Its Hot, Humid, and then its freezing and rainy

Day 1- May 4, 2010

Today was the first full day in the Dominican Republic. We arrived last night after a long day of travel. We are here at the Student International camp in Jarabacoa with another US school called Bethel College. WE came in to hot and sticky with a slight breeze. The missionaries said it gets cold at night but we didn’t believe them. Grand Canyon Girls (there is 14 of us) are in a whole cabin, and after we unloaded last night we all turned on our fans to full blast like any other hot Arizonan, But little did we know that in the middle of the night that the temperature would drop several degrees and it would rain extremely hard. Needless to say, we all woke up freezing; tonight we will not be having the fans on high.

This morning we were oriented to the camp. After lunch we all went to our different ministry sites to be oriented. Caitlin, Beth N. and I are all working with a Obstetrician and Woman’s health doctor who is willing to teach us a lot of different skills that we would not be allowed to do in the US. We are all very excited. Beth G. is the only one from our group who is at the special education site but from her orientation and Haley’s remarks it sounds like a pretty cool place, where everyone there receives one-on-one attention.

After our orientation we had free time when most of us slept, then we had dinner to which our table called DR hamburger helper over rice. It was ground beef with potatoes in a sauce over rice with a salad that was tossed in vinegar. It was very good. And how could we not top it off with out a refreshing ice coke straight from the bottle? It is pretty good too only 75 cents.

Quote of the day:

Leader: “Under no circumstance will you guys be riding motorcycles while you are on the island. Motorcycle accidents are the number one killers here in the DR.”

Ten Minutes Later…. Beth N. “ Oh my Gosh those motorcycles look so cute I want to ride one so bad. I will totally break the one rule.”