Today marks three weeks that I have been here in the Dominican Republic. As I look over my first two blog posts I realized that I really did not give too much background info on my living situation here. Now that I have been here for a little bit, many of my first impressions have subsided so I think I’ll be able to explain things to you in a better way than I would have done so before. I’ll explain the three main aspects of my daily life. For the rest of my time here, I will share a photo at the end of my posts with an interesting experience that I had and would like to share with you.

Home

I live in a neighborhood of Santiago called La Zurza II. It is a middle class neighborhood situated about a ten minute walk from the University. The houses in this neighborhood are beautiful. I don’t have too many photos of the houses here but I will be sure to take some and share them with you in future posts. I live with my host mom and my host brother, Jorge. Jorge is 12 years old. Last week, Jorge adopted a puppy Chihuahua, Nikki. At the moment she is about as big as a guinea pig, and couldn’t have more energy. She is very fun to play with and gives me another reason to love living here.

School

I take all my classes at the University close by. It’s called La Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra, but since that is an absolute mouthful to say, we just say PUCMM in daily discussion (Pronounced PU-KA-MAI-MUH). I am majoring in business, so I cannot take classes which will count towards my major. However, I am minoring in Spanish, so I have come to a perfect place to focus on that. A few of the classes that I am taking are Dominican Folklore, Political Processes of the Dominican Republic, and of course Dance for Foreigners. These are all taught in Spanish by local professors. The professors here are very experienced at working with foreigners, so they are extremely patient and realize that struggling through conversation is the best way to learn a language.

Spanish

This brings me to the next aspect of my life here. You may be wondering how I could possibly live and function in a world where I can’t even use my own language. Well it’s not as scary as it seems, but still pretty tough. Although I have a couple years of classroom experience with Spanish, it’s a whole different ball game when you need to converse. As of now and for the most part, I am still hearing things in Spanish, translating into English, thinking of a response, then translating back to Spanish. Even then I still always seem to get something wrong. It can get frustrating at times, but I have wanted to learn Spanish for a while, so the fact that I can actually use it is a few years of hard work finally coming together. A whole day of classes thinking like this takes quite a toll on your head. However, it has definitely gotten easier since I’ve arrived. I can’t wait to see how much more my Spanish will improve while I am here, as it is more or less the inspiration behind my trip.

Photo of the week

I apologize that this photo is a bit blurry. I came home from class one night, and my host mom had left dinner for me. Next to the plate there was a piece of tree bark on the table. As I looked closer I realized that it was actually a moth. I was instantly out of my comfort zone and started considering my options.  I’m usually pretty calm around bugs but this thing was huge! I carefully went to my room to grab my camera and something to use as a size comparison. All of what I just described amounted to this photo. See you next week!

Location: Santiago, DR