If you have any problems with falling asleep, maybe you should take a trip to the Dominican Republic. This will involve about 16 hours traveling to the airports (LAX to JFK) and the actual flying, plus any layovers. For the last couple days we traveled for an estimated travel time of 20 hours. Needless to say, we were all super tired. A few people caught some sleep on the first flight, most all passed out on the second flight. Consequently, a lot of the boys here sleep with their mouths open. Audrey curled up in a ball, no one really knows how but she slept that way on the way to Santiago. Once we landed, we went through the immigration process, gathered our luggage, and then headed outside to eat some really yummy turkey and cheese sandwiches, chips, delicious bananas, and cookies. After that quick snack, we all loaded into vans with super cool windows that slid to the right and drove to the main camp site, Ministerio Estudiante Internationales. After being assigned rooms, we went and made all of our beds; most of the girls took naps or read the rest of the Celebration of Discipline. Not sure what the guys did, probably slept as well. Dinner was at six and they prepared for us spaghetti, garlic bread, fresh pineapple and papaya. Let me tell you this, that fruit is so flippin’ good! It’s so sweet and juicy, you will always want more. And just in case you thought it couldn’t get any better, they gave us WATERMELON for lunch!! Anyways, this morning was orientation day, where we learned about the history of the Dominican Republic, some cultural distinctions such as greetings, and hand/face gestures. For instance, if you want to point to a certain object or person, you don’t use your hands to point, you purse your lips and do a little nod in that direction. It looks like you’re kissing the air. If your are confused about something we Americans tend to show it with out eyes, but here in the D.R. they scrunch their nose upwards a little. We all had a good laugh practicing these gestures, but soon became pros. After that, we ate lunch and met our site leaders. After hanging out for a bit, we departed to go get a first look at the sites we would be working at for the next two weeks. From the general report, everyone is super excited about each of their sites and the majority are excited to experience all the siestas! (Some sites aren’t able to experience siestas due to their schedule) The next thing we have today is dinner and then cultural night, where, as rumor has it, we eat good food, get hair braided, and learn how to dance!
Hope you enjoyed reading!
-Carley Miller
DR 2017 – Day 1 from Joshua Wilderness Institute on Vimeo.
Due to limited internet, we will post all photos once we are back!