UC Davis Blum Center for Developing Economies

I sincerely believe that there are just not enough words that can describe how happy I was to be living in the Dominican Republic. The country is extremely different from the United States, but it’s exactly that reason why I loved it so much.   We’ll start with the juice. Fruits in the DR are unlike any fruits you’ve ever seen or tasted here. Walking through the campo with a friend, and being able to simply crack open a chinola, or passionfruit as we know it, sounds like such a menial experience but for me it was eye opening and just kept adding to the reasons to love the country. Every morning, I would wake up to the sound of a blender and as I sat down to breakfast I was always presented with juice or shake from some different fruit, passionfruit, papaya, or even avocados at times. And the mangos! My Dominican friends constantly made fun of me for my constant search every day for the café with the best mango juice or for one last mango tree. It wasn’t until my third week that...

I’ve never really been a teacher before. I had been a camp counselor to 6th graders at some point, and have done small volunteering projects involving discipline of those younger than me, but I have never had the responsibility of being a teacher for my group of kids. The first week of arrival at the Mama Elba School, it was a bit unnerving. Not only was I going to be responsible for a group of my own kids, and teach them the topics that I had already outlined, but I was to do so all in Spanish and with students of varying disabilities ranging from ADHD to Autism. At the end of my first lesson, Handwashing, I was thoroughly exhausted. Although the invisible ink really captured the attention of nearly the whole classroom, it was close to impossible to get them all to sit down and listen to the reasons why germs were bad to keep underneath your fingernails. I needed help.  The only way to learn how to be a teacher is to observe other teachers. The NGO I was working with already...

Kids are incredible, in any country, they continue to amaze me with the life and energy that never seems to run out with them. In any situation they could be crying one minute and the next be completely taken by happiness. They are not so easily brought down by the normalities of life that often gets us adults down for a whole day, a whole week. During my time in the Dominican Republic I had the opportunity of working in two different workplaces with two very different groups of kids, a pediatric clinic and a school. And in both places of work I was able to see the range of personalities, emotions that a child can feel between 10 minutes to 4 hours.  Babies in the pediatric clinic, although small can display a sense of intelligent understanding just by their observation of everything going around them. They know when their mother is leaving them to play them on the scale to be weighed, they acknowledge when a stethoscope is too cold on their skin, and they recognize the depths ...