Fun filled first full day

     As far as days to blog about, today is either one of the easiest days, or quite honestly an extremely difficult day to summarize. Tonight will be a difficult night to journal about, as we try to unpack literally 10 hours of information. It was our orientation into Dominican history, culture, economy, and most importantly of all... Food!

     Instead of giving a wild summary of everything we did today, I'm just going to tell you all about the issues on my, and also it seems most of the groups heart. This morning, we heard from a man who works for the Iglesia Evangelical Dominicana (Dominican evangelical church). He explained to us the history of the country, and the societal implications on the people today. It became fairly clear to the group that those in power in this country have developed systems of oppression to keep the majority of people poor and uneducated (sound familiar?).

     One of the groups major concerns coming into the trip was either doing work that did not help the people, or our Americanism would ruin relationships before we could even start helping. I think I can speak for the majority of us when I say that we want to get to know as many people as we can, and serve them in any way possible (if it's even possible, we shouldn't assume that we even can help!). As we sit in our hostel, reflecting on all learned and experienced today, we anticipate the impending trip into the country. Who will we meet? What will their experiences look like? What is their truth? We cannot wait to get a glimpse into beautifully complicated lives, and share in them any way we can.

   

    On a more fun note, here are some quick hits of the day:

  • Gill and Evan have spent the last hour watching old snl videos on YouTube
  • Evan has a encyclopedic knowledge of snl. I love it
  • Deidre has a sense of humor that's so dry literally nobody can figure it out, which makes her even funnier
  • Andrew, who in the 4 years I have known him has never failed at anything. He is like Odysseus, but instead of his Achilles heel being his weakness, Andrew today went catatonic at the sight of some pigeons flying near us. 
  • Kim actually got hit in the head by a pigeon, she was completely unphased.
  • Deja wins the unfortunate honor of being asked to a disco!! 
  • Stu learned some Dominican sign language, he has not stopped using them (incorrectly of course) to make everyone laugh.
  • And Rob? He is the most inappropriate jokester of us all. No surprise there.
Much love! Until next time internets- Jimmy

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