Am I Dreaming?

When I was in Michigan home from school, I had been dreaming about my upcoming trip every night. Some wacky, crazy dreams that don't make any sense most of the time. I was taking bits and pieces of things that I know and embellishing upon them. Por ejemplo, I know that the city has McDonald's and other popular American fast food places. So, I had a dream that I went to McDonald's and the menu was in Chinese (only for the purpose of me not being able to understand it) and they served things like tacos and burgers with beans and rice. I had dreams where people I knew went with me because I didn’t know the names, faces, or personality of the other students at that time.

For the past few days, I have been pinching myself. Why? Because I am not dreaming anymore and I am finally here! I know that I may have indicated that I would talk about packing and flying in this post, but that involves a lot of pictures and the time and energy needed for that post is not currently aquì. Also, I do not have access to the internet at my home, so I have to type this post on Word and post it tomorrow. The post that covers packing will probably come Monday and if it makes anyone feel better, I’ll change the date so that it looks like I posted that first. I also hope to blog about my first excursion and other ISA (E-SAH) things, in addition to finishing my Boston and New York blogging. So much to do! All I want to do is spend time with my host family and explore the city, but hopefully I will get to it.

Speaking of family and exploring, those are the topics I want to cover. Despite not knowing the information of my family until two weeks ago, that doesn’t even matter anymore. Mi familia es perfecta- Victor Jose, Fifi, Lina, Victor Alfonzo, Laura, Taylor, and me! Taylor is from Texas and she goes to Oklahoma University. Lina makes comments about how Taylor has a cantarero and we are trying to spot the differences between the north and south. If anyone has any suggestions of different words or pronunciations, let me know! We have come up with pop vs coke, a lot of pop culture, glass vs cup, and apparently Texans say “scrubin’” when they wear sweats. Even communicating in English can be a challenge at times! I honestly don’t think that I could have picked a better family. I am the youngest, unless you count Bachi, the dog of Laura’s friend that she has been taking care of. Bachi es la princesa! She is spoiled, or nonada in Spanish.

 I apologize for the back and forth between languages, but that is my brain is functioning right now. We have not completely switched over to speaking Spanish because most of my family speaks English very well, but we try to cut it out a little bit each day. By next week, I hope to be communicating almost entirely in Spanish. This week is a lot of orientation and we start class Monday. Today we will find out what classes that we placed into after taking yesterday’s exam.  Victor Jose has been taking us to most activities and gives us a good education on everything there is to know. He only speaks Spanish, besides a couple words in English, and it has been helping my comprehension greatly. Last night, he gave Taylor and me a lesson on Haiti after dinner that spawned off of a statement about only telling host families new to the program good things about the experience. He knows so much, and it is really great. All of the family attended, or is attending in the case of Victor Alfonzo, PUCMM (Pu-ka-My-Ma), the university where we are taking our Spanish classes, and we have learned a lot about the school.

Everyone who was so worried about me can stop now. I haven’t seen a lot yet other than the campus and the streets surrounding ISA and the apartment, but it’s wonderful and decently safe if you know where not to go and use precaution at night. Everyone is so friendly and excited for our experiences. The apartment is nice and has a beautiful view of the city. My room and bed here are larger than in the States. I think I’ve had four bug bites so far, and coming from Michigan, that’s not a big deal. There is a group from GVSU here that have been in the city for two weeks, and they did mention lots of bug bites, so maybe it will be worse when I travel. I haven’t been outside besides the balcony at night yet and we live on the fourth floor. It is crazy to me to have open windows, no screens, and very few bites. The Grand Valley group is doing a different type of program through ISA, but it is nice to have some familiarity. There are five of us from Michigan in my group, three from Kalamazoo, which is an odd occurrence in a group of twenty-four, but cool. My “Beat Western” button is on my purse just for the two WMU girls!

I believe that is all for now. The food is good, the campus is very beautiful, my family is very accommodating, we are going to Puerto Plata on Friday, and we have many other exciting things on the way! I am going to try to buckle down and type a bit more instead of watching telanovelas and The Big Bang Theory. If you are reading this in the morning of the 6^th (hey, one month until my birthday), I will be online from 6-7 PM if you want to chat. Other than that, I will have very limited access for the next two weeks and slightly limited after that. I’m enjoying it though; I was not on my computer for more than ten minutes for three days.

Gracias por tu atención! 

Six Week Crash Course

Hola! Me llamo Brooke. Iré a la Republica Dominicana este verano y eso es mi blog.

For those of you who don't speak Spanish, I said, "Hello! They call me, Brooke. I will go to the Dominican Republic this summer and this is my blog."

While I have already started another blog, my sister encouraged me to segment this section to make it more easily accessible in the future. There are tabs to connect both blogs together at the top of the page, so it should be easy to follow. There are 43 days left before my six week journey around the Eastern part of Hispanola (the island made of of the DR and Haiti). I am getting really excited! I have never really been able to experience another culture to this extent. I am hoping to improve my Spanish and hopefully my host family and other natives will be able to understand me.

This brings me to my first concern. If you are reading this blog because you are considering studying in the DR, I am going to try to ease concerns as I become at ease with them and hopefully that will help you as well. There is very little information to go off of for my program as far as personal experiences go. While on a normal day I am perfectly happy to be laid back and go with the flow, I am a planner when it comes to trips. I get excited when I plan for things. So, since I wasn't granted that opportunity, I am hoping to create that for others. Especially when school gets out, I will reflect on all the steps I took. One thing that I found that was actually helpful was from a collection of different universities and found here:

http://offices.colgate.edu/ocstudy/Guide%20to%20DR%2008.pdf

But anyway, my first concern is that I know absolutely nothing about my host family. People keep asking me questions about them, but I have no idea. The program I am going through, ISA, is giving the flight itineraries, contact information, and homestay locations for our group to us a month before we leave. It's just around the corner, but also feels SO FAR AWAY. I'm not worried about my family, I'm sure it will be great, I just want to know. While I am the only one going from Central, I have met three other girls through the facebook page for my program so far. Talking to them has made me even more excited and a little more relaxed about the whole thing.

Throughout this post, I have been cooking plátanos fritos (or fried plantains) for my Spanish class party that is today. It was an experience, that I can say. I only burnt myself twice and I ate my weight in plantains testing them out. Pictures will come in the next post. I am so looking forward to the food when I am abroad. I am hoping that my host family will teach me how to cook some things. *Note to self: Learn Spanish cooking terms more than 'tazas,' 'hornear,' 'cocinar,' and 'quemar' ('cups,' 'to bake,' 'to cook,' and 'to burn' respectively).*

In the next post, I will talk about booking my flights, buying supplies, and lots of other good stuff.

Adios chicos!