Rhys ’25 and Luca ’26 provide an update on house building and relationship building.
We spent the morning removing all the nails from the wood. I thought it was very interesting that everything on the construction site is reused and recycled. We then carried the wood and loaded it into a pickup truck. Four other students and I took a ride to Jose’s house. I was amazed by the landscape and the view of the mountains along the way. Throughout our journey, we spotted many animals along the way, including chickens, horses, cows, goats, cats, and dogs. Later on, I was working on the floor of one of the rooms, and it was very strenuous but also a necessary step before we pour the flooring tomorrow. My favorite part of the day was when we were filling up the septic system with rocks. I enjoyed loading up the rocks with some of the local kids. I definitely think I got to know some of the local kids a lot more this afternoon, and they even gave me the nickname “el fuerzaron” or “strongman”. By the end of the day we made a lot of progress on the septic system, setting us up to be done by the end of the week. Overall, it was a great day and we got a lot of work done!
-Rhys ’25
After a knock on the door from Ms. Koyama, I fell right back asleep, only to be woken up by my roommate Angel. This has become a routine here in the DR, as well as brushing teeth with bottled water, eating new foods at breakfast, and traveling to the worksite in a curtained bus. All these things turned from new experiences to a predictable procedure in a matter of days. After the morning, we traveled to the worksite to get started on today’s jobs. The morning consisted of removing nails from scaffolding wood boards, handing plaster to mason, and loading rocks into wheelbarrows for the septic tank.
At lunch, we ate rice, chicken, beans and eggplant, while discussing what needed to be done. The house has been constructed extraordinarily fast, and yet there is still much to do. After lunch, we flattened the ground in preparation for the floors to be poured, which gave us an unexpected challenge. As we departed the worksite to Tyler Christopher Long’s serenation, we made plans for a city tour and, as Aiden Van Eps hoped for, a stop at an ”ice cweam” store. Luckily, both those things came true after dinner. Jose Abreu (founder of Cambiando Vidas) talked about the history of the DR and some statues seen in San Juan before agreeing to our wishes and taking us to ice cream. Finishing the night with dessert, we had a true Dominican experience when we visited a local baseball game.
-Luca ’26
