Day 5 and 6

This is the end of the first week here in the Dominican Republic. Tomorrow we will be going to Santo Domingo for the weekend. Yesterday went to this place where the little kids in the community go after school for help in their education.  It keeps them off the street and keeps them from dropping out of school. I love kids so I enjoyed seeing them and talking to them with the small amount of Spanish I do know.

After playing games with the kids we took a tour of a community that was down the street. This was a poor community. Walking around you can see how bad their living conditions are. There was trash everywhere and the water didn’t even look clean. They were living in shacks. There were a lot of animals and they looked unhappy. We walked through this community which felt like we were walking for miles. All of the people in this community didn’t look unhappy. Some of them did but some didn’t. It seemed as if they were happy and taking life as it is. Today we went to the dabjon market which was on the border of Haiti. We also went to the bridge which is at the Haitian border. Looking across at Haiti I seen women and children washing clothes in the water and bathing.

These living conditions were worse than the community we walked through yesterday. This makes me really appreciate what I have and where I leave. I was told that this was going to be a flea market in which we would be able to purchase things. We were also told that this was similar to black Friday shopping but probably worse. When we got there it was nothing that I had expected. As soon as we got off the bus everyone was staring. It was obvious that we were Americans and not from there. The stares never left us the whole time we were there. I was kind of scared walking through everyone because it was crowded and everyone was rushing, pushing, and shoving. I was afraid to get lost and be separated from the group. Walking through we held hands trying to navigate through the crowd. As soon as I got inside I was ready to get back on the bus.

The crowds of people and almost getting hit and ran over was enough for me. We went to the bridge, through the market, and back out. Some of us got separated from each other.  I made sure to stay with a group of people. I didn’t feel safe in that crowd and was ready to leave before anything bad

happened. When we met back up with everyone else we found out that three of our people were mistaken for Haitian and almost didn’t get back to the other side of the border. If that were of happened to me I would have been scared. This was something to experience but nothing I would want to go back to. One time was enough. All of us were ready to leave the market and weren’t too interested in buying anything. After the market we went to the beach in el morro and had a good time.

Our really had flipped around. I went from being scared and not feeling safe to having fun and enjoying myself. It is weird how a day can switch like that so fast.