A School Day in Puerto Rico

Hi, everyone! This is Hannah and Yane.

Today was our big trip to the Universidad de Puerto Rico (UPR). We started out with an early morning and sleepy bus ride. We arrived at UPR and were welcomed by Dr. George Bonilla and a few honor students. During the breakfast they gave us, the High School String Ensemble performed many acoustic pieces. They were phenomenal! We then attempted to live up to their performance by singing “I’m Not Perfect,” which was a total failure but at least we tried :) However, we did have Ben and his guitar to save the day. He played an original piece called “Town of Ghosts”. After breakfast our class got divided into five different groups. One group went to science class, where they extracted DNA from a banana. Two groups went to math class, where they studied geometry. The other two groups went to history, where they studied about Puerto Rican Diaspora in the Historical Content. After that, we attended an assembly meeting with the rest of the school where a guest speaker talked about the literature of the Puerto Rican Diaspora. The honor students took us to a classroom where they served us a wonderful delicious lunch. We then headed over to the University of Puerto Rico History, Anthropology and Art Museum. We toured around the museum and looked at different paintings and mummies. Then we headed back to the university’s high school campus to get ready for the girls and boys basketball games. Both teams lost, but the score was closer than last year. During the girls game there was also a soccer game going on over at the other court. During the games the two different schools hung out and talked. The students from both schools went to a little market to get drinks. Unfortunately we returned to the school and sadly had to say good-bye to the students. Fortunately many of the students exchanged contact information with each other. Everyone made friends with each other and enjoyed the day.

We headed back to the hotel, where we went to the pool for a little dip. Then we headed out to dinner to a little café in old San Juan. We had a small Spanish class and discussed what went on today and what is going to happen tomorrow when we go to Ponce. Overall it was a fantastic third day with a lot of fun!

Also, a highlight for me was when we saw endangered Puerto Rico parrots building nests in a mango tree with dry palm frongs. A rare and beautiful sight! - Wendy

The Rainforest and Luquillo Beach

Hi, everyone! It’s Alessandra.

Today was our second day here, and some of us started off our day by going for a run with Brian. It was drizzling a little bit, but it was still nice. While we were running, we heard the Puerto Rican national frog, the coqui. It is a very tiny tree frog.

The first adventure we had today was going to the rain forest. The rain forest’s name is El Yunque. Everything there was just beautiful. The plants, the flowers, the ground, everything. As soon as we got up into the rain forest, it started to pour! Even though we had rain gear, we all still got soaked. It was still so amazing.

After El Yunque we went to a beach called Luquillo. It was a public beach with lots of people. It just showed how diverse Puerto Rico is. The water was fantastic. It is a blue color, not so much clear blue, just blue. It was also very salty. It was warm as well. After we were tired of swimming and were starting to get "pruny," a lot of us went walking along the beach to a little beach food shack. The food there was so delicious. Tonight we went to dinner at a restaurant called Bebos. The food there was yummy, too.

It is just amazing to be here in Puerto Rico and seeing all the culture, the diversity, the sights. It is an amazing experience for me.

Hope you are having a good time and good weather back home in Philly! :)

PUERTO RICO 2011- DAY 1-Viejo San Juan