Day 13: Final Reflection and End of the Trip Celebration

Hello everyone! This is Sophie, the Leader of the Day! Today was our last full day in San Pedro de Marcoris, so we spent the majority of the day reflecting on our trip and all the wonderful memories we’ve made over these past two weeks.

We started the day off strong with an energizing breakfast of scrambled eggs, ham, cheese, and fruit. After breakfast, we made our way to the conference room upstairs to begin a round of final reflection activities. There, we started off by mapping our Global Glimpse journeys before playing a quick game of “start, stop, continue.” In this activity, we wrote down positive behaviors that we wished to start doing, many of which related to concepts we learned in Global Glimpse. For the “stop” category, we wrote down negative behavior that we hoped to discontinue after the trip. Finally, for the “continue” category, we wrote down behaviors that we learned and adopted during the Global Glimpse journey that we wished to continue afterward and bring back to our respective communities. After playing “start, stop, continue”, we moved on to a group Big Love session. In the Big Love session, we anonymously shared ‘Big Love’ to our group in quick 30-second intervals. It was heartwarming to see all the positivity and appreciation spread throughout the room which was equally reflected in smiles across everyone’s faces as they read their papers.

After the final reflection activities, everyone headed downstairs for lunch. There, we had rice with chicken and pork, potato salad, and fruit. The vegetarians had beans, rice, and fried plantains, so it’s safe to say that everyone had a delicious lunch today! Following lunch, everyone had free time until 6pm, when some people played games, got empanadas (as pictured below), and completed the digital final survey. At 6pm, we all got on the bus (with Kelvin the bus driver!!) and drove to go get pizza. At the restaurant we enjoyed various types of pizza paired with water and coke. Everyone bonded over our final dinner together, with contagious smiles spread from face to face and ballads of laughter that filled the air. Maggie, Emerico, and Stafani especially enjoyed the playground area of the restaurant, stopping to take a brief photoshoot that is pictured below.

The ride back from dinner was one of the highlights of the trip for many of us, and undoubtedly the “rose” of my day. We turned the lights off, and spent the entire ride blasting cheesy songs from Faith’s speaker and sang them at the top of our lungs. At one point “Party in the U.S.A.” by Miley Cyrus came on and the whole bus was alive with music and cheer. Our joy was so contagious that even the bus driver, Kelvin, felt inclined to join in.

We ended the night with our final nightly meeting, where everyone had the opportunity to share “big love” for the last time. I would like to say that this trip has been such a unique and valuable experience for me and despite any ups and downs there might’ve been along the way, I’m truly grateful that I got to spend it with the people I did, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Goodnight everyone and thank you for reading our final blog post!

-Sophie