Let’s talk about mondongo…

Okay, so when someone says to you “Just try it! I’ll tell you what it is afterwards” you can automatically assume that whatever it is they want you to eat is probably something you usually wouldn’t, right? I guess that the surprise of what the mystery food actually is will be ruined when it looks EXACTLY like what body part it came from. Well, after this month, I can tell you that cow intestine stew (aka…mondongo) looks like cow intestines (see the picture) when prepared. And I can tell you that I don’t like it. Yuck!  However, I can also tell you that in the last month I’ve tried some foods that I DID like, including:  fresh coconut/coconut milk; quipe, a type of fried wheat; pastelito, a fried pastery w/ meat inside; and fried chicken feet (yes…the feet) . You can take a girl away from the Southern fried foods, but you can’t take the Southern fried foods away from the girl…! Aside from the mundungo, papaya, and pig’s feet stew, the DR is proving itself to be a mecca of yummy and delicious new food adventures for me!

This second month of being here in the Dominican has also brought me other exciting and different experiences! I got to see first-hand the effects of a strike on public transportation…apparently people in the DR make strikes and protests for a lot of things, and this type of demonstration happens more than a few times a year. A co-worker and I walked from the school for about 20 minutes to the only transportation stop working at the time. We waited for an hour for a bus that wasn’t already full, and when we DID get on the Onsa bus, people were nearly stampeding to get in the door. We saw a lady with a baby get pushed aside several times by people who were in too big of a hurry to jump in front of her to care.  A few private owned taxis were also working, but they jack up the prices so high when strikes on public transportation happen, that it was worth it to wait; stampede and all. But, the good thing is I now know how to take the Onsa! And a very nice old man insisted on giving me his seat, so I smiled the whole way home because of his generosity J

I also had the pleasure to help prepare and attend the wedding of the aunt of one of the girls I live with! My first wedding in a different country!! How awesome! It was a small and beautiful reception, with only close family and friends attending! But don’t think that the lack of massive numbers of people prevented us from having a true party! We danced for hours to merenge and bachata, and I would now consider myself an apprentice at both dances! A few things caught me off guard because they were different that the typical US wedding traditions. One thing is that the couple picks “godparents” for their wedding. These people are special people in the couple’s lives and are the ones who sign the marriage certificate and who stand with them during the ceremony (oh…and they have to buy the cake and the alcohol for the reception). Also, my mouth almost hit the floor when they brought in a 5 layer GIANT cake. It was beautifully decorated with butterflies and flowers, but I couldn’t fathom how 50 people could eat all of THAT and not turn diabetic by the end of the night. It turns out that this monstrous cake was completely fake…only meant to take pictures with. They had another (real) cake made for eating purposes, which was very good, might I add. At the end of the night I felt totally blessed to be there and be with an amazing family and wonderful couple!

Another fun experience I had was going to my first movie in a Dominican theater! You would think that this experience would be the same as a typical trip to the movies…but you would be wrong. A little. Most of the experience is the same: you buy your ticket, you get a popcorn, you sit down, you enjoy the movie. However, like true Dominicans, the people ignore the whole “Don’t talk while the movie is playing” rule. We went to see the new “City of Bones – The Mortal Instruments” movie. It was in English with Spanish subtitles. We were two of maybe 5 people in the whole theater…apparently this wasn’t a very popular movie in the DR. To my utter entertainment, a man sitting behind us felt very inclined to vocalize his opinions during the whole film. Loudly. I may have enjoyed listening to his personal emotional rollercoaster more than I enjoyed the movie itself. Because I also like to talk during movies, I think I’ve found my movie watching niche here in the DR! I’ve heard that during comedy movies people are much more talkative, so I can’t wait to go to one of those in the future!

We celebrated the feast day of Our Lady of Mercy here in the Dominican! It is a very special day for the people here and they have a deep respect for Mary which is very beautiful! Nuestra Senora de Las Mercedes is actually one of the patron saints of the Dominican Republic. There was a procession in her honor through o

ur part of town with hundreds of people walking in the street with a band and lots of priests and holy people and a statue of the Virgin that was on a base carried by people in the crowd. It was a really cool thing to watch! We actually caught the procession by surprise while we were walking back from the store, so we got lucky to see this special event!

Café con Leche (the school of coffee and milk! Haha!) is a wonderful place to be! I fall more in love each day with the kids at the school and their smiles and hugs and energy! The youth here put on a concert at the school this month and it went really well! Many kids and families from the community came to sing songs and enjoy the evening together!  My English classes are going well, and I’m pretty sure most of the students in K-4^th grade know their basic English greetings. J They like to practice with me when they see me in the halls and when I’m helping with the lunch lines. We are moving on to other topics in the month ahead, but I just hope these little lessons I give them will help them in some way. I put my trust in God for the well-being of the kids at Café con Leche. These children live a very different life than most kids in the United States. They experience and live in poverty, they have responsibilities you wouldn’t think children need to have, they often see violence right outside their doorstep. But they are kids. They like to have fun and play games and laugh, and this resilience against the sometimes hostile environment they live in to just be a kid is what brings me the most peace and joy for them. Maybe by the end of my time here they won’t speak any more English than they did when I arrived, but I hope at least they know “That Amber girl, she loved me”. So, I will continue to stumble through my English lessons with my not-so-awesome Spanish and continue to give out as many hugs and high-fives and play as many games with them as I can. I think this will be what I gain from this experience. Not so much that they learned so much from me, but in everything I do with them, I do it with love and I give them love.

My progress with the language is, well, coming along I guess. My classes with Mercedes’ brother are helping and I am definitely feeling more confident with the language in speaking and in understanding. If people talk very, very, very slowly I can understand about 65% of what they say, roughly. I am trying to expand my vocabulary by “reading” newspapers and writing paragraphs each night. It takes me about 15 minutes to “read” a paragraph, though, so I’m not very well kept up on the news these days. This week will start my ultimate test of tests with my Spanish. On Tuesday, we have made a pact to stop speaking English in the house…for the next 4 months. Lord help me…! Of course if I don’t understand I can ask, in Spanish, what a word means in English. I count on so many prayers for this…really. Pray for me. Now, please! And pray for the poor people I live with who are going to have to talk like deprogramming robots for the next few weeks while I get used to it all.

Of course I certainly miss home and I miss my family and I miss my friends and I especially miss my wonderful fiancé (who is reading all of the Harry Potter books while I’m gone! He knows the key to my heart is really a magic wand!) This week was especially hard being away from home because our super sweet dog, Holly, went to doggie heaven. This experience here in the DR is really such a beautiful one because I’ve had so many times that I am so happy and filled with joy, but there are also times when I’ve had sufferings and hardships. It’s in these sufferings and hardships that I know I grow the most, so I am trying to embrace these more difficult moments and be happy when they arrive. Of course I didn’t LIKE it when my dog died, and I don’t LIKE it when the guy on the guaguita tries to charge me more money because he knows I’m a “gringa”, but I can live these harder moments for someone else. Someone who is suffering more. Someone who needs my unity in living difficult situations. Someone who I know is struggling. It makes it easier to embrace these hard moments because I don’t do it alone, I do it for and with someone else. Even if they don’t know it.

So! I’m not sure what this next month will be like! I do know that I will have my first birthday celebration in a foreign country (how exciting!)! But I hope you all don’t stop reading my blog because this one was so incredibly long! J Until next time! Hasta luego amigos!