Personal Narrative Essay: A Trip To The Dominican Republic

I have come to associate myself with the identity of an American Hispanic. When I was young, I never thought of my identity. I always thought everyone was equal and there were no distinct ways to stereotype a person. An event that helped me realize my identity was a trip to Venezuela where my family is from. Even though I was born in the United States, I met several different family members on this trip and saw so many different cultural views and sites that I had not seen in the US. In Venezuela, everyone speaks Spanish, and there were so many different types of foods like “Arepas,” which is a type of food made of ground maize dough, a staple where I’m from.

The dominican Republic is known as the breadbasket of the Caribbean because it grows, farms, and catches almost everything that’s served for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The Dominican Republic was the first colony founded by Christopher Columbus. It used to go by “La Hispaniola” in colonial times. Also the flag of the Dominican Republic is the only national flag in the world to feature the image of a bible. My country is the Dominican Republic. I learned about the culture, food, religion, imports and exports, geography, sports, and family. All of it was very eye opening.

Each house-- painted a very vibrant, dazzling color, purple, orange, yellow, green, and pink. I had never seen houses like that in the United States the usual house colors are gray, white, tan, blue, very dull colors. The sight of these vivid houses was just a small glimpse of this beautiful country. As I nervously traveled without my family for the first time the lush terrain of Costa Rica dotted with colorful houses welcomed me.

In 2015 my grandmother died. When I received the news I was on the couch and my mother told me “Miguel we have to talk” I was sweating because my mother was so serious and she told me that my grandmother was dead, and in that moment all I could think about was being back in the Dominican Republic, growing up with her, imagining the moments I spent in her house and the mornings that I sat in her living room, watching TV and smelling her amazing food wafting through the pass-through window from the kitchen. Then I snap back on reality and realize the future my grandmother would want for me.

Upon our arrival to The Dominican Republic, my mother informed me that we were going to spend most of our vacation at my grandparent’s house. Immediately, I was filled with exhilaration. After so many years, I would finally visit my beloved grandparents. I had already visualized what spending the summer at their house would be like. Rolling in the sand of the clear see-through beaches, listening to the birds sing and chirp around us as we savor our early morning breakfast, enjoying the sound of waves smashing into the rocks on the shore, and laying in an air-conditioned room when the temperature got too high.

This paper is about the time I went to the Dominican Republic and Nassau, Bahamas with my family and the wonderful lessons I learned or thought about even more. I learned a lot when I was in those two places because there were a lot of examples of the lessons I learned. Both places are very large and there are multiple people who show the lessons in their everyday life.

I was born in dominican republic santiago in May 21, 1997. I'm 19 years old. My weight is 132 pound and my height is 5.9 feet. My skin color is dark and my eyes color are black. My favorite color is yellow and my favorite singer is Daddy Yankee. I'm a student from Bronx Community College. My major is Liberal Arts & Biology because I want something related with medicine. Now I was thinking about become a physical therapy or doctor with a specialization in pediatric.

Tomorrow my family is going to Cuba for a vacation. I’m glad that summer break has started. I’m very excited to go on the plane and taking pictures of places around Cuba. To start off, I am packing my suitcase full of clothes and making sure that I have everything that I need for this special trip. I could imagine being in the hotel resort relaxing and having a fun time with my family. My dad told us that he booked our flight to Cuba in a very early time. We had to go to my grandparents house to stay there for the night. We left the house and went inside the car to get ready to go. We started driving to my grandparent’s house. When we got there Grandma Joan and Grandpa John were outside cleaning the front yard. They start to get surprised and

I’m sorry that I haven't blogged regularly but as you can imagine I am still trying to get comfortable with my new life. Now that I’m here I’m really starting to realize that Haiti has no structure, my mom would have a fit! (Love you mom!) Work day hours vary constantly, you can start work pretty much at 7:30AM and then declare at 3PM that you are going home. With my line of work we are constantly depending on the wifi, which as you can imagine is not the greatest in a third world country, but we manage to get as much done as we can. I can honestly say that every day is different, there is never really a schedule or a plan as to how one should go about doing things. You simply just do them. Transition from the U.S. has

Since traveling to Nicaragua, I find myself perplexed by the Nietzchean idea that language is the enemy of experience. It is difficult to explain in words an experience that is both awe-inspiring and awful, edifying and heartbreaking, beautiful and atrocious. If my time on the Bucknell Brigade was either entirely great or completely horrible, it would be easier to write about. But since the memory inhabits a confusing and ambiguous space between two intense opposites, my voice had withdrawn into silence.

"I can't go on the service trip to Dominican Republic," I reluctantly explained to my teacher. "I don't receive health insurance," I confessed to my doctor. "I don't have federal financial aid, so I can't finish college," I tried to explain to my friends why I was leaving Oakwood University. On my college applications, I chose the best fit to describe my citizenship status from the limited drop down list, "I don't currently hold a valid U.S. visa." As an undocumented student, my life's themes have been "I can't" and "I don't.” I experienced a eureka moment when I read Invictus: “My head is bloody, but unbowed…/It matters not how strait the gate, /How charged with punishments the scroll, /…I am the captain of my soul.” I aimed to change my

This past summer, I went to Honduras for ten days with a school group. While I was there, we had a soccer tournament with some of the local teens. I was given the position of goalie for the gringa (white girl) team. I have never played soccer aside from a stint when I was four, but I did my best. Or so I thought. A Honduran girl who was cheering us on out of sympathy began yelling at me rapidly in Spanish. My three years of high school Spanish did not prepare me for being yelled for blocking the ball. She kept saying something over and over, but my soccer vocabulary is very limited. Finally, one of the older girls who knew a bit of English told me “don’t throw ball” and then proceeded to mime kicking a ball. You see, I had managed to block

Getting ready for landing was a new experience this time. Although I have flown to many places on many different size planes, this landing was different. I could see the houses and buildings below. The cars and people were like ants moving around. This is actually the typical site from the window seat of any plane that is about to land. To me it was very different. We were about to touch ground in Havana, Cuba. The place where my parents were born, raised and educated. This was also the place where my parents were married and had their first child, and also, the place they had to flee from in order to continue practicing their beliefs. I was arriving to my roots. A place that my family hadn't

“What is that horrid smell”? I had just landed in San Jose, Costa Rica with my church group, and before we could admire the beauties of this new place, we were greeted with the most pungent stench of our lives. It was day one of a two week mission trip, and we were already nose deep in one of the most poverty stricken areas in Central America. For the vast majority of the group, it was the first time getting to experience a new country in an authentic way; living among some of the least wealthy people in Costa Rica. The goal of our mission was to rebuild the church’s gate as the slum it was situated in is one of the most dangerous slums in the country. In addition, the pastor of the church we were staying in had a special request to our group.

As graduation approaches we are all faced with our plans for the next step in our lives. Right now, I plan to attend the University of Evansville in the fall to study Nursing and minor in Spanish. While at UE I plan to study abroad during the first semester of my senior year in England. I am especially looking forward to this opportunity because while in England I will be able to travel extensively throughout Europe while also continuing my education. I also plan to travel to a Spanish speaking country, most likely the Dominican Republic. This is something that I am both looking forward to and nervous for because this will be a very cultural trip that will also presents it challenges as far as the language barrier that will allow me to grow.