The past two days have been a huge learning experience and have tremendously opened my eyes to a whole new world and how people live in other cultures. I have learned about the culture in ways such as food and eating together. I have learned through experience and conversations with Dominicans that the people cooking the food will be offended if you are not eating it. At times during lunch the communication can be very hard. It is hard to have conversations to get to know each other when we do not speak the same language at all. We often have to almost act things out to get our points across. As awkward as lunch with the family is, we are building skills to put in our tool box on communicating with the families in the future.
The Spanish classes are very in tense and I keep thinking it is for children learning any language. Whether it is their first language or their second language I saw learning from their eyes. I realized how hard it is to understand the teacher who is speaking in a different language and how it is so easy to get lost. When our Spanish teacher speaks to us in Spanish and I don't understand a sentence it is hard to stay focused. I often found my mind wondering. I can now empathize with students who are learning English and who are in a classroom where English is in the primary language. In the future, I will now be able to reflect on this experience and help those children who are struggling.