Monday, August 10, 2015 Team Building/Day Camp Prep - 2

I hope this finds our readers well. J

This morning, my room slept through four (yes, FOUR) alarms and left just in time to eat breakfast, which was fantastic, as usual. 

Jake Kheel (Environmental Director of Grupo PuntaCana and the Director of the PuntaCana Ecological Foundation) came in after we finished eating and briefly, yet fully, described the many sustainable projects he and his teams are working on to better the Dominican Republic. These include bee

keeping (to keep bees from being a nuisance and to make money selling honey), an iguana sanctuary (to reintroduce them in their natural habitat), a hawk sanctuary (also to reintroduce an endangered species into their natural habitat), a coral regrowth project (to keep the local reef thriving), a lion fish “search and destroy” project of sorts to keep their population stable (harvest them to eat and also teach the fishermen's wives to use taxidermy to preserve the fish for sale to tourists).  Lionfish are not an indigenous species and therefore have little to no predators, so they kill off the local fish populations at a rapid pace.   Grupo PuntaCana also has a strong recycling program. (Dominicans have an astonishing amount of garbage, and no government provided disposal).

After Jake finished speaking, we went to the Ecological Foundation to prepare for tomorrow’s day camp for the local Dominican children. I had a great time getting to know our awesome, bilingual Dominican teens who will be helping us throughout the week. 

After we played some games and tie-dyed T-shirts, we went and watched a film made by other local teens in a local film academy. Even though it was entirely in Spanish, we got the gist of what it was saying, and it was really awesome.  They did a great job editing the shorts!

Next on our agenda was a trip to the Ojos Indigenous (Indigenous Eyes), a series of freshwater pools that feed into the Caribbean. We had a BLAST swimming around and jumping off into the beautiful, clear-blue water, and even had our feet nibbled on by small shrimp, which was quite an experience. 

After that was dinner, reflections, and then blogging, Wi-Fi, and swimming. All in all, today was pretty amazing. The teens are hilarious and outgoing; the language barriers are hardly a problem. In fact, they make our interactions all the more interesting and enjoyable. I am so glad we were able to have this opportunity, and I will surely never forget it.

Amelia Kahle

Alleghany County