Hello world! It’s your Lideres Del Dia Yoko and Corina Condori!

Today was Living Like a Local Day. We ventured off to explore and assimilate ourselves in the Dominican culture and lifestyle.

For one whole day, we were left without electricity and had to manually flush our toilets. To add on to this experience we were challenged to shower with buckets and part away with our beloved fans for one day.

However, this day was a highlight for the majority of the Glimpsers as we were able to get to know the people from the Los Francos community. We were all divided into five groups and were given the families designated homes. As we were welcomed into their homes, each group was supposed to help out the host families by essentially doing daily chores. As a group we swept, mopped, washed the dishes and babysitting. Yes parents, you read that right, we did chores and enjoyed it. Afterwards, we all met up for lunch at Maria’s house, also known as the amazing woman who works extremely hard to take care of her community members. We ate lunch and then heard Maria speak about the her story in the community. Afterwards we mingled with the neighborhood kids and created tight bonds with them, It was almost as if they were our younger siblings. A lot of people bonded with the neighborhood kids by getting their hair braided by the local community teenage girls. Then, there was face painting ALL the kids, including us, got wild with the face paint.

At the end of the day, no matter how much fun we had, most of us were given a different viewpoint in the world. The rural community we visited was just one of the many here in the Dominican Republic an we were lucky enough to be warmly invited into their homes. Living Like a Local Day hit us hard, it made us realize how lucky we were with our lives at home. However, it led us to realize that no matter how “poor” they lived, and how little they had to fear, they were unified and rich with love and kindness,