Hola,
Today is the first full day we spent in the Dominican Republic. It started late in the day, with an 8:30 breakfast. We spent the extra time taking showers and sleeping in. The showers were fairly cold, but they were a nice cool down from the hot weather in the outside world of Santiago.
The hotel we are staying at is Hotel Colonial. It is a small hotel with the basic needs. It has beds, a shower, a television, and restrooms. The staff at the hotel is very nice and friendly. The hotel manager, Lasaro, always comes up and asks each of us how we are and knows us by name. He has a friendly attitude and tries to make our stay very pleasurable. The food in the hotel is very good. They give us generous amounts of food and have a wide selection to choose from.
After breakfast, we split into two groups and went to exchange money and get some supplies (water, Gatorade, etc). We exchanged money at a small bank. The bank was gaurded by an elderly man wearing casual clothes and armed with a shotgun. This makes me wonder if there are more bank robberies in the D.R. than in the U.S. The supermarket we went to was crowded and busy, but had everything we needed to buy.
During lunch, we meet Yanlico, a resident of Bateye Libertad and whom we will be building a house for. He is a younger man and attends the local college. He is very nice, but appears to speak little English.
After having a quick lunch at the hotel, we took a bus to the Central Leon museum of Dominican culture. We saw how modern Dominican culture was affected by the geography and its change in the last 500 years (due to deforestation), the mix of native, European, and African cultures, and how the culture is reflected in the art that the country has to offer. We walked back to our hotel after the museum and saw the local street market.
At the street market we saw intense poverty with people on the streets begging for money. We also saw the types of shops that they had to offer. We stoped at a chain ice cream shop and got some ice cream to cool down from the hot sun.
Once back at the hotel, we had dinner and then had a meeting to talk about what had happened in the day and our personal feelings on the poverty, people, and how we can help.
It was a fun, busy day filled with many new and interesting experiences for us all.
Ben Suslick
University Laboratory High School
Urbana, IL