Best weekend of my life

So many great things have been happening and I think I am finally over being homesick. Yes, I admit it I was a little home sick for a while, everything was just so different and I missed what I was used to and all of the people from home. Lately I have been able to jump into the culture more and it has been so rewarding. 

One of my first big steps into the Dominican culture was going to a class called Social Club. It was an english class for dominicans and they would have social club every once in a while. They would do different activities in english all the time and it happened to be time for some karaoke when I stopped by. If you know me you know this is not my place to shine, my vocals would never win me any prizes, or friends for that matter. I had a blast though, it was for about an hour and the teacher would hand the microphone to “the next victim” after each song. Of course Nikki and I were picked to show them how people from the U.S. do karaoke. We sang Vamos Ala Playa and didn’t do so well with that, but it didn’t matter because everyone was singing along with us. 

My favourite emersion into the culture so far was this past weekend. El mejor fin de semana en mi vida or the best weekend of my life. This past weekend the whole CIEE group traveled to La semana on friday. So all of the study abroad students as well as us five gap year kids. It was a long four hour bus ride there but was well worth it. We got to stay at this very nice resort place located right across from the beach, where we got to eat most of our meals. The rooms were nice equipped with a little kitchen area with a fridge, little table, blender, big sink, plenty of bedding, and everything you would need. Taking a shower here was the first time I had some really nice water pressure, you really start to appreciate the little things here. Anyways, we had left early in the morning so we got there around 11:30, had a great lunch and got ready for our endeavour up a mountain. I’m not able to hike yet because I have problems with my ankle so I was able to ride a horse up the mountain. It may seem like a relief at first that no hiking would be involved but it was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done! It was a very steep mountain and had a lot of ups and downs on the way up. The horse kept slipping in the mud and I thought for sure he was going to crash and burn in a nice wipeout.  It seemed very hard for the horse but when I asked the man going along next to the horse he said it was harder for him and easy for the horse because he had two legs and the horse got four. We finally reached and ending point for the horse and went on a short walk to the most beautiful waterfall. It was giant and gorgeous and it was amazing to swim in the water at the bottom. At one point I climbed up the side a little with our intern Grey and took a leap of faith off. I was so nervous I had everyone count down from 5 for me so I could make myself jump in. I braved the two scariest things of my life that one day; riding the horse and jumping off a waterfall. They may have been scary but they were so rewarding and I would have hated myself if I hadn’t given them a try. Near the end of our trip to the waterfall I sat of the rocks at the edge of the water with my feet dangling in. I got a little pedicure from all the tiny fish that liked to eat the dead skin off of you. It was the most ticklish thing ever but it was so cool. The horse ride back I had lost a little bit of my nerves and could relax a little more. I may have ridden a horse most of the way but did walk a little, through a lot of mud, wearing my vans, the birthday present from my mom. Sorry mum I’ll clean them as best I can:) We got back to our resort and had a great dinner. After dinner I took a nice long walk on the beach with a bunch of the study abroad girls and Grey, then a lovely dive into the warm ocean water. It was so nice walking with my feet in the VERY warm water. Compared to Maine the water here is like bath water. Then the next morning we all got up had a quick breakfast and headed off to a boat we would be taking. We all climbed aboard this very nice, big boat that would take us to a cave where we would explore and then take a kayak ride weaving through gorgeous mangrove trees. The tour of the cave was all in spanish so I didn’t pick up much of what the guy was saying, but it was still amazing. There were bats flying around everywhere and it was such an amazing thing to be able to experience. After we escaped from the cave we had a delicious lunch on the boat and I went for a quick swim before the kayak trip. There were little jellyfish swimming around us, but don’t worry non of them would sting you, it did creep me out a lot though. Everyone was picking them up and I even took a turn holding one, it was so squishy and see through. After that I hopped into a double person kayak with our intern Grey, who had ever kayaked before. We took off through the maze of mangroves and she was doing very well for her first time. The trees were so cool to observe. We headed back a little before everyone else and stopped at one point to just sit in the nature of it all and observe all of natures beauty. We did hear a very scary sound from the huge rock wall that scared us a little and started to paddle very quickly running into some trees and the rock wall. There were so many crabs on the trees roots if you got to close and it was very creepy. We got to some very open water though and enjoyed a little more of our relaxing time just sitting within the beauty of it all. We got back to the boat and dried off a little, at this point I was ready for a nice, long nap. After a little bit the boat took off and I was up front with a bunch of people feeling the warm(weirdly warm) breeze as the boat moved along. It was weird seeing all these huge patches of litter throughout the water and I wanted to jump in and clean it all up. I got to know some of the girls from the study abroad program very well and they are all so nice even though my spanish is much worse than theirs. Once we disembarked the boat we headed back to our resort and had a great dinner. That night I then hung out with a bunch of the study abroad kids on the beach. We were all dancing (well I was trying to dance, I'm not very good yet.) to lovely spanish music and went for a late night swim at like two in the morning. The water was still just as warm as it was during the day and I loved it. The next morning was our last time eating breakfast on the beach. We had a free day this sunday and got to enjoy everything around us however we wanted. I ended up taking the bus trip into town and walking around. I then went to buy a painting with this one girl, Olivia, and we missed the bus back by five minutes. We could have walked back to the hotel, it would have only been twenty minutes but we took a motor concho instead. A regular concho is like taking a cab but a motor concho is on a motorcycle. I was very scared because there would be three of us on this one motorcycle but near the end I didn’t even have to hold on and was completely fine. We got back to the resort and I had a nice lunch, packed up all my stuff and took one last dip into the pool. We then had to head back to Santiago, another four hour bus ride. It had been a perfect weekend and I will never forget the memories I was able to make on that trip. I had gotten to do so many things that weekend that I had never dreamed of. 

