The experience I will never forget <3

Being able to travel to a country that I've never been to was one of the most funnest experiences I've had so far. What started off as a group of people who didn't know each other ended up as one big family, traveling and living together for two weeks helped us create a bond that none of us want to leave behind. I'm happy that this program gave me the opportunity help out a community we helped create a recreational park for the community called Los Higos and knowing we created something that they will have for a long time made us all happy and proud of our hard work, this program also helped me break out of my comfort zone and be a leader because we all got to be leaders of the day at one point during our trip and when I was leader of the day it was the final day of our CAP project so we were all tired but me and my partner were able to make sure we all finished off strong. Although our CAP project was a lot of work it's one of my most memorable experiences because we got to use pickaxes and shovels to dig out the hole where the benches were going to be placed and I got to admit even though I've never used a pickax before my trip it was the funnest thing ever I got to break through all the stone and honestly it was fun, even though we were all working hard we did have our good laughs and when we took our little lunch break some of us were able to play either baseball or basketball with the community members and even if I didn't play with them it was so funny to watch. Throughout our trip we met so many new and interesting people who shared their stories with us and it made me think about all the things we take for granted like our jobs here in the US people may think that they don't get paid enough because they only get paid minimum wage but that is way better than how much farm workers get paid in the Dominican Republic, there the farmworkers get paid roughly 234 Dominican pesos a day which is equivalent to $4.11 in the US. At the end of everyday we would have nightly reflections and it was a great way to just do a recap of the day and take a sneak peak at what was in store for the next, the meetings were held by the leaders of the day and sometimes the leaders of the day would make the meeting fun by cracking some jokes here and there to just liven up the mood. While most days we did work really hard we also had a couple of free days where we were able to go out into the city and shop or our program coordinators would take us to a beach where we spent the night, we were also taken to a waterfall on our last day at the Dominican Republic and for our last dinner together we went to a pizza restaurant and it was sooo good. During the free time we had in the day we either played cards together or we went swimming in the pool we had at the ranch we stayed in, sometimes people would get homesick and all of us were there for one another which brought us al closer and helped us gain empathy which is apart of Global Glimpse's mission for us. Some of us had digital cameras so we were able to capture all our best moments. During the trip I personally never encountered any areas were improvement was needed but I did see that there was a lack of food options for people who were lactose intolerant so there's that but other than that this program was amazing.