Just go for it!

So during the middle of the school year my friend just dragged me to a random information session with her and it happened to be for this program. I had not heard about it before and was not particularly interested, but as I heard more and more I realized it was something I really wanted to do, so I just went for it. This program can be 5 weeks total but I opted out of the Spanish immersion and adventure tour and just did the 2 weeks volunteering. Although my time in the Dominican was not as long as others, I still think it was the opportunity of a life time and some of the best two weeks of my life. To begin I will tell you one thing, I did give this program a 10/10 because the opportunity they gave me for these two weeks is something I will forever be grateful for, but information can be a little confusing. The thing is, within ISV there are many different countries with different programs, and then within the different countries, there are different volunteer projects, so a lot the information you receive is general to your country be not specific to your volunteer project. Going into the trip this did make me a little nervous but I also think this in a way added to the fun of it. I did not go in knowing exactly what I would be doing and it was always exciting to find out and get to do things I never thought I'd be doing, just be open to go with the flow and trust that you are in good hands. My project leaders were Pedro and Danyi and if yours are them or anyone like them you will have no worries. These two are two of the most welcoming, interesting, funny, and all around just good guys. The second we spotted them at the airport they made us comfortable with them and they were always open and helpful. The volunteer project I was a part of was called the El Castillo project. It was truly en eye opening experience. We were up a mountain in a rural area of the Dominican Republic in a village called, as you can probably guess, El Castillo. We stayed at a beautiful ecolodge called Villa Pajon and the nearest city was Constanza which we had an opportunity to pend a day in during one of our days off. Our other day off we ventured to the the aguas blancas waterfall. While these days were great and the rest was probably needed, I would venture to say all the volunteers would have preferred to keep working. El Castillo was amazing. We were able to redo the whole school floor, tear down and rebuild an entire new house as well as replace/fix walls, foundations, roofs and floors in many other houses. It was truly rewarding to do all of this because you can really see the difference you make and see the finished products and the atmosphere in the community was unlike any other I had seen. Everyone wanted to help, people were constantly coming to our working sites and offering to do bits of work and help with the construction on other people's houses when they too had very little, and the things they can do (and we learned to do) with their bare hands and no power tools never ceased to amaze me, also the two construction "maestros" (Kiko and Pinguino although I have no idea if those are correct spellings) we got to work with were, just like our project leaders, funny, all around great guys that truly made our experience one of a kind, I think ISV does a great job really picking people out like them that will make your time on project even more fun and memorable. Another part of this project was running the HELP (health and english language program) for the children of the community. This may have been the best part of the program. We got to plan lessons and spend the day with these kids that were so eager to learn and play with us. Each activity we did thrilled them and they could have fun with anything, literally swinging a jump rope around and not even jumping brought joy to the eyes of these kids, and it is that joy that I could see on each of their little faces that made this piece my favorite part and why i think this program is so great. Just go for this program and I can say with almost 100% confidence that you will not regret it for a second, just be ready for some teary eyed goodbyes and make sure to check your junk mail as for some reason a few important emails from ISV went there for me!