February 20th – English Class, Juice, and a Ceremony

 Today for breakfast, we had scrambled eggs and pancakes, which were really yummy. There was also a pineapple-orange juice for us!

Today was our last day visiting the school. When we got there, all the kids ran up to us and hugged us. Then we went to the morning assembly, and they sang the national anthems of the Dominican Republic and the United States. All the kids sang (or rather mumbled) along with the US anthem as well. As they went to their first class of the day, they all greeted us by giving high-fives, fist-bumps, or shaking our hands.





Our first class of the day was sixth grade and we did a matching game with fruits like we did yesterday with a different sixth-grade class, and they got very excited and enthusiastic about it.








After that, we went to fourth grade and we went outside and played a matching game with Uniendo Manos Dominicanas cards. They had different tasks for the students to do on them. The preschoolers were also at recess at that time and they kept coming up to us and giving us hugs and wanting to play so some of the other students and we all got distracted by the very cute preschoolers.




After the first 2 classes, there was the morning recess. We played many more thumb wars and clapping games, including one that involved tickling, and another that involved rock paper scissors. The kids also wanted to play tag so we started a game like that, but then we realized it was turning into a stampede and was unsafe, so we had to stop. We also played some Ronda, which is a game where you sing a song and then freeze and if the person in the middle sees you move when you’re supposed to be frozen you become the person in the middle.


After recess, we went back to the hotel for our lunch and had a yummy yuca (cassava) salad, two kinds of rice, avocado, and an option of beef or chicken. There was also mango-orange juice, which was a surprise because we hadn't had anything with mango yet on this trip.





After lunch, we headed back to teach fifth graders and I don’t think we have met this class before. I was surprised because they got the hang of the body parts really fast and they spelled the body parts in English pretty well when they had to label a person’s body parts on the board. In that class, we also played Simon Says, which was new to them, and much loved! Simon Says... touch your head!!





The day ended a little bit early so we could go to a closing/goodbye ceremony. Maria Del Carmen thanked us for coming and gave a really nice speech. Also, a little girl (I think she was in third grade) gave us a speech in English, and she did very well! We all received a certificate of thanks from the school district and bracelets, pins, and flags depending on whether or not you were a student. Frank got a special award for his services as well! We gave our final hugs goodbye, which was really sad and I’m going to miss the school a lot.













Tonight after dinner, we will go sing karaoke and enjoy beverages, food, and people. I think Dr. Sanchez will also join!






-Charlotte



Comments

  1. shelties11February 26, 2025 at 11:27 PM

    What a full and happy day! I'm sure the children are going to miss you so much! What a wonderful experience for everyone involved. I'm already feeling nostalgic about your trip that's almost over.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

February 16th: Church, Las Auyamas, and Carnival

Image
  Today, we started by walking to church for their Mass. They had several people in the choir loft, someone playing the keyboard, and someone playing the guitar. There was a lot of singing. During the service, an infant got baptized, and someone also had Happy Birthday sung to them, and we all sang that. At the end of the service, we all got invited to the front of the church, and he congratulated us and blessed us. We also all got holy water flung on us.  There must have been more than 250 people there - it was packed! After church, Glen drove us to a small village called Las Auyamas. There we visited Ana Maria and her family and their home, and it was a house the DR group had helped build about 7 or 8 years ago. Some of us also took a walk down the road and saw many (for us) exotic plants and animals! There is this very interesting plant called Sensitive Plant, and when touched, the leaves instantly curl up!  They had some fresh avocado, made into a salad with some pick...
Read more

February 15, 2025 - Arriving in the DR

Image
We’re a bit slow sharing our trip with you, so we will do a quick start with Friday and bring you up-to-date with Saturday. Friday, the bus left on time! We all found food at the airport!  The plane left on time!  And we all had seats! The plane was overbooked, but none of us offered to give up our seats. Some of us slept on the plane, some of us watched movies. But the time went quickly and we arrived on time in Santo Domingo around 5 AM.  Getting through their customs was easy but interesting. They were curious about our big bags that held T-shirts wrapped around toothpaste and toothbrushes. So they pulled those over; were we bringing something in to sell? But as soon as we explained, everything was fine. We were met curbside by our wonderful hosts who were there to greet us with smiles and hugs. We piled our suitcases - all 26 of them! - Into the back of the shuttle bus and drove through the dark to our hostal Sana-  El Jardin Secreto (The Secret Garden), where we...
Read more

A School, a Birthday, and the Fire Department

Image
  We started the day off with a nice breakfast of scrambled eggs instead of the usual fried eggs. Then, we went to the school and as we got off the bus, and a lot of kids greeted us with warm hugs. Since today was not opening ceremonies or the day of the child, there were no special dances in the morning assembly, but they still sang the Dominican national anthem and the United States national anthem. After the assembly, we went to a sixth-grade class where we stood in front of the class while the kids wrote fruits down on the smart board. Then we pronounced the fruits and they repeated them back. We also played a matching game where the students had to match a picture of the fruit to the English word for that fruit. The kids were very shy in the first part, but once we started playing the matching game, they all wanted to participate. After spending time with the sixth-grade class, some of the people in our group went to teach the fourth graders animals in English outside with fla...
Read more