1st Day of Classes! (Day 3)

May 19^th, 2014

Day Three

Day 3 of my trip started with an early morning with all of us having to walk to our first day of classes. Our classroom for the week would be in a room that would be in a room of a local hotel.

            Our initial class was a Spanish speaking class, where ISA brought in a local Spanish professor from the university to teach us the basics of the language. I feel that this was necessary because once we arrived to Santiago; the language barrier was an instant obstacle we had to overcome with the people in the community.

            In the lessons we learned pretty much the basics of words we would use interacting with our homestay families and people from the local markets and surrounding stores. The only thing bad about the experience was that it was tough to keep my attention after the first hour and a half. The entire class was almost 4 hours long.

            After our first class we had our lunch break and I was really looking forward to that because here in the DR, it’s a norm to have a 2-hour lunch break in between class and professions. So we were able to come back to our homestay have lunch and then have enough time for a quick nap.

            As lunch ended we proceeded to make our way back to class. Our next class was very interesting we were discussing how much of an impact the culture had on us so far during the experience, the similarities and differences in cultures and things we should look forward to trying to take away from the abroad experience. What I liked from the discussion was that everyone was from various backgrounds and had experiences that all made us appreciate the opportunities we have as Americans.

            This pretty much sums up the day for all the activities we had to do.