The first few days of being here, after two red-eye flights to get here on hardly any sleep, we stayed around our neighborhood and took a few days to unpack, walk around and see the different schools we would be teaching English at and walked to the local beach with our neighbors. We just took a few days to get familiar with the area and had a few more trainings before we were going to start school last Monday. For the first weekend here my roommates (Alyssa, Brenley and I) went to Sosua beach with a few other girls in our group. It was absolutely beautiful. The waves there are crazy big at high tide right at the shore but the water is a beautiful turquoise color and was so relaxing. They also had the yummiest pina coladas there with fresh pineapple chunks. It was heaven! We got cheeseburgers for lunch just because we needed familiar food haha, but they didn't taste anything like American burgers. It was still nice to have something other than rice, beans and unknown meat haha.
On Sunday about half of the group came to the local LDS church meeting, this week was an area conference so we ended up listening to a broadcast Elder Anderson speaking in English which was SO nice to hear English. There was a family there from Norway visiting so it was fun to chat with them about what we're all doing here. There are also white missionaries here which is so comforting to all of us for some reason. One day when we walked home the Elders were just standing outside of our gate and it was so fun to talk to them in English and actually understand what they were saying haha. My Spanish is actually way better than I thought it would be, I can pick up about 60% of what people say to us (which is them using basic Spanish so that we can understand, so I really am not that impressive with my Spanish haha). But the high school Spanish is coming in handy!
Monday was the first day of classes, which also meant the start of a few mental breakdowns throughout the week. These kids are so, so cute but it's so hard to describe how terribly behaved they are without coming here and seeing it in person. These kids come from such broken homes, many of whom only have moms and only have one bedroom in their house. Many of these moms are prostitutes, not because they want to be but because they have to be in order to put food on their table for their families. And since the whole family shares a bedroom, these kids see things in the night that they should never ever have to see. They mimic those actions every day during class and disrupt everyone's attention, they pee on us, spit on us, bite us, flip us off and know hardly any English even though the program has been here in the DR for a year and a half. It is so mentally draining to try and settle these kids down and teach them a lesson. It truly has been babysitting this week, not really any teaching. We've been in contact with the leaders of ILP (the program i'm here with) and we're working on tweaking and adjusting some things here because the program isn't being successful the way it is set up now and we truly want to change that so these kids can be successful and learn English. We love these kids already, even if they're hard to teach, and really want what is best for them so they can be successful! These cuties in the pictures below were eating lunch when we walked into the cafeteria on the first day.
Part of why this first week has been so overwhelming is because we want these kids to learn English so that in their futures they can have a job that requires English, even if it's a job at a hotel nearby it would make such a huge difference in their family's income. And right now we see that they are not being successful and that the kids and Spanish teachers don't really care or put any effort in trying to make the classes successful. A lot of us felt useless being here, thinking that we would make no difference in our four months being here. We got homesick all over again thinking of why we came and how we should've stayed home and done something else this semester. But as the week went on, we became more motivated to change the program by talking to the ILP leaders and really truly make it work in this country not only so that our semester is successful, but so that future semesters can be as well. Our goal is to bring back the mindset to the community that English classes truly are a privilege for them. They don't have to pay anything for the classes and we are here as volunteers to help them, which they often take advantage of. The Spanish teachers see us as babysitters to give them a break for a few hours which is so frustrating! So we're working hard at making things better so that these kids love to learn English and can use it in their futures. We know their backgrounds and know how much we need to just make them feel loved them and care for them. Since we already care so much about them, we'll be working hard this semester to make an impact so that this program works here!
The kids are the cutest, most photogenic little cuties but I promise they are little devils in the classroom haha. We love walking around the streets of our neighborhood with them, and they're always waiting at the gate to talk to us or to have us come play with them. We LOVE them at home and in the streets when we can have fun together, but in the classroom they are absolute horrors which is so hard!
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