Dear Readers
I am writing this to you from a mesita in my room at my Dominican family's house. Contrary to what I wrote last night, only now am I actually writing in this blog. Dominican time, not American time, as the sayings go.
It's all very interesting right now, and I can hardly summarize everything in a single few paragraphs. I've gone from being an intelligent and fairly articulate person to a person who staggers and struggles to explain the need to buy a water bottle. A lot of my host family's conversations fly by my head without entering my brain, and I have to have things repeated a lot, because they talk very fast. I'll forever remember to speak slowly to immigrants because those people who do, I LOVE!!!
And yet, I am also getting fairly good at the bachata, I can maringue like a 23 year old Americana semi-pro, and every morning I wake up to the cry of the family rooster. I think, on the whole, the linguistic trade-off is a good one. And really, it's not that bad. I'm about in the middle of the pack, skill-wise, when it comes to my Spanish and I've entered with the minimum level of skill we need to reach by the three month mark or we're out, so technically, I am starting at the requirement and improving, not striving to learn enough to do the work and improving on the job.
My host mom is very determined, like many Dominican host moms, to see me gain weight during my stay here. Therefore I am fed and fed, and fed. This is also normal, but a very different sort of normal than the American one. Fat is good. I am "muy flaca", which means very skinny, which is not so good, but I told my host mom today that I am getting fatter and she was very happy. We laughed.
On a more serious note, I've been putting a lot of thought to how much we are getting paid as trainees, and it is rather intriguing that I am being paid roughly two dollars a day, and yet because I am treated to all my food and housing and live so close to the training center, I feel richer than I did as an AmeriCorps getting paid $800 a month--yet then I see things at the mall which cost nearly as many pesos as my 1,250. For the month. Fortunately Volunteers are paid more than trainees!
Poverty in America is different than poverty here. The expectation in America is so much higher, and nobody expects a person to be truly poor in the richest country on Earth. In the Dominican Republic, the poverty is much harder to look away from, and you cannot avoid it. Yet it has it's rich and it's poor, just like anywhere else. And also tourism, which will probably become a rant at some point in the future when I actually feel the idiocity of entire cities dedicated to people who come in for a blinkered experience, which I don't think I've hit the depths of yet. For now, it is enough to say that I refuse to wear blinkers. Don the blinkers and you forget that the people you choose not to see are as human as you are. Certainly I would have never learned how wonderful and kind my host family is if I came in for the "Touristica" experience.
Instead of luxury, I am led around by a four year old who seizes my pinky and drags me into the porch so I can play Uno with him ten times a day. I am taught the local dances by my host mom, who understands that I am not really able to talk to her, but am eager to learn as much as I can. And I can translate instructions on the computer games for my older host brother, who is eight and just starting to learn English in school.
Who could possibly choose blinkers over something like that? I know I couldn't. It's worth every bucket bath. When you get used to those they are actually quite fun.
I am writing this to you from a mesita in my room at my Dominican family's house. Contrary to what I wrote last night, only now am I actually writing in this blog. Dominican time, not American time, as the sayings go.
It's all very interesting right now, and I can hardly summarize everything in a single few paragraphs. I've gone from being an intelligent and fairly articulate person to a person who staggers and struggles to explain the need to buy a water bottle. A lot of my host family's conversations fly by my head without entering my brain, and I have to have things repeated a lot, because they talk very fast. I'll forever remember to speak slowly to immigrants because those people who do, I LOVE!!!
And yet, I am also getting fairly good at the bachata, I can maringue like a 23 year old Americana semi-pro, and every morning I wake up to the cry of the family rooster. I think, on the whole, the linguistic trade-off is a good one. And really, it's not that bad. I'm about in the middle of the pack, skill-wise, when it comes to my Spanish and I've entered with the minimum level of skill we need to reach by the three month mark or we're out, so technically, I am starting at the requirement and improving, not striving to learn enough to do the work and improving on the job.
My host mom is very determined, like many Dominican host moms, to see me gain weight during my stay here. Therefore I am fed and fed, and fed. This is also normal, but a very different sort of normal than the American one. Fat is good. I am "muy flaca", which means very skinny, which is not so good, but I told my host mom today that I am getting fatter and she was very happy. We laughed.
On a more serious note, I've been putting a lot of thought to how much we are getting paid as trainees, and it is rather intriguing that I am being paid roughly two dollars a day, and yet because I am treated to all my food and housing and live so close to the training center, I feel richer than I did as an AmeriCorps getting paid $800 a month--yet then I see things at the mall which cost nearly as many pesos as my 1,250. For the month. Fortunately Volunteers are paid more than trainees!
Poverty in America is different than poverty here. The expectation in America is so much higher, and nobody expects a person to be truly poor in the richest country on Earth. In the Dominican Republic, the poverty is much harder to look away from, and you cannot avoid it. Yet it has it's rich and it's poor, just like anywhere else. And also tourism, which will probably become a rant at some point in the future when I actually feel the idiocity of entire cities dedicated to people who come in for a blinkered experience, which I don't think I've hit the depths of yet. For now, it is enough to say that I refuse to wear blinkers. Don the blinkers and you forget that the people you choose not to see are as human as you are. Certainly I would have never learned how wonderful and kind my host family is if I came in for the "Touristica" experience.
Instead of luxury, I am led around by a four year old who seizes my pinky and drags me into the porch so I can play Uno with him ten times a day. I am taught the local dances by my host mom, who understands that I am not really able to talk to her, but am eager to learn as much as I can. And I can translate instructions on the computer games for my older host brother, who is eight and just starting to learn English in school.
Who could possibly choose blinkers over something like that? I know I couldn't. It's worth every bucket bath. When you get used to those they are actually quite fun.
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