Day 6: Sustainable Development Day

Hello family and friends, it’s Ninel and Xochitl coming to follow up after our sustainable development day. Today we started off our morning by having breakfast at our beach hotel which included pankcakes followed by eggs ham and cheese and paired with a varation of fruit that included watermelon, pineapple, and papaya. Following this, we headed on back to our hotel in conztanza, where we quickly fueled up with lunch which included white rice, seasoned chicken, side salad, deliciously paired papaya and fruit punch. 

To get our minds thinking again we started off with a mental warm up to introduce our activity for the day, we led our global glimpsers to learn more about Dario Victoriano better known as “Gato’ who is a sculpter and teacher to public school students here in the Dominican Republic from middle school through highschool. We got to learn not only about his impact and commitment to keeping culture continous throughout years of experience through making masks for the Dominican carnivals to celebrate Dominican culture and traditions through making all sorts of masks out of  clay molds, applying papier mache, and painting. As we finished our mental warm up we started heading on over to our mask class where we were greated by the one and only Dario Victoriano where he gave us two sculpture options where we got into 5 groups and had to work with clay, tools, and water to sculpt and smooth out our clay. We all definitly got our hands dirty but more importantly we shared laughs, giggles, and unforgettable memories with one another. We finished by thanking Gato with our big love paper to show him how thankful we were for teaching us this new skill filled with lots of fun. 

We quickly rolled on over in the gua gua to our community where we will be working on our CAP Project. We had the privledge of metting the director to Fundacion Alegria Inocente! We got to learn about the history about this non-profit organization how it only began from 4 humble men who went into communities and saw the lack of school supplies, as a result they made it their mission to help those with low income resources and how it grew to be 56 people currently gathering together to help the community. They introduced to us the layout for what we will be doing on our three following CAP days. This time around we will be able to help in the process of building Dona Nena’s home after being unstable condition. 

Not only this but we got the pleasure to actually meet Dona Nena and see the direct impact Global Glimpse has on communities. We lastly finished by walking down over back to our hotel where we were followed by a seminar which we discussed what tasks and materials we will be needing for the following days we will building. After a quick refresh we were fed dinner, which consisted of chuletas (porkchop), salami, french fries, and plantains. After cleaning up our dishes we followed by having our nightly meeting where we led our quote and question of the day. 

Our question of the day was what is sustainability and why is it importat to integrate it into development projects, followed by our quote which reads, “True development must be in harmony with the needs of the people and the rythem of the natural world.” by Sulak Slavraksa, a Thai social activist. We quickly disscused amoung our peers the importance of this question and quote but also how it applied to our day and activities today and the days to come. We ended off by passing the torch on over to our new leaders where they presented their very intresting talent. Gave and recieved much big love around the room in appreciation of today and ended up with our unity clap which we chose “fairs” as our word to represent a common lingo we have used constantly throughout our trip so far. We are eager to see what tommorow awaits and see our CAP progress, catch you all later much big love to you all hasta manana!

Hi family and friends, it’s Xochitl. Quiero empezar por contarles q me la estoy pasando genial he creado muchos amigos y conocido a tantas personas tan lindas en este viaje. Igual he provado tantas comidas deliciosas y abrido mis ojos a tanta belleza en otra parte del mundo q no sabia q existia. Espero q no me esten extranando tanto, pero les quiero mandar mis saludos hasta cuando los vuelva a mirar los extrano y amo mucho cuidense! Mwah ciao hasta la proxima vez! Les mando un fuerte beso y abrazo! <3 🙂

Hi family and friends, its Ninel. lol Im not sure how to explain how i feel but ill try my best. Being LDD was very rough for me, as my family knows i am very shy and Its hard for me to speak out to people and tell them what to do. Although that was a bit of a challenge, i tried my hardest to be in control and lead our fellow Global Glimpsers to each task we needed to achieve. I miss home, i miss wrestling, i miss my friends, and lastly i miss my dogs Rollo and Mocha, i hope to see you guys very soon and the days here in the Domincan Republic has been life changing for me. Deuces!!