We’ve been in Constanza now for almost a week. It’s absolutely beautiful here and the climate is wonderful. I’ve been getting a lot of exercise climbing the mountain behind our house and going to the baseball field to run around with the kids. My host family here is lovely. There are two boys, 13 and 9 and one girl who is 11. My host dad drives a public motoconcho (motorcyle) for a living and my host mom is a cooking guru!
I haven’t written much about the food here, so I’ll take this opportunity to elaborate a bit. Dominican cuisine is full of “viveres” which directly translates to “that which sustains” but what we would generally consider as starches. Yuca, plantains, potatoes and a number of others that don’t exist in the states are consumed daily. Eggs and salami are also very popular. The centerpiece of the Dominican diet, however, is definitely rice, and boy do they do it well here! Any Dominican will tell you that if they haven’t eaten rice at a meal, they feel that they haven’t really eaten at all. Rice is present at every big midday meal, typically accompanied by either beans, lentils, plantains, chicken or pork. Another plentiful part of the Dominican diet is fruit! There are many wonderful tropical fruits here that I had never tried before like guyaba, guanabana y carambola (starfruit). Dominicans love making “batidas” or fruit shakes. As you can tell, I am far from suffering with this cuisine!
Dominican word of the week: “barriga”
The technical word in Spanish for stomach is "estomago" but here in the DR, they would have no idea what you were talking about if you were to use that term. Your stomach in the DR is referred to as your "barriga". For example, when my host family feeds me twice the amount of food I can consume in one meal, I grab my stomach and say "mi barriga esta lleeeena" (my stomach is so full!)
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