Day 11: What Defines a Good Leader?

• Passion - energetic/impassioned about topic at hand, transmits that strong feeling over
• Charisma - persuasion, charm
• Education - they don't just talk fluff, bullshit. a.k.a. they know what they're talking about
• Ability to Transmit - effectively communicate thoughts
• Promises - does what s/he says, doesn't lie or promise things s/he can't keep but campaign isn't build upon promises either
• Realistic but Optimistic
• Looks/plans ahead [to future]
• Learns from Mistakes - doesn't repeat because blindly charging forward
• Can Admit Mistakes - not too prideful
• Chooses Right over Wants - does what's good for country/party/campaign/goal not for personal self

Day 11: Free day @ Cabarete!

Today consisted of...

  Shopping 1: Gabby and I bartered on a nice painting

  Swimming and floating: in the lulling ocean waves 

  Drinking juice [1]: mango lemon juice at the mojito bar = Yumm

  Eating burritos: vegetarian of course

  Shopping 2: I got a nice sling over black/grey striped bag

  Beach Bartering: We all got jewelry from the beach hagglers

  Chilled on the beach: chatting, napping and listening to oldies music

  Juice [2]: mango pineapple = double y u m

"Alex! Leonard! Get in here!!"

Savannah, Emma and Sophie chillin on the beach

I got a little sunburned/dehydrated and felt overheated and tired the rest of the night, probably as a result. This was the first night I wore actual pants (I was chilly too)! Fun times though, fun times.


*Emmas photos :)

Day 10: Bottle School II

Septic holes getting deep!

Experimenting with sanitizer

Today was pretty much a repeat of the previous day, except we didn't go back to the honey mans comb paradise, we visited his house instead, where several of us purchased bottles of honey to take home (or chug on the spot, as Hunter seemed to do).  The hole got a few feet deeper, to the point where Jake could stand in one part, and have just his head stick out. We all made friends with the kids, who loved to have their photos taken - we had a photo shoot. Abby gathered a group of followers who helped her dig and wire in bottles, while some little boys had fun using the remainders of my hand sanitizer, as they'd never seen anything like it.

Told you it looks like a fetus!!

"We can't keep Puppy?"

We found an adorable puppy, which everyone wanted to rescue, and which Louisa (who aspires to be a vet) determined had worms, fleas and skin issues, among several other health issues. Hunter and Patrick discovered the cocoa nut (I think that's what they're called), the fruit(?) from which chocolate is derived. Once the nuts had been cracked open, the inner white-slime covered cocoa beans were revealed. Everyone had...an interesting time sucking the white covering off the beans, which tasted like sour mango (I thought they looked like alien fetus's), but I soon discovered the actual bean tasted a w f u l aka not like chocolate at all. It was a successful and entertaining day all in all, and our last time for a while at the bottle school.

Sunrise on a morning walk - beautiful way to wake up 

Little Alejandro helping us shovel dirt

Bottle School Boy

This boy made his toy himself, and
would run up and down the beaten
road for twenty minutes, so entertained
- he was great

The well they get their drinking
water from :/

Amelia makes friends!

Day 9: Bottle School I

We all got bused over to a small village, where our project lay: a school made from bottles. It began when the local priest asked Dave to build him a school. Dave agreed upon the promise that the priest and villagers would collect 30,000 bottles and stuff them with trash - all within the following two weeks. A fortnight later, Dave returned to discover that they had in fact completed their task. Now it was just ours to help them build it.

Jake hard at work

The wooden structure and tin roof had already been constructed, and the groups before us had made some progress with several walls, however there was so much still left un-bottled. So we set to work nailing chicken wire on either side of the posts, filling them with straight lines of bottles layered up to the ceiling, securing these bottles with metal wire, and finally cementing over these bottles a few times. A septic tank was also started, with several of the group members digging a 6 ft hole in back of the school. We took breaks to play with the kids, buy snacks from the store, and even visit the local honey man.

This was probably one of my favorite experiences of the whole trip, visiting the honey bee man. 9 of us took the journey to find him, walking through the village, down a forest path and across a ridiculous 6-inch wide bridge made of wire. As we walked up the small incline to his comb kingdom, he spotted us and made his way down with an enormous cloth covered bowl. After greeting us, he began plucking large, green leaves from a nearby branch. On each he placed a fist sized comb, dripping with this sticky, fresh goodness. We emptied our pockets and gave him the coins we had as thanks, and made our way back. I'd just tip the leaf down and let the honey drip down the center of the leaves and into my mouth. The best was to just take a huge bite out of the comb, letting the  honey spurt out of each hole as I chewed the waxy comb - savoring every moment. This experience, among many others, will stick with me for a long time.

