One Week!

Phoebe and I have seen and experienced so much throughout the first week of our Peace Corps work, which makes it and will continue to make it difficult to choose which experiences to share. I’ll do my best to share a taste of what’s been happening over the past week.

Adjusting to life here is going well so far. Phoebe and I are both healthy, eating VERY well, clean“ish’, sweating through our clothes, learning loads of Spanish, getting pricked with vaccinations, attending continuous training sessions, learning to find our way around Santo Domingo using carro publicos and guaguas, and making as many friends as possible. Amazing volunteers, teachers and trainers with lifetimes of experience, knowledge and a desire to live and work in a completely new and different country, surround us. We both feel very blessed to be involved with such a wonderful organization as the Peace Corps and their training group Entrena. Our training program is absolutely phenomenal. We are receiving daily teachings about Dominican culture, transportation and por supuesto language classes. My language class has a grand total of three students! I LOVE IT! Our Spanish is already at the level the Peace Corps expects us to be 10 weeks from now! So, we get to practice, practice, and more practice. By no means are we fluent, nor can we understand the locals when they really get to talking, however our hard language work back in the states is paying off.

During one of our Spanish language courses, we learned about the public transportation system in the Dominican Republic. We are learning about the public transit through practical application, class discussion and getting out there in small groups. The public transportation in the Dominican Republic appears to be organized chaos. I couldn’t even tell there was such a thing as public transportation when we arrived in the country last Thursday. Now, I’ve ridden in several full carro publicos (like a taxi, but taxis here are private and cost more) and an extremely full guagua (bus) from our barrio into the central part of the city. The carro publicos are wild. You flag a carro publico down similar to the way you’d try and catch a taxi in the states. Instead of whistling, you simply stand on the side of the road, hold out your arm and point down to the ground when you want one to stop. The drivers often see you waaaay before you are able to see them coming, so often it isn’t even necessary to flag it. Most of us gringos stand out anyway, especially with our bolsas full of schoolbooks in the morning, so we can be easy to spot. Hector has been our driver over the last two days, so we’ll see if he picks us up again.

The carro publicos seat six passengers and one driver for a grand total of seven people in a 1982 Toyota Camry. I hope to get a picture up here for you. One of my new Peace Corps friends and I were talking about the messages we received growing up in the states. Our parents and teachers used to tell us, “Do not to get into a car with strangers” and “You must always wear your seatbelt.” Those rules are obviously out the window! Two people squeeze into the front seat and four into the back. I don’t believe the carro publicos even have seatbelts.

The guaguas are another experience all together. With meringue, salsa or bachata music blaring, the guagua bounces down the road stopping for every potential passenger. The cobrador (literal translation is ‘collector’) hangs himself out of the door yelling the route of the guagua. Passengers hop on, fit at least five to a row, with only four seats, and squish each other cheek to cheek! It seems as though people say, “Hey, we can fit one more booty in the seats, squish on over!” The guaguas appear to be older Volkswagen style vehicles but a little bit bigger…I was in one two days ago and the driver tried to drive us through a giant “river” in the road. He got stuck, of course, and after about ten minutes of trying to get unstuck, everyone in the guagua exited, including the group of 30 Peace Corps gringos squishing into the bus. The cobrador handed me a random child as we were exiting the bus, a brief glimpse into the culture of the Dominican people, who trusted this random gringo with their child, even if only for a few brief momentitos.

The adventure is just beginning and my smiles are getting bigger.