Bienvenidos a la República Dominicana!

It’s my eighth day in the Dominican Republic and I still haven’t had time to stop and take everything. Many of you have asked about my blog, so here it is! I’m actually typing this first entry in segments because I’ve realized that I’m never going to have a stretch of time long enough to type everything….and it’s only going to get busier. Okay this is gonna be superrrr long…

For those of you who don’t really know what I’m doing here, let me explain. I’m here on a study abroad program focused on service learning. There are 9 of us gringos in this program and we take classes at the university here in Santiago. All the classes are focused on this idea of service learning and are in spanish. We are also spending this week visiting 6 different NGOs and at the end of the week we are going to each choose one NGO that we would like to work with. They all deal with different issues in community development like education, public health, etc. And they all work with certain local communities that are caught in the brutal cycle of poverty. So once we figure out which one we’re working with, our schedule will be: get up wayyy too early, walk to school, go to classes, go home for lunch, go to our community organization, go home, eat dinner, and crashhh from exhaustion. It’s a pretty intense program in that you don’t have much free time. Which I guess is a good and bad thing. This is my schedule of classes:

Monday:

9-10am: Social Methods (a research methods class, bleh)

11-12pm: Independent Research and Capstone (this class involves preparing us to do research in the communities. Part of it is research on the issues they deal with and the second part is developing and implementing our own sustainable development project that has to do with these issues and then write a 50 page paper on it…in Spanish.)

-then home for lunch and straight to my organization for the rest of the day, same with all the other days

Tuesday:

8-10am: Social Methods

10-12pm: Español

Wednesday:

8-10am: Poverty and Development

10-11am: Community Participation

11-1pm: Independent Research and Capstone

Thursday:

8-9am: Poverty and Development

10-12pm: Español

And Friday we don’t have classes, but it may be filled with community work.

So yeah, that’s my daily schedule for the semester. Today was the first day of classes and so far I like them. My only worry is that it’s easy to space out (especially this early), and because it’s in Spanish I can’t just space out and still understand, I always have to be actively listening and thinking so I understand. I’ve already caught myself going in and out of listening and then I get lost. But I’m sure it will get easier. It’s not only going to be exhausting because of the packed schedule and that I have to walk everywhere, but also because my mind has to be working really hard the whole time to communicate with everyone in Spanish. I’ve been so tired and busy that I haven’t had a chance to really let reality sink in.

So what have I been doing for the past 8 days? Well, on the first day we got dropped off at our host families’ houses for a few hours to drop off our bags and meet the people we’ll be living with for the next 4 months. I live with a 67 year old woman named Rafaela who is sooo wonderful! I love her. She’s adorable and super nice and talks to me slowly so I can understand her haha. And she lives here with her “husband”, Victor, who is in his 30s….don’t ask, I still don’t get it. She was married before and he died but they had 3 kids who are old and out of the house. Victor is nice too, but he doesn’t say much. I have my own room and bathroom with occasional hot water, so it’s nice. It’s so hard to sleep though because the roosters call all night and the dogs bark constantly, and the cats are always fighting, so it sounds like a farm outside all night. My earplugs only block out so much…But I’ve been told that pretty soon I won’t even notice the sounds.

So after having a meet and greet with our fams, we all left to drive to this place about 2 hours away called Tubagua. It’s in the mountains and overlooks Puerto Plata and the north coast. And it’s GORGEOUS. We slept in canopies under mosquito nets outside and the view that I woke up to the next morning was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. The pictures don’t do it justice. Even the view from the bathroom was incredible!

We started orientation there and did some activities and get-to-know-you things. There are 3 other people from Clark University there so it’s nice to have familiar faces around. The rest are all really awesome people from different US universities.

The next day we did an insanely treacherous hike up the mountains to the waterfalls (I’m pretty sure Marcos, one of the program directors that guided us, was trying to kill some of us off). But when we finally made it to the waterfalls, it was all worth it. And I jumped off of one! It wasn’t that high, but it was still scary. They were beautiful.

The next day we got up early and went to the university (it’s called Pontificia Universitaria Católica Madre y Maestra (PUCMM) but we call it “pucamyma” for short). There we took a spanish language test to see if we were in level II or III. Surprisingly I was placed in level III even though I thought it went horribly. Then we had a bunch of meetings with “important people” and then got a tour of the campus, which is beautiful. We also had a “treasure hunt” around the city where we had to learn to use the concho routes (they’re basically taxi’s that have a certain route the follow) and find certain places so we could start learning our way around the city.

This past weekend we went to Santo Domingo (the capital in the south) and we got to see a bunch of really old stuff from like the 1500s, it was pretty cool. The theme was race and identity, because there is a lot of racism here and it goes back to colonization.

We went to a little bar/club full of old couples in the evening and danced merengue and salsa with a bunch of old men, it was fun though haha. And then we had the day off on Monday so we all went to the beach in Cabarete (the north coast), and it was BEAUTIFUL. We just sat in chairs right on the beach and sipped delicious tropical drinks, swam in the super warm water, and got sunburned. It was truly paradise.

