Greetings from Santo Domingo SC1B families and friends!

I’m happy to report that our delegation of 19 students has arrived safely in the beautiful Dominican Republic! This is your GG leader, Luz, bringing you our first blog from our cozy (read: cool) bed and breakfast where we get to spend what’s left of the night before we head out to our final destination of San Cristobal first thing tomorrow.

While the bright-eyed faces of the curious students I encountered this morning are now the faces of tired and restless students, I’m glad to say that our journey was a successful and (mostly) smooth one. 17 unacquainted students met up at the Delta counter at SFO this morning without knowing that they’d quickly become a community of eager leaders ready to explore a new place as they boarded a full plane to JFK. The hot and humid weather of New York gave us a taste of what we could expect once in the DR. 17 then became 18 students when we were fortunate enough to have Kareem join our connecting 4 hour flight. The atmosphere of our second flight was even better! You could see Segen and Isabella chatting and bonding in the seats right in front of me and across the aisle you spotted the comradery among other “aislemates.”

Our plane finally touched down on Dominican soil at exactly 12:00am. The anticipation of finally getting here was palpable as you heard Kyle practicing the new Spanish words like “relampago” (lightning) that he learned from Briana. Once we all made it through immigration and customs, we were reenergized by the excited and warm greeting our in-country staff, Jatnna and Kristin, had for us! We gathered up, met Nakita, our 19th student who flew separately from Boston, and joined our awesome driver, Giovanni, who brought us to our hostel for the night.

By now, the place is silent as I’m sure everyone is catching up on much needed sleep. We’ll be up at 7am again tomorrow, so it’s definitely time for some shut eye.

 

Reporting at 2:51am,

Luz