On monday we headed off to school again and had a review for the quiz we would be taking the next day. Just like in the U.S….. gross. Quizzes and tests are never my favourite thing. The only difference here is our grades don’t matter like they did in a high school class. If we do bad we will just have to go over what we had already learned these first three weeks. Today (tuesday) we took the quiz and when I handed mine in when I thought I was done, she gave it back to me saying I needed to fix somethings, which most teachers usually don’t do. I don’t think I did very well on the whole thing but tomorrow we have an oral quiz. Hopefully I will be able to do a little better on the oral quiz than the written one. 

Monday was the first day I started to participate in my community service work. I started at an after school program for kids. I helped them with there homework, it was in english thank goodness. If I ever tried to talk to the kids in Spanish they would always say they could speak english. This was not the place for practicing my spanish. It was a great jump into more of the culture here though.

 Today I headed off to a place called Rosa’s orphanage where no one speaks English, so it was a great place for me to get some spanish practice. This is an orphanage founded by an amazing lady that started it all without a penny or peso to her name. She had been working at a different orphanage but they wouldn’t take in kids with special needs so Rosa knew that the lord would help her with starting her one place because it was what was the right thing to do. Now she takes in all the children including ones that have disabilities and is such a caring, compassionate women.Some of the kids there took English class but non of them really spoke English and it was very fun and a little hard to have a conversation with them. All the kids there were very cute and easy to get along with because here in the DR there is no such thing as stinger danger.  II was a little nervous to help there because my spanish is not that great yet but it was no problem once I got there I was asking all the basic questions and talking a little more than that. I only had a little trouble when the kids would ask me questions. It was a great place to help out with, nothing was expected of me and I got to spend time with such great kids. I was talking to a couple girls about there favourite music and one of them had a favourite band from the U.S., of course it was One Direction. A bunch of the girls knew there songs and would start singing them. It was a day maker for sure, except for when I had a close call with my camera. One little girl decided it would be fun to play with my camera and when I tried to get it back she thought there was nothing better to do than throw it. When I picked it up it wouldn’t turn on and I was freaking out a little inside but telling all the kids that it was no problem and there was another one I could use. Finally I got it to come back on, thank goodness for that because all the pictures I had taken from that weekend and the selfies the kids had been taking were not yet uploaded onto my computer. That just goes to show that I shouldn’t let the kids play with things that I really need on this trip. That was only one little bump in the road there and wasn’t a huge deal, so many good things were there and out weighed the bad by SOOO much.

Next weekend I will be going down to Santo Domingo for a huge music festival. There’s going to so many people there and I am so excited and yes a little scared.  I’ll be going down on saturday so I can see Bruno Mars, Daddy Yankee and a bunch of other great singers. I’m planing on it being a super exciting, fun jump into more of the culture down here!

Everything on this trip had been amazing this far and I know that there is more to come and can’t wait for it all to crash over me.