November 2

I experienced my first holiday with my family here in Santo Domingo this week. Wednesday was All Saint’s Day, and Thursday was Day of the Dead, which are celebrated like crazy here! When I woke up on Wednesday, our house was full of women from my church cooking empenadas to sell outside of the cemetery (they’re trying to raise money to provide electricity to some houses that they helped build with groups from the United States). We went to the cemetery about 10 and it was packed with people who were all putting flowers and wreaths on their loved-ones graves. It was really neat! And outside of the cemetery, people were selling all kinds of food, listening to music in big tents, and even drinking beer! (not the people from my church, of course, since drinking is a big sin for them) It was exciting though to see all of the people from my city hanging out and having a good time.

On Thursday I went along with my host mom to visit a sick man in my community. So far, I thought my little city here consisted of only about 8 streets. Boy was I wrong!! To get to this guy’s house, we rode in the back of a truck for about 30 minutes through HUGE fields of palm trees and then sugarcane, crossed a river twice, got out and walked for about 10 minutes, crossed an awesome wooden footbridge over the river that was suspended by cables and shook like crazy, and climbed up a small part of a mountain. I felt like Indiana Jones- it was an awesome adventure! Unfortunately, I didn’t bring my camera because I thought we were just visiting someone that lived on one of the 8 streets that I thought was the whole town. But my host mom told me she’d bring me back since I liked it so much….. on the way back, there was a downpour and of course, I was riding in the back of another pick up truck. I was so soaked, but I was standing back there laughing because it was so horrible that is was actually really fun! And it was the first time I felt like I wasn’t getting better treatment just for being white. In fact, the driver didn’t bring out the tarp to cover the back until some Guatemalan girls got in the back with me and I was already soaked to my underwear!