CIEE College Study Abroad in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic

This was my first time immersing myself in new culture for so long! I am going home in about 3 weeks. Overall, my comprehension & language skills have improved. I’ve learned more African history here than in the U.S. which I loveee! I’ve learned how to be more independent in a new environment & have the attitude of “just try it”. When I first arrived, I was nervous about solo journeys and conversing but now I don’t mind & honestly just say what I can. The program has planned trips which I like because not everyone takes the initiative to go out and explore by themselves.

This program was absolutely life changing. The weekly excursions and great support really made it a trip to remember. CIEE did a great job of putting together a wonderful group of students and staff to create a great experience for everyone. The host family placements put us right by the city and really gave us the cultural immersion we wanted. One of my favorite trips was when we went to white water rafting because it really brought us all together and was a truly unique experience. I think it was the perfect combination of education and fun because we learned so much about the Dominican Republic: it’s history, culture and language all the while enjoying ourselves.

My time here in the Dominican Republic with the Liberal Arts Program through CIEE has been nothing but a memorable experience I will take with me forever. Despite the hardships, like having trouble with my host moms, traveling on my own at 5 am to get to Santiago from the Santo Domingo, and learning the concept of DR time, I have only grown. This program was great since it provided many weekend excursions like a fun trip to Samana, a place with beautiful beaches, but also a work retreat in a rural area where we learned about a coffee plantation with great people. It was a great way to experience the language and to gain more confidence since it is an interactive and experiential learning program. I never would have thought that I would be this happy and so sad to leave, when I was counting down the days until I got to go home two months ago. Who knew I could cliff jump off a waterfall.

I loved loved my study abroad experience in the Dominican Republic! My professors were awesome and taught me a lot about Domican history and cultural. My host mom was the best, she was very welcoming and helpful. The CIEE staff were awesome! They were always available and willing to help with class enrollment issues or whatever else we needed. They took us on the best excursions ever. I will never forget the day the CIEE staff took us to Cayo Arena or to the 27 Charcos. I literally felt like I lived in paradise. On the weekends my friend and I went to different beaches and I often went to the beautiful countryside with my host family.

Choosing to study abroad in the second largest city in the Dominican Republic with CIEE was one of the best decisions I've ever made. Dominican people are warm and friendly, and the culture is so vibrant, I couldn't stop eating, drinking, and dancing! Though the difficulty level of the academics was not very comparable to the American university I was coming from, the difficulty of adapting to a new environment, and taking all of my classes in Spanish, made up for it. Furthermore, the trips and rural work retreats offered by the CIEE program were some of the best memories I have. The Dominican Republic has so many beautiful places to offer, we were able to go to Cayo Arena, a small island off of the north coast with beautiful sites for snorkeling, and Samana, a city on the west coast, thriving with animals that live off its cliffs and in its caves. During the weekend work retreats, leaving the urban city to climb miles of rolling hills was always a fresh of breath air. The people we worked and lived with appreciated every second of our time, and I will never forget the Canadian woman that we met who had adopted seven Dominican children and raised them as her own. The stories of some of the people I met their are unforgettable. While this may sound like an experience anyone in the DR can get, I have to thank CIEE for the program it put together and the staff and management that made the program so successful. Lynne Guitar, the director of the program, is a loving and fun professional, with a passion for Dominican people and culture. She was always available and willing to stop any work she was doing to attend to the needs to the students, and it is clear that she loves doing what she does. All of the staff, in fact, always made me feel at home. I really built a family with the people involved, and more so, with my home-stay family, with whom they did a great job placing me. Ultimately, I built relationships that will last me my whole life and made memories that will stay vivid in my mind for forever. The four months, one semester, that I spent in the Dominican Republic, caused me to return two times in the following year to do thesis research, and was the reason for a final move to the island post-graduation. Ms Guitar helped me find a job teaching English at the same university I studied at for the first year, and now I am currently living in Santiago and teaching in a bilingual middle school. I owe it all to CIEE.