¡Aplauso!

The first day in Santo Domingo was great! The morning was cool, waking up in the Dominican Republic. It started to sink in that I was really away from home. The breakfast at the hotel was simple, fruit, sausage, rolls, but the food was delicious! I had never experienced such a tasty mango in my life! They taste way better here than in the US, I can guarantee you that. The papaya wasn’t as good as I hoped it would be, but it was still papaya, which is amazing!

Orientation was chill, they gave us a pizza lunch, because we weren’t feeling American enough, and taught us what to expect when entering a Dominican home for the first time. That was a laugh, mostly because the volunteer student suffering through the role-play wasn’t me. Our instructors played various characters del barrio, your mamá, papá, tías, primos, and vecinos (that’s mom, dad, aunts, cousins, and neighbors, for you non Spanish-speakers)… and it was loud, rambunctious and chaotic.  My actual experience, I later found out, was nothing like that, but  I still felt prepared.

That night, our facilitators took us out to dinner at this cool place. I don’t remember the name, but it looked like a pirate’s ship, the walls were painted like treasure maps. I think it was more to do with Columbus’ voyage to the New World, but I can’t be too sure. The food was great, and I wanted to eat more, even though I was beyond stuffed. The serving sizes here are much bigger, which is great!

After dinner they took us to a little place that was sort of like an outdoor bar. It was just like a little storefront that had drinks, a TV with the Yankee’s game on, and loud music! So what you do is you take a chair and put it in the lawn across the street, sit, listen to music, and have a beer or two with your friends. Of course the beer part is totally optional. So we sat up a small hill, by the ruins of an old monastery, and got to know each other. Right next to us was a birthday party of little girls (yes, it was a 5 year old’s birthday at 9-o-clock at night across the street from a bar where others are drinking openly, and yes, this is normal). The girls were dancing to the music and it was so cute! When we first walked up a merengue song came on so only a few of the girls were dancing together, like four, and it was very precious. Then a bachata song came on and they all got up. And then, drum roll please, they played reggeton, and the whole world broke loose! Those girls were shaking everything their mamás gave them! Once they saw us watching them, they came and picked up a few of us to dance with them. Then a few more joined on the next song. I have the best videos, but for the protection of the privacy of the other ladies on this trip, and to not cause drama with seven weeks to go, I will refrain from posting them.

These little girls were so cute! At the end of our first reggaeton song with them, they all jumped and shouted, “¡Aplauso!”, which has quickly become our catch phrase, because they had taught us so well. It was amazing to see such little girls “bailando muy sexy” and then revert back to little girls as soon as the music turned off. I guess that’s similar to girls in the States who learn how to pop and hip roll as soon as they can walk.

When we left that little bar spot, we went to a similar place that was across the street from our hotel (no dancing little girls this time). We were just chatting it up, making fun of incorrect uses of the hashtag “yolo” and enjoying being in la República Dominicana. One of the facilitators was teaching us how to merengue, and I must admit, I’m a natural. We felt the necessity to take a “yolo” photo, just because it wasn’t raining outside, #yolo. When it got too hot to bear, we found some chairs and sat outside, by the road. This is also very normal. Even though the night air had the occasional breeze, the heat from the multitude of people in such a small area became unbearable, so we moved our fiesta to the fourth floor balcony of our hotel for a game of “Never Have I Ever.” Again, due to the privacy of others, I cannot say what went on in this game, but I will say that I learned more about this group in 30 minutes that I think I could have learned from a group half this size (and there’s only 17 of us) in a year. People were very comfortable with just putting it all out there. Some stories good, bad, or require your own personal judgment to decide whether it was good or bad, but they definitely created a bond that I don’t think will be easily broken.