"Do you have hot water?" and Other Things About Life in the Dominican Republic

I always get asked so many questions about life in general in the Dominican Republic. The three most common are:

• Do you have hot water?
• What do you eat?
• What are the people in your program like?

I've decided to start a little mini-series about life in the DR, with questions from y'all. (But mostly because my life here is starting to get routine and boring and I don't really have much more to say). Please leave a comment if you have any questions about anything, however insignificant or important or random it may be. (Otherwise, you're going to be reading about me sitting in class for the whole morning and really, who wants to do that?)

Back to the hot water. Yes, we have the capability for it. No, I do not use it.

Having hot water is a complicated process. It involves turning on a switch that turns the propane on which heats the water. It takes about 15 minutes to heat. At first, I thought hot water was a good idea. When you have to wake up at 6:15 every morning to shower (if you shower that day, ahem), those extra 15 minutes are crucial.

It kind of freaked me out at first, but they don't use hot water for anything else, either. Clothes are washed in cold water, and all whites are bleached. The dishes are washed with cold water, and that still kind of scares me. I think they use bleach for the dishes, too, but I'm not sure about that. I haven't creeped in the kitchen enough.

But really, when you sleep in 80 degree weather, you don't want to take a hot shower in the morning. And when I come home from my organization dripping with sweat, I don't really want to stand under hot water. Cold water, however, makes the cut. Sometimes in the morning I step out of the shower absolutely freezing, complete with goosebumps.

I've come to embrace the cold water, though. Because I know that when I'm freezing in the morning, it will be the absolute only time that day that I'll be cold.

Optimism, my friends. It's good stuff.