Sophie plays patty cake with Soline

There were so many adorable kids there too, who helped us build their own school. We all took time from work to play patty cake and tic tac toe in the dust with the children, who were all so beautiful and cute.

After our sweaty, cramped bus ride home, we dove into the crashing ocean waves followed by the pool where we relaxed for the rest of the day followed by another riveting movie and discussion











     

One of the many adorable boys 

Crossing that treacherous bridge to the honey keeper

He presented the comb on the leaf to us,
- tasted like heaven

Siblings :)

My girl, Soline <3

Working hard!

Progress!!

One of the many dogs Dave's picked up
at Beach Comber living' the life &
soakin' up the sun

Day 8: Arriving at Beach Comber

6.6.12.

Beautiful beach all to ourselves:]

We all dug into a wonderful breakfast of fresh cut fruit (banana, mango, passionfruit, etc.) and hot sandwiches on the hotel porch before making our long bus drive over to Beach Comber, the residence that Dave owns and lives at most of the year. We drove through cities, towns and deserts before arriving at the this paradise of a beach home, which included a luxurious pool, relaxing discussion area equipped with a ping pong and pool table, and a beautiful view of the soft, blue sea.

Daniel proves his worth at the ping pong table...

The rest of the day was free time, where we zipped into our rooms, threw on bikinis and raced out to the ocean which greeted us with strong, frothy waves. The current was so strong that we had to get out every 10 minutes to run back along the shore so we could remain in the allowed beach zone. After getting thrashed around in the waves and floating in the lulling saltwater (the area right before the waves broke), we headed back to the pool where everyone relaxed in a chair sipping fresh coconut juice or in the pool, playing chicken.

Our rooms and the pool. Wonderful? I think so.

These were going to be some fabulous next few days.

Day 7: Organic Coffee Farm & Santa Domingo

At breakfast we discovered some member's favorite TV shows, which included Friends, CSI, and My Little Pony.. We still haven't dropped that one. The bus ride up to the coffee farm was breathtaking, for those who managed to stay awake. From the openings in the trees, we could see countless palm trees sprawled over the infinite green valleys and rolling hills, with the winding rivers snaking between. The coffee farm was interesting, and those who could hear the tour guide learned lots. For those too engulfed in the view and picture possibilities (emma and I), or those feeling sick from the bug spray incident the previous night (James and Fergie), among others, this tour was still as fun, but very very buggy. Still, we got to trek through the jungle and try exotic fruits that tasted like sweet tomato-mangos, learn about the coffee bean process and observe the breathtaking view again from a hike to the mountaintop.

Pretty flowers on
the mountainside

Beautiful dewey flower

Coffee Farm tour guide showing us
 red beads (ripe beans)

View from the mountain village

Juliana trying the mango-tomato fruit

MOTO on the mountaintop!!!

(as you can tell, I haven't quite got the hang of the photo arranging on here yet...)

Outside the slums
 (we weren't allowed to bring cameras in)

Afterwards, we set off on our l o n g drive to Santa Domingo, but not before splurging on a variety of ridiculously cheap snacks from a nearby store. Through the city we drove, until we arrived at the starts of the Dominican slums. We walked through a technology school, where many citizens learn sets of skills they can use to find jobs, and then down a long and steep set of concrete steps to the bottom, where countless, poverty stricken Dominicans lived. The rickety shacks that housed these people were tiny and many members of our GLA group who had never seen slums were gobsmacked at the sight. I think Dave said over a million people lived, cramped in that tiny slum-area. Because the DR government doesn't provide many public services, like trash collection, these slum-inhabitants have no where to put their trash, so they empty it by the river. The river that serves as their baths, washing machines, and faucets for drinking. We saw pigs and chickens crowd round a freshly dumped mound of trash, rooting through the remains before moving on. This idea of poverty, water availability, sickness, job search and so many of the other problems we had been discussing was an evident reality here in the Santa Domingo slums, and many of us were moved by this fact.

Music began blaring from a nearby house, and a crowd of children congregated around us; a dance contest began. Wesley was pushed into the center of the circle to represent our group.. Let's just say the Dominican children were a little better than us. Haha! The light was waning, and so we made our way back up the steeep trail of stairs to our buses, waving goodbye to the children, some teens passing the kids sugar cane they'd bought out the windows.

