We would like to introduce the word of the day. Every day the group will decide a word that describes their experiences of the day!

So today, the word of the day is:

FAMILY
/ˈfamɪli,ˈfam(ə)li/
noun

We got to the village after a three-hour ride on our bus and we were welcomed by the community. We arrived to the school and had a delicious lunch organized by our cooks Tania and Ananyel. Then we organized our rooms in our classrooms and did a little tour of the school. We did a scavenger hunt in which each group had kids from the community that acted as guides. Then we started the welcoming party. Around 70 people came from the community to welcome us. We started the ceremony with the national anthem of the Dominican Republic and then the U.S. anthem, then there were various speeches from different leaders of the community. The reason we chose “FAMILY” as today’s word is because the community made us feel like such. We had grandparents who hugged us warmly, cousins and siblings who played with us all day long, and lots of aunts and uncles who told us their only objective was to make us feel like home and take care of us. We also celebrated all together since this year we have the privilege of being the 20th Putney group that has come to the Dominican Republic, and the 10th group that has come specifically to La Guazara! It is a huge accomplishment for both Putney and the community and we are really happy to be able to keep working on this long lasting relationship !

We then had dinner all together and finally, when everything was finished, had our nightly meeting. Each of us got into our sleeping bags and mosquito nets and went to sleep.

More soon!

— Juliana & Greg