Without water in the DR

My next adventure of the summer was a research trip to the Dominican Republic! I was pretty excited to go and to get to use my Spanish. The trip itself was great, but I don't think I'll be going back anytime soon!

We stayed with host families in Santiago, and this time my host family was fantastic! The only issue was that the house didn't have water for about a week. Normally, this would be ok but this also meant no real shower for about a week. Add that to the fact that the Dominican Republic is the hottest place I've ever been and the fact I had to wear absurd amounts of bug spray to keep all the mosquitoes at bay, and you have one very unhappy me! Oh and did I mention that air conditioning is pretty much unheard of there? Yeah, not so fun! Luckily, the water did come back on before I left! Apparently a water main or something broke and they had a lot of trouble fixing it. We'd been warned electricity could be intermittent but not that the water could be as well! Funny thing is there was never a problem with the electricity while I was there! The other bad fact was that I was without internet for 2 weeks (or I would have posted quite a few blogs with all my free time!)

While we were there, we visited a lot of very poor places in order to conduct our research. I didn't exactly find what I was looking for in regards to my research, but I learned that I should be very grateful for what I had at my home stay because the people we visited did not even have that much. Every time I travel, I appreciate the fact that I'm from the U.S. even more! It is a really eye-opening experience to travel to third world countries and see how they live. We all take for granted things like air conditioning, hot running water, being able to flush toilet paper, and being able to drink the water out of the tap (even if people think Evansville's water tastes bad at least it won't make you sick!)

It was a really great experience to see those places though, because they are places that people don't normally go, not even the Dominicans. We went to a place called Batey Libertad and even though the people were poor, they were so happy and eager to help. They even sang and danced for us and were more than willing to do interviews. We all enjoyed our time there a lot. We visited another Batey, called Cerro Gordo and what we found there was very sad. There was a clear division between the Dominicans and the Haitians and the Haitians lived in huts near the back of the village and worked in the sugar cane fields. They were all reluctant to talk to us and most only spoke Creole so we didn't get many interviews but still gained valuable information. The people there told us that they didn't sing or make any music because the owner of the plantation didn't like them making a lot of noise. While these people weren't slaves, it was the closest thing I've ever seen to slavery and it makes me sad just to think about it.

Onto a lighter note, the "tourist" places we went to in the DR were great, I highly recommend 27 Charcos de Damajagua (27 waterfalls). It was one of the prettiest places I've ever been to in my life, plus I got to jump off/slide down 27 waterfalls! I didn't get any pictures as my camera isn't waterproof but it was definitely a great experience! We also got to see some pretty beaches as well, but the waterfalls were definitely my favorite!

Ok-well this is all for now! I leave for Belgium in 6 days and we're going to Paris as well! I will try to blog while I'm actually there this time and not weeks afterwards!