First impressions

First things first, a quick note to anyone who has a place at university: get your ass over to that phone, defer your entry and get out here into the real world, because its pretty freaking awesome! Ill try and give you a quick snapshot of my first mental, amazing week in the Dominican Republic.

I appologise that it is so long, I do relise that probably the only people to reach the end of this particular marathon will be my mum and dad but do your best. If you would like a more... Succinct version of our first impressions then visit my partners blog: ruthelizabethwebster.wordpress.com

Apologies for the terrible picture arranging but with the current internet connection its the best I can do. There are also more pictures on my Facebook page 'Alice's Year in the Dominican Republic with Project Trust'.

 Ok, so. On Tuesday I left Edinburgh behind and headed south. After a night in London we hopped on a 9hr flight to Miami where we stopped off for 2hrs before getting onto a shorter flight heading straight for Santo Domingo wooop wooop Dom Rep here we come! By the time we arrived it was 9ish local time but about 3am uk time so we had all been up for roughly 22hrs... We were pretty tired. However, exhaustion was replaced with alarm as we stepped out of the airport into the heat! Sheesh! Santo Domingo hot and humid! At this point we were all wondering what we had let ourselves in for. However we battled on and got in a taxi. As we drove through the city listening to meringue and watching life, our nerves calmed well, that is until we hit traffic when it turned into a bit of a a white knuckle ride. As Amilia explained later that evening 'Dominicans don't follow any highway code'. Anyway, we made it to the hotel to drop our bags, in one piece and were met by Amilia who took us straight out for pizza and talked us through some basic Dominican customs, she also warned us girls about cat calling... More of that later! After a delicious meal we headed to bed where we all slept very soundly. The next morning Amilia met us at the bus station where we said farewell to the boys as they headed to Santiago and we boarded a bus to Barahona. So. That's one adventure kicked off the list. Now. Onto part two.

These are a few notes about my impressions and experiences in the first week:

 House

 our house is small but we reckon it has a big heart. With in about 50 meters of the front door there are 5 banana trees, 2 mango trees, an orange, guava and coconut tree. Also in close proximity are next doors chickens who are very noisy especially at around 6am. Im not going to lie,we have number of invertebrate friends of varying sizes, the other day I opened the lid of the coffee pot and inside was a huge cockroach, fairly terrifying! There are lots of lizards which are better, we like the lizards (although not when you find them in your bed at 11pm!). So far the best thing about the house is the roof. On the second night we climbed up onto the roof and listened to meringue while watching the sunset over banana fields and palm trees and looked at the amazing sky which cheered us both up quite a bit.

     Motor bikes
 So mental! There are people on motorbikes everywhere. We regularly see 4 people on the same bike, in fact its rare to see a single rider. Many people cant afford cars and so transport what they can on their motor bikes, we have seen people riding with mattresses, huge baskets of bananas, children on the handle bars, bricks, chickens, gas canisters and water containers. Some of the bikes are fairly run down but people tend to improvise for example the bombita girls saw a guy without a seat on his motorbike so had just put a coconut.

Cat calling
There is lots and lots of cat calling and declarations of love from the guys which is soooooo funny and a little bit unnerving! When we were driving to Barahona a guy came up on his motorbike while we were in the back of the copa truck and was like 'I love you, you are beautiful' (we looked minging) whilst blowing kisses he drove alongside for a good five minutes, it was fairly hilarious. I think they do it, unfortunately not because we look beautiful because, unless they find sweat attractive, we invariably don't look good. They do it because we are white and they associate white people with money, also young men want to marry girls from america and the uk to obtain a visa which they think would allow them to escape poverty here. However, I have received my first proposal of marriage, unfortunately I had to decline.

                                          School

School started on Monday. Within the day there are 2 tenders, half of the children come in the morning and half in the afternoon. Monday began with a parade through the village which was designed to remind children that school had started and to persuade the ones that hadn't turned up to attend. Kids here tend to stretch the holiday as far as it will go which usually means skiving the first week. For the first week I have just been clearing out my classroom which has been empty all summer. We discovered a number of random items like half a tambourine, lots of lolly sticks, a bag of tiny pieces of felt, a fair number of cockroaches both alive and dead and even a gecko who had been camping out in the cupboard for the summer.
Most of the kids seem great and they are all very interested in us, I guess it would help if I understood what they were saying but I guess that will come.



People
Everyone here is very welcoming. Its hard for me to tell considering I have have only been here a week but there seems to be a huge sense of community, in the evenings people sit outside their houses and just talk, everyone is outside: talking, laughing, eating, drinking coffee. There is invariably no power in the evenings so as it gets darker fires are lit in the street and electric torches come out. Music is always playing (often on repeat) from someones house or car radio. There is sometimes lightning in the evening so the street is sporadically lit with bight light which adds to the already crazy atmosphere. You cant walk down a street without someone shouting you over (or whistling at you, but that's a different story) giving you food and sweet coffee, pushing you into a chair, introducing you to their friends, family and neighbors. Ok, well I could go on and on but I will force myself to stop for now.

To conclude, the first week has been overwhelming, scary, mental but totally amazing. However, teaching starts on Monday... I have a feeling that the honeymoon period is about to come to an abrupt end.