- We completely underestimated the ubiquity of social media. A number of the Dominican teen leaders followed the Fundación Las Margaritas Facebook page-and posted pictures and thoughts about their camp experiences. I have posted all of those to the page thus presenting a different perspective of the camp. Based on these posts it seems that the relationships they developed with the campers and with the gringos were very powerful. Here's one such post:
And now that I've shared all their posts with the Fundación page we've got a nice record of their thoughts.
- One difficulty I've always had with the Dominican language is that their Rs sound just like their Ls. For example, the word for pan (as in pots and pans) is either "sarten" or "salten" as those two words are pronounced almost exactly the same. Usually it doesn't matter so much as I just say the words as I hear them. If I ask Doña Yolanda for a sarten or salten she gives me a pan. However, there is one instance that really presents problems and it has to do with politics. The two major political parties here are the Partido de la Liberación Dominicana(PLD) and the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano(PRD). But since Rs and Ls are interchangeable in terms of their pronunciation the "pe-ele-de"(PLD) sounds almost exactly like the "pe-ere-de"(PRD) - at least to my ears. So, I have to be very careful when I talk politics with Tanya's family because they are all "pe-ere-distas" and "pe-ele-distas" are looked upon with a certain, shall I say, disdain.