Some of my group members felt very uncomfortable while walking through the slums, particularly many of the boys, as the Dominican men seemed to glare at them. The children at one point were chanting "matar americanos" translating to "kill Americans", which unnerved several group members. However, from a  slum inhabitant's perspective,  I can see why they'd be angry, feeling hatred towards us. If I were a poverty stricken slum inhabitant whose residence was being invaded by a bunch of touristy, rich Americans as if we were some sort of zoo, I would be pretty irritated as well.

Tuyen and her face-sized pizza

Afterwards, we were bused through the city to our quaint little hotel. However, because of a room-space mix up, only the boys stayed there because just 3 rooms were available. So we girls weaved our way through the SD streets to another hotel, where we got settled, got dressed up, and left to re-meet the guys for a night on the town. Jane and Dave led us to a fast food pizza place, where we inhaled some 14 HUGE pizzas. And when I say huge, I mean pizza-the-size-of-your-face huge. We walked around colonial SD for a while, taking touristy pictures in front of the famous statues and stone buildings, before being police-escorted back to our hotels.

Our hotel had lost electricity to the second and third floors, so when we arrived back, everything was pitch black. We entertained ourselves during that light-less time with flashlights, cameras and lots of laughing. The end result was a bunch of really cool pictures, a night of fun light shows, and a few arm bruises from where we accidentally whipped ourselves with the flashlights as we wildly spun them around.

Christopher Columbus site in Colonial Santa Domingo

Abby spinning on a light - looks sooo cool dudee

Our light show shenanigans: Gabby

All in all? A good day.

Day 6: School of Forestry and Environmental Minister

6.4.12. a.k.a. A very Dominican July 4th!!

We got up early once again, and got a tour of a tree nursery/farm that the school of forestry had growing. We made our way through a the nursery, housing thousands of different saplings and down a dirt path to the rivers edge, where we admired the misty green-blue waters we would soon be splashing in. We ate the staple lunch in addition to a delicious dessert of coconut fudge of some sort - whatever it was it was goood - and some strong Dominican espresso (the deprived coffee addicts were ecstatic).

All of us planters with our trees babies!

Beautiful waterfall

We then hopped on the bus and drove to a little river side area, where we planted 100 of the 10,000 tree sproutlings we had donated. Afterwards we hopped back onto the bus, arrived at the hostiles once again, and quickly slipped on our swimsuits so we could make our way to the waterfalls just a short stroll away. After crossing many a rickety bridge (only 5 allowed on at once, or it might collapse...), we arrived at a viewing point to the beautiful flowing falls. I swear, it was the misty blue color you'd see on a birthday cake or in some pirate fantasy movie, it was brilliant!


After snapping a few photos, we waddled back along the swaying wooden bridges, and raced along the trail leading to the swimmable area of the river. It was numbing but refreshing, and we spent a good few hours of our independence day exploring this birthday cake colored oasis. Leonard ended up loosing his glasses, some of the boys built a dam with pebbles in the shallow area, and we girls experimented with underwater photos and floating down the rapids. We were sad to leave this breath taking view of distant, misty mountains to nearby, blue-as-blue-can-be rapids giving way to the circular waterhole we'd spent our last hours in.

Veggie girls and our salsaaaa

We had a dinner of boiled plantains (...yum?), followed by a sustainability discussion drowned out by the deafening noise of the monsoon-like downpour that echoed against the tin roof. Afterwards we enjoyed a second dinner of hot dogs and hamburgers cooked  (burned?) by our very own chefs-for-the-night Daniel and Ben.  Since the DR supermarkets don't really sell fake meat burgers, Juliana and I (the only two veggies in our group) enjoyed a large bag of chips and jar of salsa to ourselves for dinner. We all engaged in a very intense game of ratslap afterwards, and slowly drifted off to bed.

Apparently, most of our group is deathly afraid of spiders, as I was woken up soon after I fell asleep to the sound of petrified screams and shrieks over a "freakin huge spider!!!!" in the bathroom. So huge in fact that we had to have Rachel (the counselor) come in and exterminate it herself. The boys weren't any better - one spider sighting and a whole bottle of bug spray was expelled to ward off any other 'dangerous creatures of the liking'. It worked - it also warded off any feeling in James' arm the next day. Yay chemicals!

All in all? Hella Gnarly Tight July 4th (I picked up regional slang while I was there. Am I using it right??).