June 6th - Day 2

Hi All,

We started out our morning with a trip to a local church. They are converting the top floor of the church into the new pastoral house and wanted help repainting that as well as the outside of the bottom floor. It wasn't terribly difficult work but everything gets harder when it is 90 degrees outside. We worked with a 28 year old Dominican man named Luis from San Cristobal, Ari, a 18 year old girl who was a university student, and the site manager who's name I did not catch. 

Today was the first day that we did not have our mission partner, Joella, with us so we were on our own to translate. It was a bit difficult to get all of the instructions but we managed to make it work. We have been here just three days but those of us that have a little Spanish background are picking it up pretty quickly.

We went out to lunch with Luis and Ari and got to know a little bit about them. As we conversed in broken Spanish, we learned that Ari was in her first year at a Dominican University. Luis, who appeared to be at the oldest in his early 20s, was in fact a father of three at the ripe age of 28. For fun he enjoyed playing basketball in his hometown. He was also quick to mention that he had just gotten a motorcycle. 

In the DR, traffic and road systems are absolutely insane. There is no such thing as having the right of way... the only thing you can do is take the right of way by pulling out into traffic when there is a slight gap, claiming your right to merge with traffic. Everyone does it so there must be unwritten rules somewhere about how to drive. All these cars go whizzing around ignoring pretty much every road sign and lane line. What makes it even more wild is the motorcycle drivers that go flying up beside cars and dodge through cars stuck in traffic. I asked Luis if he felt unsafe driving his motorcycle. He said yes but the adrenaline rush was incredible so it made it worth it. Driving in even the craziest cities looks tame compared to our Dominican experience, but luckily our driver Mario knows what he is doing and has been getting us around safe and sound.

We also had a special visitor this evening. A fellow NWMC-er, Emily Nuss, is serving her final weeks as a Peace Corps volunteer in Santo Domingo and came to talk to us. She talked to us about different experiences that she had over her three years in the DR and also advised us what to do with our remaining 5 and a half weeks. The highlight of the night came when she taught us how to do the Merengue and Baracha dances. We had a lot of fun and really appreciated the time she took out of her night to come visit with us.

We are looking forward to more painting tomorrow alongside our new friends. Below are some brief notes from the day. 

Quick Hits

• Evan, our resident professional painter, got paint in his hair right above his temple making him look like a 50 year old version of himself (insert comment about how he looks exactly like his father here)
• Deja is still working on her elementary painting skills as she had a bit of trouble keeping the paint on the correct sections of the wall. Luckily we will have some time to refine those skills on this trip.
• A slight mispronunciation in Deidre's name has a very unfortunate meaning in Spanish as explained by Luis. 
• After just three days Gillian is already overwhelmed by the amount of video she has taken on her GoPro that must be edited. Her newest idea was to  wait until we get back to New Wilmington to edit six weeks of video
• Kim got to pet a puppy this morning, so her day was made
• Jimmy painted a wall and then was instructed to scrape the old paint, paint underneath this new layer, off the wall. Either our manager enjoys messing with us or our Spanish translation skills are still a work in progress... I'm thinking it's the latter. 
• Before any of the rest of us woke up, Stu and Kim had already gotten in an hour long workout. That may have led them to look like this at the end of our work day....

Until next time,

Andrew