Day 3 - San Juan

Some of us began the early morning to watch the sunrise, and although disappointed by the cloudy morning, enjoyed exploring the beach in the cool morning air. After getting dressed, eating breakfast, and preparing for a long day's worth of activities, the Puerto Rican travelers loaded onto the bus and headed over to El Puente. However, in a mere 30 minute ETA, our bus broke down and we ended up being stranded on the side of the road. Nonetheless, we took refuge under the tree, watching planes fly over us, and digging into a bag of goldfish. Once the new van arrived, we were headed down to El Puente, but now we even had music in our van! At El Puente, an environmental organization in Rio Piedras looking to become a pillar of the community, we walked through the town and learned a little Barrio history. We walked through a market, saw lots of graffiti, many dominos tables, and other organizations around town. After our walk through, we relocated back at El Puente and had a conversations about green energy vs. fossil fuels, and the involvement of the government. 

We had a very meaningful discussion and had a couple of our questions answered before we drove over to Old San Juan for the remainder of the day. For lunch we ate at Cafe Manolin, where we had to wait for 15 minutes to be seated, and ended up having to split up our big group of 14 travelers. By the time lunch ended, we went our separate ways to explore the gorgeous town of Old San Juan. A couple of us went to get henna tattoos, explore in and out of souvenir shops, and walked down multiple alley-ways to capture in the Puerto Rican culture. 

Others visited places like the Museo de las Américas to see exhibitions on the African influence on Puerto Rican culture, Taíno history and culture, and contemporary Puerto Rican artists like Carmelo Fontánez. At El Parque de Las Palomas we got some refreshing iced coffees, quesitos, and limber de coco while we watched the pigeons and made some chalk art. Many of us enjoyed street arts and music like street performers and even a cameo from our very own VEO.


At 3:30pm we were assigned to meet back up as a group, but with a little miscommunication, some of us ended up at the later meet up spot and had to walk 15 minutes to get to the rest of the group. Once we got together, a group of us walked over to Castillo San Felipe del Morro where we got lots of photos and were taken aback by the breathtaking views. Spending about an hour exploring the castle and learning about its history, we rested on the lawn, and eventually met back up at Plaza Colon to drive to dinner. For dinner, we split up between Chinese-Puerto Rican Cuisine and a Chicken butcher. 

After dinner, we did a little shopping to restock on groceries and drove back home to Casa Coral. Putting away the groceries, we spent the rest of the night showering, playing games, relaxing, and getting ready for the next day. See you all tomorrow for another great day!

Best,

         Your Puerto Rican Travelers

            Sabrina & Ja Seng Ra


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Preparing for Take Off!

Image
 Snow and Ice, Goodbye! With four days and a time change between our travelers and departure, we welcome you to our March Break in Puerto Rico Blog. On a two hour delay at Watkinson, it was the perfect time to introduce our trip. We will be departing Sunday from Bradley, and look forward to landing on the beautiful island of Puerto Rico. For the last few months, we have been preparing for our trip through group meetings, individual readings, and a whole group trip around the Hartford area to explore Puerto Rican food and culture. We even made some delicious desserts together! Borinquen Bakery Bee Borinquen Bakery, New Britain, CT If you want to check out the book we have been studying, here is a link  to Puerto Rico: A National History,  by Jorell Meléndez-Badillo.  We have been reading different chapters, and there are chapters that mention Hartford, CT specifically! Tomorrow evening, we will gather to play dominoes, and have a homemade Puerto Rican meal (provided b...
Read more

Day 2 - ¡Loíza!

Image
       Today, after getting a bit of a later start to our day, we cooked breakfast before embarking on our first trip: a day in Loíza. After a scenic bus ride which passed by vast meadows with free roaming cows, verdant mountains, and small towns, we eventually arrived at the home and studio of Samuel Lind, a very well known and respected Puerto Rican visual artist; he was not home when we got there, so instead we switched up the itinerary and went across the street to a family owned and run vejigantes (traditional Puerto Rican masks made out of coconut husks) workshop, which had been in operation since 1958. While we were there, a Puerto Rican lady named Adelina, the daughter of the man who founded the business and created countless vejigantes, taught us about the culturally rich and fascinating history of the masks. In addition to the masks themselves, we learned about the history of a figurine of Santiago Apóstol (locally depicted as the persona Santiago Matamoros...
Read more

Day 1 - Landed in San Juan

Image
     Today Watkinson's Puerto Rico travelers landed safely in San Juan!!! We started off our trip with a gorgeous lunch at Marbella, right by the beach. Everyone was super chatty even with the salsa music making it hard to hear, and the DJ even shouted out Connecticut! After lunch, we drove over to Amigos to shop for our groceries! We split into group and ventured throughout the store to find everything we needed for the week. Once we had FINALLY finished our shopping, it started pouring... suddenly the rain stopped and we thought "this is our window". as the Watkinson students and teacher started to walk quickly to our van Sabrina yelled "this is a trap" and the rain slowly started to speed up. We then realized that this was not our window and we should have let Ms. Alferi wave the van over. We loaded our groceries into the van as fast as possible. While some Watkinson students tried to escape the rain, Mr. Kozey and Jordy sacrificed their dryness for the rest ...
Read more