DR culture: The Dominican REplublic is much like the other hispanic cultures I have been to. You will find the streets full of people walking and motorcycles/mopeds, music playing everywhere, and people being very friendly. Here, life has time to spend with people, even if that means you are late to the next thing you have to do. Everyone just understands that you were taking time to spend with someone else. Hospitality is so great it makes you want to cry at times. My teammate Anna and I are staying with a host family whose son is the youth leader at the church. This family lives in a very poor part of town. The farther you get up the hill and closer to the mountains, the poorer they seem to be. With so little, this family opened their home to us and gave up their beds so we could sleep there. So Anna and I have a bedroom all to ourselves, complete with bunk beds (yes mom, I am still sleeping on bunk beds…but I get the top bunk now). The family was told that we had very little to give, but that we wanted to come to support the church, so they agreed to take us into their home and buy and cook all three meals for us thinking they were getting paid nothing. Not to say that this family is starving by any means, they are getting by with some luxeries, they have a fridge and a TV, and it is obvious they get what they need to eat for the day, but above and beyond that, we know they are giving a huge sacrifice to feed us as well. So it was our priveledge to present them with our daily living expese for food for this next week (which we had planned on giving them the entire time). It is going to be most enjoyable to spend time with this family and get to know them more!
Food and Bath house: The food is good, but I miss veggies…yes, I said it, I miss them! I miss salad! I miss cucumbers and carrots, and broccoli (Ande, be sure to tell your mom that I miss my green veggies!). We have been eating a lot of rice and chicken. Now that we are with a host family, the means are different. This morning we were given rolls and ham, chesse, catchup and mustard to eat (more like a lunch for us), lunch was rice, peas in sauce with some beans and some type of salami. And dinner was fried eggs (sooo good!) and fried bananas (which kind of makes them loose the small taste they do have). So that gives you a small taste of what we eat…a LOT of carbs. Yesterday and today we had a snack time which consisted of amazing homemade popcorn, and waffers.
A lot of people have toilets here, but you have to bucket flush them, meaning you poor water into the bowl for it to flush. So you don’t flush if there is only pee in there, at least until it gets full.You always throw your toilet paper in the trash, never in the toilet. There is no toilet where we live, so we use a bath house out in the back of then yard for going to the bathroom and for “showering”. To shower we use buckets, which really isn’t all that bad. There is a hole in the middle of the bath house for your expeltion needs. And don’t worry…there is a watch dog that potrols the yard. When Anna andd I walked out to the bath house last night, this little dog charged us only to be stopped by the chain he is on. I think he would have chewed our legs to pieces if he had the chance. Meanest dog I have ever met, and always scares the poop out of us (well, I wish he did that actually…). We asked what the dog’s name was, and the little girl said , No Name. I don’t even think they like him. When we made it to the bath house, we looked around with our head lamp and found a spider whose body was the size of the light in my lamp and whose legs stretched out to the size of a small kitchen bowl. Under it was a large grasshopper that it was killing or trying to eat of something… not what you want to see when you are about to squat over a hole in the ground. haha. It is actually pretty funny. Even though things are a lot different than they are in the states, we are enjoying the time we have here and embracing the new things and challenges that come.
