Category: Highlights

I was disappointed to wake up feeling no better or no worse than the night before. The loud volume, and slightly achy muscles had given me a poor nights rest (Nicole as well) and I was still exhausted. And then, mid morning, the baseball tournament started.

The best analogy I can come up for what it was like today in the barrio, is that of living in the middle of a carnival. As I mentioned before there is a never ending supply of music, albiet not as loud as last night. The roosters and dogs are generally quiet now. You can always here people talking in animated Dominican fashion. Yelling appears to be a fairly normal part of everyday interactions. Children can almost always be heard playing in the field. Baseball is the sport here, and there were people playing from mid morning throughout the day. Home plate is less that 25 meters from our balcony so we get to hear the crack of every bat, and the shouts over every call. The traffic picked up during the day to give us the almost constant drum of untuned motorcycles passing. Not that traffic is busy, just regular enough to ensure there is one motorcycle within hearing range.

When we were originally talking with TEARS, one of their warnings about the Barrio was that nights could be loud. Well we thought we knew roughly what to expect from some of the loud nights in Haiti: dogs barking, roosters crowing, maybe a bit of music playing in the distance with the odd splurge of shouting or cheering. Boy were we in for a surprise.

Having made our own connections via the Internet, and reaching out to our extended network we had come up with two potential locations for our time in the Dominican Republic. The first was a resort which had been converted into …

This is stepping back a little from our first post to recall, roughly, how we came up with these plans.

The most common question we get lately is why are we going to the Dominican Republic? For those who don’t know, let me explain our plans. We will head down to the Dominican Republic roughly November 25th. Our next three months will be spent learning how to live in a different culture that speaks another language. We don’t plan on spending it in one of the tourist areas you may be familiar with, but rather in a more authentic local culture. Why would we give up the luxuries of a comfortable suburban lifestyle for the rustic simple life of a developing country? Basically because we don’t see it as giving up, but more as stepping forward.