We have been in the Dominican Republic for just over 2 weeks, but in our apartment for just over one week now.  It has been a great experience so far, but very educational, so I thought I would share the top ten things (in no particular order) of what I have learned.
  1. I am a better driver in the Dominican Republic than in Canada.  This surprises me, but my family stares at me in awe!  Stay with the flow, the bigger car wins, watch out for manholes with no covers....all else are suggestions (red lights, lanes, stop signs, signalling...).  It seems chaotic, but it is HIGHLY effective.
  2. The Dominican people are wonderful.  In the entire world they are ranked #2 in Contentment and Satisfaction (Norway is #1).  It is hard not to be positive when you are surrounded by the second most positive people on the globe.
  3. I love my family.  The amount of family time that we have had has been awesome - great conversations with my wife, group IKEA furniture building sessions, playing catch, water fights, EPIC Halo battles, walking to the park - God has indeed blessed me with a great wife and 2 wonderful kids.
  4. A 20 minutes task in Canada will take one hour, unless the person you are dealing with likes you, then it will take really, really long, but you will have made a good friend.  This applies to buying groceries, setting up a bank account, buying a fan, adding minutes to a cell phone - relationships are more important than time.
  5. I have a love/hate relationship with IKEA.  My new furniture is very comfortable, but if I see one more picture book of instructions, a wooden dowel or an allan wrench any time soon, their may be carnage!!
  6. Spanish is the coolest language....ever.  I am learning slowly, Michelle is picking it up much quicker, but we start lessons next week.  It is amazing how much can be communicated through sign language and broken English (charades), but I look forward to being able to "hablar mejor Espanol" (speak better Spanish).
  7. Cold showers are AMAZING.  In Calgary, when one refers to cold showers a different meaning comes to mind.  Grown men sympathize with each other, nod, and groan the absence of certain necessities.  In the DR, a cold shower means something totally different - "I am a white guy who has been sweating all day in wickedly hot weather, who smells really bad and needs to cool off before bed."
  8. Fruit tastes so much better when it is picked, sold and eaten within 24 hours, rather than picked, prepared for shipping on a pier, transported by boat, trucked to the grocery store and then eaten 10 days later.  Who knew??
  9. Go with the flow should be everyone's motto.  No electricity today, oh well.  No running water, no worries.  Cows blocking traffic, enjoy the rest.  Life is not and never will be perfect and too often we expect it to be just the way we want it, resulting in stress/frustration.  Relax, manana es un nuevo dias (tomorrow is a new day).
  10. Tim Horton's is not as good as all Canadians think it is.  In the spectrum of Dominican coffee there are varying levels of quality.  Santo Domingo is top quality and Lider is a very low quality coffee.  On this scale, Tim Horton's would be significantly lower than Lider, but just slightly higher than drinking a cup of mud with two creams and one sugar!

God is Good!