Time for Change!

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Quote of the Month: “I am only one but I am one.  I cannot do everything but I can do something.  And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.” -Edward Everett Hale

     I have recently decided to move and I now live in the city of San Pedro de Macorís, close to the orphanage.  The move was a decision that I made to add to my experience in the Dominican.  I now still work with the orphanage as a tutor but in addition I live amongst the Dominicans and can get a different sense of the culture and it’s people.  One thing that I have noticed, which is a striking difference between Dominican culture (and in many ways different from Latin American and Caribbean culture as compared to the US) is the sharing of resources.  In the US I feel that our culture promotes one to “pull oneself up from one’s bootstraps,” and we are only really willing to share resources with family and friends.  However, here, within only a few minutes of knowing Dominicans they are more than happy to share what they have with us.  Sometimes that maybe sharing their transportation, their food, their home whatever one needs to feel comfortable.  This was something that was really shocking to me because I never expected the people to be as open as they are.  This is something I also noticed when I studied abroad in Argentina for a summer in 2007.  One day when I was sick, and could not move myself from a bench near the local bakery, many Argentineans came to my rescue.  Many of them asked my host mother and sister, whom were with me, if I were okay and if I needed anything.  The owner of the bakery also called a taxi and the taxi driver didn’t even charge us because I was so sick.  I have always loved others’ ability and willingness to help me even though they may not know me that well.

     As for the tutoring program I am learning new ways to work with my kids.  One recommendation that another friend of mine, who is apart of a near by orphanage, taught me was to “serve not help.”  In this way when I was working with the students teaching them new letters and words I often would help them more than I served them.  In this way when they had to sound out words if they got the pronunciation wrong I would tell them the correct way to pronounce the words in an instance.  However, once I learned that I should give them more opportunities and serve them in this way I saw dramatic changes.  I realized that a lot of the kids knew a lot more than I thought.  When I gave them more opportunities to sound out the words they were able to do it correctly on the second and third try.  This has been a wonderful and new break through for me that I plan on incorporating this principle in tutoring and as well as in other jobs in my life.

     Additionally, I have learned the power of communication through actions.  Sometimes we do not always have to communicate through words for people to understand us.  This is one thing that I have realized since it took me a while to understand the Dominican accent.  When I was with my favorite patient from the Haiti house, she and I were not able to communicate at all because she only speaks Creole.  However, we spent an entire hour playing cards without speaking and it was great!  We had such a great time and I didn’t even realize that I didn’t need verbal communication to have a great time with her.  There was also an American volunteer that was a volunteer over the summer.  She was barely able to form words and sentences in Spanish.  I was amazed at how close she was able to get to the girls’ of her house without being able to speak the language.  They were all so sad when she left and we begged her not to leave.  I realized then that communication through actions could be so much more powerful than spoken words.  As the old adage goes “Actions speak louder than words!”

     Another great thing that I am starting to realize is that if I have the support of my family and friends I can do anything!  As long as I have their support I feel as if no one is against me.  Even though problems arrive here that I have to get through and have to manage to overcome I feel that the help from family and friends has taken me so far.  I cannot credit my successes to myself, it must go to all of the people that have supported me and been there for me over the years.  Therefore, I feel that I can travel anywhere and live wherever I want because along as I have contact with people that love me I will be able to pull through anything!

      Finally, a good friend of mine has brought to my attention that sometimes we must go through adversity, some type of struggle or even hit rock bottom and then have patience and later we will achieve something great!  I have realized this a lot in my own life where I have taken a risk and moved outside of my comfort zone, struggled a lot and then in the end achieved something great.  An example of this is my Spanish language skills.  When I first came here I was so frustrated about my inability to communicate how I wanted to or my inability to understand others a lot of the times.  However, after having patience and taking things one day at a time I now feel I have achieved my goal of being fluent.  Now I feel absolutely comfortable expressing myself and am not afraid to talk to a single Dominican.  I am so happy now but the only thing is that we must have patience with ourselves to achieve the things that we really want in life.