Two steps forward, and one drive backwards: Dominican life in reverse.

The past two days have been extremely busy ones, so it's time for a recap! Monday we started the day by going to visit a small children's school and a water filtering place. We learned how they were able to filter water and provide it to the community at a low cost. We even got to see them sealing the water bottles. 

After that, we headed to a local hospital. This hospital, however, was nothing like what we would find in the states. 

While we were there, we learned that the center is very popular for doing eye surgeries, and their optometry department was one of the biggest parts of the hospital. We were able to go into most of the different rooms and areas; we even got to see their operating room, and we were able to see some of the people both pre and post-op surgery.  One of the people coming out of surgery had been sedated, but there were no machines hooked up to her. It was pretty weird because they almost have no way of monitoring a person; we didn't even see an IV. They also had big centers for hearing, children, and general doctoral needs.

After the hospital tour, we got to visit a Dominican university. It was the first university to be built in the New World, and it was beautiful! The campus was huge, and the views as we were walking were perfect. There was a slight breeze blowing the palm trees, and everything was just very calming. There was artwork spread thoughout the entire campus on the walls, ceilings, everywhere. On our way back to the house, we passed a special restaurant, and we had gone to far... Our bus driver then proceeded to back up on a BUSY Dominican road for a seemingly long amount of time. We were all dying of laughter by the time Rafael, our driver, had finished backing up. 

On Tuesday, we ventured out to a super cool cave, toured la casa de campo, and visited a batey. The cave was cool and dark, and we made a friend with the little boy who was also in our group.  

At la casa de campo, we found a super cool amphitheater. It was beautiful, and it had an abundance of stairs. 

To end the day, we visited a batey, which is a Haitian neighborhood in the Dominican Republic. We got to talk with some of the people who lived there, and we also got to play with all of the kids there.