making it time, but then we had an interview with people asking us questions about why we were there and where we had come from, making us 15 minutes late to class. We then were in class until 7 and walked to Sheila’s to eat dinner. We then went back to the hostel for our nightly meeting and are now ending the night at 9:30pm.

From Jasmine,
Nancy already went to bed but I wanted to still share my personal experiences that I had aside from the general things that we did. At the beach I hung out with my best friend Alessia and a new friend Shelly as well as an ambassador. We swam for the most part and Alessia made me carry her because she was scared the fish were going to eat her in the water. I bought some really nice Larimar stone jewelry which was originally going to be souvenirs I was going to bring back to my family but wearing them now I think I might just keep them all…. I wish I was able to buy more because they were all so pretty but I didn’t have enough money.

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It was hard to be the leader of the day on a day like this because everyone was having so much fun in the water it was hard to get people out, but it was fun too.

After arrive at the hostel I had to rinse off all the sand I had on me from the beach really quickly and get into my clothes for tutoring plus pack everything I needed for tutoring which was a bit of a struggle but I managed it.

Tutoring was really fun for me as it always is, but I’m still unsure if some of my students are learning anything. I have a class of intermediate students ages 16-19 and today me and my teaching partner Eduardo didn’t really teach too much but were really talking and engaging with some of the students in conversations which was really fun, but I felt like some students who were not in the conversations were bored and wanted to learn more. My students are really fun and they love playing games, we played person-person and Simon says today which was fun. Most of my students don’t do the homework we assign them but today I brought candy that I had bought on my free day for the ones that did do their homework and they loved it so I’m hoping that will get the others to do their homework as well.

After tutoring I was able to see my favorite ambassador Felix which was good because last time I saw him he got mad at me after I had promised to do his henna but doing someone else’s instead, but it was his fault because he ditched me on free day to be with another group. But I still gave him candy so that he could forgive me and he did. Well it’s really late now and I have to get up early for a packed day tomorrow, so goodnight!
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