Hola Global Glimpse amigos y familia, it’s Sophie here. And today, I took on the vastly important role of El Lider del Dia. Through this new responsibility, I discovered my deep newfound appreciation for those who have the impressive challenge of wrangling a small gaggle of excitable teens. If you’re a close family member or friend of mine, I’m sure that the fact that I volunteered for the role of student leader on a day with the focus of politics comes as a total surprise to you, (since my finely honed skill of extreme sarcasm becomes ineffective through a computer screen, I’m being sarcastic).

Today, we took a trip to the capital city of the Dominican Republic, the first colonial city in the Americas, the picturesque Santo Domingo. In Santo Domingo, we had the great opportunity to visit Dominican congress, and after a lovely tour with the nicest man in the building, we had a conversation with a prevalent Dominican politician and buddy of Marco Rubio *eye roll* about the state of politics in the D.R. Being the thoughtful and adventurous people we are, us Glimpsers totally took this conservative dude off guard, asking him hard hitting questions that really exposed the lack of equality and democracy in Dominican society and politics. He “clapped back” by asking us about Donald Trump, and I decided to express my disgust for everyone’s least favorite owner of a toupee. We then headed to El Conde, an open air tourist market, and after eating pizza and drinking Coke (our first American meal this entire trip) we had the opportunity to put our skills of bargaining to use as we haggled with vendors, all of us picking up or utilizing Spanish along the way, being as it was our sole method of communication. After spending a sufficient amount of time and money and enjoying the frequent tropical showers in this lovely colonial city, we got on the bus and headed back to Escuela de Dios, the place where we all teach.

Today’s classes were filled with restless and distracted people, many of us being displaced by the fragrant smell of fresh paint on the classroom walls, and the rain. But, we all persevered and got through this slightly more difficult teaching session. Finally, we headed home to CONAMUCA and came back to a meal of salad, mashed plantains, and ham, a staple Dominican meal.

Today I learned the importance of courage and self-confidence. In order for us to have been able to ask questions in Congress, we had to address several different groups in Spanish before even prosing our question; a lengthy and seemingly archaic process that made every person who attempted it stumble over their words. But those of us who did speak really put ourselves out there and embraced a unique opportunity to have a question and answer session with a person with consequential political importance. Anyway, I’m up past curfew at this point, but I would just like the close this blog by saying that I’m learning so much here, about myself, my global community, and my peers. It’s really important and apparent here that we shouldn’t take anything we have in a highly developed country like the U.S. for granted. Democracy and (arguably) lack of lots of corruption in terms of public spending (at least in comparison to this country) are privileges we enjoy as American citizens that we should not take for granted. We are all really happy to be here, but equally excited to come home and see our loved ones.

Buenos noches,

Sophie

P.S. Special shout out to my family and friends even though I’m like 87% sure they don’t read this. But if y’all do let a gal know washpoppin and comment, miss you no offense.