Familia y Comida

Family is very important in the Dominican Republic. A lot of the time children go from their parent’s house to a married house. Therefore, if a 25 year old is still single, he or she likely still lives at home. Other important things are musica (meringue is the most popular), baseball, and dominoes (mainly played by men).
Las casas: Houses vary greatly here in Santo Domingo, but are usually a small, concrete home. Most families do have a television, computer (sometimes with internet), electricity (but frequently goes out), and running water (but frequently goes out and do not have hot water). My host family has a nice TV (even nicer than mine in the states), a computer and a laptop, electricity and a back-up generator, and running water.
I find that the bathroom and the dining room (the food) have the most differences from the US. The bathroom: When you go to the bathroom, you put your toilet-paper in the trash and never in the toilet. If you go number 1, you don’t flush you just leave it in the toilet. This is to conserve water, and because you never know when there will be an outage. In some of the showers, there is a bucket with water. We were directed that if you found the bucket, that means you are suppose to take a sponge bath. Luckily, I did not have a bucket, so I got to take a regular shower, but with freezing cold water, of course.
The food: Most of the meals contain rice and beans in some way. They also incorporate fruits, eggs, potatoes, or meat (chicken, beef, or pork). Lunch it the biggest meal each day. Breakfast is usually coffee, milk, and bread or something very light. Yesterday for lunch, I had rice topped with fried plantains sided with roasted chicken and beans. Then for supper, I had potatoes topped with cheddar cheese chunks and fried eggs.

With all of these things in mind, I’m starting to see just how good we have it in the states, all of the amenities that we take for granted. However, I am also starting to see that most amenities don’t matter that much, as long as you have family and friends.