Our full day in the Dominican Repulic; and it still does not feel real!! This morning we up bright and early and were in the taxis around 7:45 am. We went to 3 Mariposas Montesorri where we had a little tour of the grounds and met with Sara who is the founder and director. She talked to us about how she started the Montessori school, how she ended up in the Dominican and how she found her students to attend the school.
Some amazing parent volunteers from the school took us for a tour in La Cienega where a lot of the children from the school live. We were able to see a lot of homes which were about the size of our laundry room and sometimes held a whole family of 5 with one bed. We saw a lot of kids being pretty independent and home alone. Most of the children were excited to see us. We were lucky enough to see many of the families homes. The amazing people who were showing us their houses were also so proud to show us it. They were pretty clean even though they do not have running water, electricity, and bathrooms. They often threw their garbage in the back of the homes so there were a lot of garbage on the roads that were made of dirt. We were told that the garbage service is very unreliable and they need to Cary your garbage to a certain place and sometimes it still does not get picked up. We also were able to see churches, a school on top of the church where we met Joseph who was the director of the school and a place where Haitians met and discussed what is happening politically in their lives. They want to be sure that their people are okay and they have peace among the people. La Cienega have a large population of Haitians.
Then we went to Spanish class where I am in a group of 5 and we are the very beginners starting with hola and uno!!! Our teacher is amazing and is an extremely smart Dominican women, who is proud of her heritage and allows us to ask questions about Dominican culture and the history.
For dinner we went to Casa Mama where I decided to order fish and was a little surprised of what was put in front of me! I did try it but because of my dislike for bones I stuck with my side of fried plantains.