When living in the Dominican Republic for a month with an entire squad of 47, these are 11 fun facts you’d like to know…
1. You will have a private place to come to every night; it doesn’t take much for it to feel like home. It helps that you’ve been carrying your home with you for some months now and finally you get to pitch your tent.
2. The awesome chickens you walk by everyday to get to your home are your alarm clock. Keep in mind however that your “alarm clock” starts at 3 am every day.
3. After a few days of not showering (by racer’s standards 2-3 days) it’s nice to know that your waterfall shower is always running and only a short and a little slippery, sometimes dangerous, path away. Group showers in your bathing suites make for fun moments with your team, always try to make the most of your cold water shower.
4. You will get a roll of toilet paper to carry with you, and don’t you lose it! It comes in handy at all times, specially when the line for the bathroom is too long and you’ll have to run to the “hidden bathroom” in the woods. Be careful where you go though you don’t want the rain to wash your bathroom area into tent city where everyone’s homes are.
5. Your breakfast and lunch will always be more than enough, but you might need a granola bar after diner the first days. Dominicans’ largest meal is lunch; dinner is more like a snack, usually bread and juice. Make sure you fill your belly up with lots of yucca, ñame (starchy root vegetables,) bananas, rice and salami from lunch.
6. You will appreciate church a lot more in the Dominican Republic because you’ll realize that you have it so much easier in the States. Everyone must be ready by 7 am for a quick breakfast and load up the busses for an hour to 2-hour drive to church every Sunday. The days you attend the church in Moca you’ll be dropped off at the bottom of the hill because the bus can’t make it up and you’ll have to walk your way up the steep hill.
7. Praise and Worship will be a lot of fun! You will surely move your hips and realize that you don’t need a huge worship ministry to praise God. A few percussion instruments, a keyboard and 2 young girls with awesome hearts is more than enough to get everyone on their feet and moving to worship.
8. Teaching English to a group of 40 kids will prove to be more fun then you could imagine. The kids will repeat word by word what you say including “repeat after me” no matter how many times you try to explain that they don’t have to say “repeat after me.”
9. Professional trench digger, plumber, and electrician can now be added to your resume. Grounds work days are as fun as you make them, play loud music, have a mud fight, or joke with the workers and show them that their first impression of your all girls team isn’t accurate and you have the ability to work as hard as they do.
10. Your Spanish vocabulary will increase and it will be a blast to talk with the locals and ask them the different names they have for things. Keep in mind that the words you learn in the DR should only be taken into other countries after asking if they are safe there, some words have different meanings from country to country.
11. The Dominguez family will become part of your team and there will be lots of tears when you leave. They will love you unconditionally and do all that is in their power to give you the absolute best experience you can have in the DR. Most of all, be ready to leave a peace of your heart in the DR!
