Screen Shot 2016-06-22 at 6.49.13 PMHello parents and fellow glimpsers reading this blog. My name is Noah Suissa, and today my fellow lider del dia today was Stephany Flores. We both attend Summit Prep Charter High School in Redwood City. Today was our earliest wake up yet on this trip, for the Work Like a Local day. Wakeup call was at approximately 5:30am. We awoke to a beautiful Dominican Sun rise over the city of San Juan. Of course everyone was tired and grumpy from the early wake up call. But, almost everyone took a nap on the bus, after our breakfast to go, from our favorite Dominican restaurant, Onaney Gourmet. After our hour long bus ride concluded, we arrived at the mountainous town of Arroyo Cano.

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Once we arrived in the town, we were kindly met with pickup trucks that took our group up the mountain. Although they were pretty small and we were all crammed up in the back, we got to experience what it truly feeScreen Shot 2016-06-22 at 7.38.37 PMls like to ride on the back of a pickup truck with a bunch of other people to get to work. In addition we also got to see an amazing view of the Dominican Republic. The ride from the town to the top of the coffee farm was approximately 30 minutes. Once we arrived at the coffee farm we got to experience how every worker plants coffee beans into the diScreen Shot 2016-06-22 at 7.38.56 PMrt and that was only one of the many things that these Dominican workers have to do every day. We assisted the workers on various tasks such as weeding the coffee plants and clearing space for coffee plants to be planted. After 2 hours of hard work we got to eat lunch from Sheila’s that we took to go earlier in the morning. After lunch we got to talk to the president of Fecadesj for about half an hour before we said goodbye and got back onto the pickup trucks.

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Since we were running late, we all hurried back to the hotel and once again took a nap in the bus. We quickly ran up to our 3rd floor hotel and changed to prepare for our presentation to the woman of Suarez, for our ideas on our Community Action Project. Although the meeting was aScreen Shot 2016-06-22 at 7.40.38 PM very stressful one for our translators, and everyone else as well, we were able to come up with some great ideas on how we would remodel the communities local (main building). This meeting did run pretty late but luckily we were able to make it on time to the local high school in order to plan and then teach our English classes.  My English class went very well and l know that everyone’s class went fairly well also. After English classes, we all sluggishly walked to dinner at Onaeny Gourmet, where some very delicious Dominican, breaded chicken was awaiting our arrival.

Tomorrow will be our 2nd and final free day in the Dominican Republic where Victor Coronado will be leading our delegation. Goodnight from San Juan and we will check in again tomorrow!