Hey everyone! I’m Desiree Garcia, one of the GG Leaders and today was my turn to be the Líder Del Día (leader of the day).

Today’s  theme was “Living like a local.” The experience started the night before when the electricity was turned off so we could experience a taste of the frequent power outages that happen in the DR. We spent the next 24 hours experiencing was life is like for Bonao locals.

We started our day at 6:30 AM and had a small breakfast to start our day before we headed out to Bejuco Aplatado, the community where we would be spending the day. This community was particularly interesting because they had formed their own brigades to help push initiatives within their community and with government officials that would benefit the people of Bejuco Aplatado. Their current goal was to bring 24 hour access to electricity to their community.

We split up to spend the morning with different families in the community. We got to see what a typical day was like for them and helped them with their oficios (chores).  I was in Virginia’s home, which was the cooking house. We helped prep the meal that the group would be eating for lunch that day. It was delicious! After we all ate and thanked the families for opening their homes to us, we headed back to our accommodation.

We had so much fun on the bus singing some of our favorite songs, and were surprised that the DR Youth Ambassadors also knew the words. We spent the afternoon playing games with the ambassadors, followed by a few seminars. We learned more about how we defined who we were, what it meant to be the Líder Del Día, and what to do at English Tutoring.

After some time to prepare our first English lessons (pictured above) we hung out for a bit then had dinner. At our nightly meeting, the electricity was finally turned back on once we “passed the torch” to tomorrow’s Líder Del Día. It was so hot today, and I was excited to have the electric fans back on that night to go to sleep.

Looking forward to tomorrow when we’ll have our very first student Líder Del Día for our Culture Day.