Social work and of course, surfing...

Hey everyone!

Wow, they days are just flying over here. I can’t believe we’ve already been here for over a month. And I can’t believe that we barely have two left… Today we had our first week of Spanish class after our little “vacation”. We had last week off from school and it actually feels pretty good to be back. We’ve been having a different Spanish teacher than before. His name is Gustavo, he’s from here and he speaks Spanish, English and a bit of German. The good thing is that he only speaks Spanish to us and only lets us speak Spanish back to him. It’s obviously the best way to learn a language and I already, after just a few weeks, feel much more confident in understanding and speaking. He keeps saying: “Español es un idoma muy bonito, todo es facíl!” - Spanish is a very beautiful language, everything is easy! It doesn’t matter if we’re working with irregular verbs or subjuntivo or preterito indefinido or imperativo - todo es facíl! But sometimes I just feel like I’m never gonna learn this language…

I spent the week mainly surfing, calming down (we had such a hectic week just before the vacation) and hanging out with some of the “sporty” people - or so we call them, it’s the other group of Norwegians who are taking that tropical open-air jadajada course. A few of the girls that I live with went to Santo Domingo, the capital, for a couple of days and it was so great just being on my own in the apartment. I really like everyone, this really couldn’t have been better, but sometimes you just want to be on your own. But I was already missing them again after a few days… I’ve been quite a lot down at Encuentro surfing with the sporties and it’s been really good fun. I’m standing quite a lot and feeling the thrill of soaring on the waves. I’ve also been feeling the power of the waves when they break on top of me. I’ve always known you have to have respect for the ocean. Now I haven’t been at Encuentro for about a week and I’m starting to chew my fingers - I want to go back! But we’re going tomorrow morning.

We’ve also had the chance to do some social work for some of the locals who live a really tough life. A few weeks ago two other girls and I went with Siv (she’s the coordinator for the social work down here) to a couple of areas where only Dominicans and Haitians live. A few days prior to this we’d been sorting clothes given to us from different Norwegian people into smaller bags, and these were the bags that we were handing out. It was a strange feeling walking around in Callejon (it’s a part of Cabarete and the word means backstreet) on muddy roads among all the shackled houses, with garbage in piles here and there, giving out clothes. In one way it felt really good to walk around like some kind of savoir but in a different way it felt like some kind of tourist and that I really had no place there. But people were very grateful and wanted to invite us in - the people here are extremely hospitable and warm considering their circumstances. After Callejon we went to a place called Barrio Blanco where mainly Haitians live. Siv had never been there before, she’d just heard that the people there are very poor and need a lot of help. It’s called Barrio Blanco (The white part of town) because of all the trafficking with cocaine and other drugs that goes on in there. When we got in there with our bags lots and lots of people started gathering around us and after fifty meters we couldn’t get any further. People were tugging at us, poking us, begging us for a bag. Para mi madre, para mis hermanos, para mi abuela. For my mother, for my brothers and sisters, for my grandma. It was like a scene from a refugee camp that you see on TV. Everything happened so fast - suddenly we didn’t have any bags left. It was quite an unusual and overwhelming experience. It’s terrible that people can become so desperate, so close to the tourist hotels. And barely anyone even knows they exist.

In addition we’re all working in a club for local kids. About 200 kids from the ages 6 to 12 are split up into six different groups and every afternoon we spend a few hours with them. Playing and doing a bit of homework and being creative, but mainly playing. It’s for them to have a place to be a couple of afternoons a week instead of running around in the streets and doing things they shouldn’t be doing. There is a lot of drugs and prostitution here that the tourists don’t see. The club is a lot of fun - most of the kids are just adorable - but it’s also very tiring. We’re about eight students, three of us know a little bit of Spanish, who are taking care of 45 overly energetic 8 to 10-year-olds for two and a half hours. But we’re slowly getting to know them and are getting better and better at handling them. And it really doesn’t matter what we do, it doesn’t matter if the game doesn’t work or if we’re not organized enough - the kids love being there and love us all the same! It’s a very grateful form of work.

Tomorrow we’re going up a bit in the mountains were they grow corn, avocados, bananas, yucca and lots of other things. I think it’ll be a fun experience and a chance to get out of Cabarete for a few hours. Don’t get me wrong, I love this place - but even lovers need a holiday…

I hope you’re all doing great!

Elin

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