As I am driving in my yellow open air dune buggy further into the Dominican countryside, I feel the hot sun on my face, the wind blowing back my hair and the dust that is coming up from the bumpy dirt road. Everything is moving so fast but the one thing that is still is the small barefoot children standing on the right side of the road, watching as we speed by. An overwhelming feeling comes and I feel my chest getting heavy. The one and only thing holding back the empathetic tears is the fact that the children were smiling. They are happy even when they have nothing. They do not know of the life that I live and they have nothing to compare their lives to, but, they are smiling and laughing more than the people I see on a day to day basis. When people think of the Dominican Republic, Punta Cana in particular, most people envision the white sand, the clear blue water, and people think of paradise. While those things are true, there is much more to the Dominican Republic that is hidden behind the 5 star resorts. Zooming past the trees on the …show more content…
All the locals have different tables set up. I see baskets, food, clothes, and everything you could possibly imagine. I met another kid that was my age who was surprised I was going to college. According to UNICEF, the government does not provide more than 4% of GDP on education, therefore, only 30% of children finish primary school. The education system here in the Dominican Republic is struggling with overcrowded classrooms and run down facilities. What is most alarming is that most of the teachers only understand less than half of the material they are teaching. That means that if this doesn’t change there will be an endless cycle of failing education. There is also a high dropout rate, teachers who never had a good education of their own, an extremely outdated curriculum, and a majority of overage students fail classes and have to repeat