This Week in Santiago

This Week in Santiago

This week was absolutely chock-full of activities and adventures! We've been running full tilt doing our morning service projects with the children in the local communities, taking our Spanish and Service & Leadership classes, and attending cultural activities in the afternoons and evenings. This week, we got to head over to Salcedo to visit the Mirabal Sisters Museum and monument, enjoy a day of shopping on the Calle del Sol, visit the museum inside the monument of Santiago and climb up the towers to check out the panoramic views, and learn all about the plastic pollution that is plagueing our planet. 

Service Projects

This week we spent time in four different communities including Hoyo de Elias, Hato del Yaque, Rafey, and Hoyo de Puchula. 

Here pictured we have a few of our students showing off their team's artwork during our serivce in Hoyo de Elias. The objective of this project was to collectively paint their "ideal community", sparking conversation and reflection about what constitutes a peaceful and happy society. As you can see, their group decided to include lots of sunshine, animals, nature, a grocery store (Bravo), and the words amigo, and feliz.

Cultural Activities

Here we have the group pictured in at the Mirabal Sisters Museum. During this outing we learned even more about fascinating history of the sisters who stood up and defied the oppression of the Trujillo dictatorship. We went on this trip after watching the movie En el Tiempo de las Mariposas, (In the Time of the Butterflies) last week. This was a very inspiring and thought-provoking experience for many students. To learn more about it, check out this resource! https://www.history.com/news/mirabal-sisters-trujillo-dictator 

Here we have a group of amigos enjoying the view from the top of the monument of Santiago! After we finished up our day here, we all piled back into our guagua, or "bus", which the students have lovingly named "Vicky". Tomorrow we have another Camp Closure for the communities we spent time with this week, and then we are headed over to Montecristi for some beach adventures. Check back here on Sunday to read all about it!