For the past two days, I’ve been mainly serving with the kids in the classroom, but today was the final day with DREAM and I was feeling muy artsy after spending the latter half of yesterday painting the mural with Ledwin so today I decided to help with finishing up the bookshelves for their final reveal. I missed taking the kids to the beach, but I was ultimately happy with my decision to switch it up. I really came in the clutch during crunch time in helping getting the bookshelves finished/touched up esp. since we only had about 2 hours to get it all done INCLUDING DRYING TIME before the kids got back from the beach.
Once all of the students received their bookshelves, we took pictures and school was dismissed. Risheilly and I walked one of the little girls (and her spankin new bookshelf) home and her family was sosososo happy. It was great to see. On the way out Risheilly started to tear up from having to leave the children and I lowkey wanted to cry too but I had to hold it down for the both of us. ALL the feels.
Once we left DREAM, we went off to our cave activity.
After a 20 minute hike through the woods, we reached the cave, but to get to the water, we had to descend a 20 foot ladder and I. Was. Not. With. It.
As I watched my entire DREAM team scale the ladder and enter the water, my confidence and desire to join them grew. Unfortunately, my overactive imagination conjured very vivid images of me falling off the ladder and plummeting into the 50 foot water to my demise so I maintained my firm “nah”. Everyone tried to convince me to come down and get in the water but I needed some time to mentally prepare and was like:
About 10 minutes later, a combination of my team’s support and my need to prove my bravery to myself pushed me down the ladder and into the cave. Go Patience. Albeit very cold and a little frightening , the entire cave experience was honestly so much fun and I’m glad I was able to enjoy the experience with the DREAM team. I would have kicked myself all the way back to America if I let a little fear stop me from soaking up all the Dominican Republic had to offer.
We headed back to our villa in Puerto Plata where we met the Project Las Americas women and they immediately began cooking dinner. For about the first 30 minutes, everyone was shy and awkwardness was a definite possibility, but in no time we were all throwing each other the pool and laughing loud enough to hear from D.C.
They finished cooking and I don’t (really) eat red meat but in the spirit of being grateful and starving, I ate the sancocho they prepared which was filled with green banana, cassava, chicken, pork, and dumplings. The rice and avocado that were served on the side set the whole meal off and my tastebuds literally screamed YAAAASSSSSSSSSSSSS to the high heavens. The women knew a lot of English which made communication easier for a lot of the team and getting to spend that time with young adults close to our age was a lot of fun. We’ll get to see them throughout the remainder of the trip and I’m excited to get to know them more.
After dinner, Sereana and Shirish taught us all Punjabi dancing, the PLA girls taught us salsa and merengue, and it was an all around great time. I’m pooped. I’m saying that now, but I’ll honestly likely certainly definitely end up staying up super late playing UNO. The wifi is down so I can’t post this tonight, so it’ll go up when the signal returns. Don’t know when that’ll be. Hasta.
- Patience
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