Day 20: Wrap Up

Well I woke up definitely feeling way better than the last day luckily with no fever as well which made me feel good.  We had an earlier breakfast than usual since we had a lot to get done so our wake up was a 6:15 AM in the morning and our breakfast was at 7:00 AM.  For breakfast we had hot chocolate, cantaloupe, bread, along with the choice of butter, brown sugar and or marmalade.  I was actually in heaven since I was watching what I was eating the day before and I’ll be honest woke up on the hungry side.  After breakfast we had our Appreciation Letter seminar we here the students were writing their final drafts to donors and or people that made their trip possible.  During this time I was updating the Global Glimpse blog and my own personal blog since I was running behind.

As this activity was wrapping there was a misunderstanding as to how the ranking of letters correlated to the names of the people, this in itself turned out to be a debacle but it appeared I was in the crossfire yet again, playing mediator between my fellow GG Leader and the in country coordinators…which lowered my morale just a tad…but I wasn’t going to let that bring my last full day in the DR down.  After that, we had part one of our closing seminar for the trip.  For being the first part it truly was interesting having the students revisit their CAP project and the part that I had to lead was the GG Journey Map which was interesting  to see all the students maps and how they have seen their change throughout the 3 week journey here in the DR.

We had to cut this activity short since we had to pack our luggage and clean our rooms since we had to have everything ready to go before we went to lunch and get our money exchanged to go buy souvenirs.  As we were able to get out of the hotel on time at 11:20 AM we made our way to the money exchange place, which only took us 5 minutes to get there and only 10 minutes to get everyone’s money exchanged…which was a record compared to previous times.  Since we were half way to the restaurant we decided to walk there and get there early.  We arrived to the restaurant and sat there for our last lunch in San Juan de la Maguana.  As we waited for our food, some of us played cards, talked and took pictures, which helped us pass the time.  

As we ate our lunch, it indeed was bittersweet since, this was the last time we were going to see Doña Sheila and our Chef, along with their cute dog Mandy.  After we had our lunch some of us had ice cream as we wrapped up our lunch to go back to the hotel to catch our guagua we ended up taking one last group shot of our delegation with our wonderful food providers.  As we walked back to the hotel and saw our guagua we helped Danny Boy pack the trailer with our luggage, once we finished packing the trailer we all loaded up the guagua and made our way back to Santo Domingo and prepare ourselves for our 3 hour ride there.  At our half way mark to Santo Domingo we stopped at a market for a stretch break—where some of the students ended up getting ice cream, snacks and their other “fuel” necessities .  As we hit the road again, spirits were high and Lucia ended up being our DJ with iPods from our students to help pass the time of our trip to our hostel for the night…Casa Grande.

After a 3 hour 40 minute guagua ride we finally made it to our hostel in Santo Domingo, we got situated in our old rooms from the first night we were here and took a 20 minute breather before we went to the colonial zone to go souvenir shopping…FINALLY!  Shopping was fun and again my group rocked, it totally was fun shopping with them in the Colonial Zone of Santo Domingo.  I got everyone on my list and had a few extra pesos for me to get me a little something, something which was nice.  The two hours that we had to shop went by way too fast but we finally made it back to the hostel just in time for dinner.  Dinner was pretty good and had a great time talking to the kids and reflecting about our experiences that we have had in the DR.  

After dinner we continued the wrap up seminar that we started earlier in the day which transitioned into the nightly meeting and our last student leader of the day.  We ended the nightly meeting with a BIG LOVE Shout out writing our thoughts…but honestly 30 seconds was just way too little time, but we managed.  The last officially business of the night was to fill out the evaluation for the program.  As the students turned in all their evaluations the last thing I had to do that night was waiting for the student leader of the day to finish writing their blog for everyone to see. 

As I have said throughout the entire day, to the students as well as the adults—it is a bittersweet day, three weeks have gone by real quick and this officially is the last day of the program that we’ll be here as a group.  Yeah we have tomorrow and most of us will be on the same flight but it’s officially a traveling day and we’ll each have other things on our minds.  

Well got to go to bed since it’s an early morning yet again to make sure that I have everything since I’m coming home!

Good Night from Santo Domingo, it’s been an AMAZING 3 weeks here!