A Fun Culture Day in the DR

Hello, here are your Líderes del Día (LDD) Beckett and Arianna for culture day. Today was full of new cultural experiences and we started off with waking up at 7:00am. We had oatmeal and bananas for breakfast then we began a rundown of today’s agenda. We headed to our first cultural activity which was a máscara (clay mask making) class with Dario (“Gato”) from Constanza. Gato helped us make clay statues that are a part of the cultural identity of the Taíno people. We all worked in groups of four with our fellow Glimpsers and all worked on different statues. At the end of the activity we all made pretty good statues thanks to Gato and gave “big love” to him. Then we walked back and ate lunch (rice with corn and chicken), then we headed to our next activity. This activity was a Bachata/Merengue/Zumba dance class held by Paul Rosado who led in teaching us how to move to different rhythms and genres of Latin music. We all had so much fun as we had a dance party at the end! After showing big love to Paul we walked to a local ice cream shop for paletas (fruit popsicles). We then headed back to the hotel and had free time where many of us visited local groceries stores and shops.Then it was time for dinner which consisted of salchipapa (sausage, fries, and cheese) and then we headed to our nightly meeting where we ended the day with the quote and question of the day, “What role does art and dance play in preserving local customs and traditions and why is it important?” During the meeting, we all made connections on the experiences we learned for our culture day. At the end, we all gave gratitude to each other for the participation everyone gave. We then passed the torch to the next leaders of the day!

Big Love, 

Arianna and Beckett