But it’s not all beautiful. We’ve been visiting the various organizations that we might work with and they are all located in some of the poorest barrios around. Yesterday we went to visit an organization called Niños con Una Esperanza (children with a hope) and it was located in the poorest ghetto of Santiago, called Cien Fuegos (100 fires). Here the roads are all dirt and rocks, there are holes everywhere, there are little children running around barefoot without any adults in sight, no running water, no electricity, huge garbage dumps that smell really bad, and the houses look like little shacks that are about to collapse. There is a lot of malnutrition here, lots of disease, no access to sanitation or medicine, lots of diseases, drug addiction, theft, and domestic abuse. But the kids are sooo adorable! I love them. We also went to a public hospital and it was really crowded, not very clean, and if you don’t have money you can’t be seen. It’s crazy because we live in middle class families and there are some really rich families near us too that all have fancy cars, automatic gates, huge houses with maids, fancy clothes, manicured lawns, hot water, food, access to education and doctors, and they live a completely different life just a few minutes away. The class differences are really crazy. We just had a movie night with some of the support students here and it was about two boys in Santo Domingo who are friends and one is poor and the other really rich and they end up seeing each other’s houses and neighborhoods and how different their lives are. And it’s actually really accurate according to what I’ve seen so far and what the students told us. It was ironic because the student’s house that we were at was like a mansion and we watched the movie on a huge projector in the backyard next to the big swimming pool and hot tub.

So that’s gonna be something I’ll be talking about more later once I’m more immersed. Let’s see what else….The driving here is craziness, it’s like Libya, lanes don’t exist and traffic signs are just a suggestion. There are lots of motorcycles and the pollution is terrible, it’s hard to breathe. When we go places as a group we use a guagua (like a van) and our driver is hilarious and crazy, his name is Rafael, he’s great. Another thing with driving is that when you are walking, every time a guy drives by, he honks at you, either to be flirtatious or because he wants to give you a ride. Men in general here suck. I’m getting so fed up with them. They’re always hissing, whistling, and saying disturbing things to women every time we walk by. Yesterday I just flipped someone off and swore under my breath because I couldn’t handle it anymore (mind you, he was an armed guard so it probs wasn’t the best idea but I was so mad I didn’t care). It’s ironic because it’s a super catholic country and women have to dress somewhat conservatively and everything, but then the men treat them like a piece of meat that they can play with. Assholes. Anyway, it’s gonna take me awhile to get used to. Along with gender inequality, there is a lot of racism against black people because they are associated with being Haitian and there is racism against Haitians here. Hair is actually an indicator of race here, so if you have really curly hair of African decent it’s seen as “bad hair”, that’s why a lot of people straighten their hair here to have “good hair”.

Let’s see, what other random things can I share? Baseball is the most popular sport here and is seen as “a way out”. Kids practice with sticks and rocks on the streets. Dominoes is a really popular game and people just play it randomly in the streets and parks. It’s super humid here so I sweat a ton and it’s in the 80s every day, but my host mom insists it’s cold because it’s winter here right now. This morning she was like, don’t go outside with you’re hair wet, you’ll be so cold! I don’t even want to know what it’s going to be like in april and may. I’ve already managed to lose my waterbottle with all my cool stickers =( but my friend Lila let me use her extra one, let’s hope I don’t lose this one any time soon. I drink lots of water, but I’m still dehydrated. Dominicans don’t carry water bottles and don’t drink much water so they always make fun of us. You can’t drink the tap water because of parasites and cholera so everything has to be filtered and you have to make sure the restaurants are ligit before drinking their water. I’ve been having some diarrheal issues for the past week, so I’m taking traveler’s diarrhea pills for it now, but I may have a parasite already haha, oops. We’re lucky if we get hot water for showers, I’ve had one hot shower so far. But it’s so hot outside that it doesn’t really bother me. We haven’t really explored nightlife here yet because we’ve been so busy and tired, but this weekend we’ll finally have some down time to check things out. It’s dangerous to walk at night, so we’ll be taking taxis. Robbery is really common no matter what time of day. Lila was robbed the other day and she walked into the office while we were eating pizza and was like “oh yeah so I just got robbed, anyway so we’re having pizza?” She’s been here for four months already so she’s used to all of this. You just have to be really careful.

I need to figure out how to get exercise here because even though we have to walk a tonn, we eat sooo much and everything is so greasy and stuff that I’ve already gained weight. But it’s kind of weird to go running, and the men will really bother you if you’re out running. I’ll probably either try running in the morning when it’s cooler and less people are around, or just do some stuff in my room. It’s good to be una gordita here, being skinny is bad. I feel like there is a lot more pressure on men to be in shape than women here.

Anyway, this post is way too long. But now you all know what I’m up to! There’s still so much I left out. We’ve been so busy. If you want to talk with me individually, send me a message and we can try to figure out a time when I’ll have internet access. And I have a bunch of pictures up on facebook, so check them out. Overall I’m having a great time and love my program. But there are definitely ups and downs. Like yesterday I was just super grumpy and just didn’t want to be here. It was probably because I was really tired and sweaty and the men were getting on my nerves. It’s definitely hard adjusting. Sometimes I feel like I’m on a rollercoaster. But I’ve been connecting with people on the program who feel the same so that helps a lot. Alright, I’ll keep y’all updated. Love you all and I miss you guys!

Paz y amor,

~Aysha~