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 The other two groups went to history, where they studied about Puerto Rican Diaspora in the Historical Content.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