Open Blog #1

For Spring Break I went to the Dominican Republic. I went because some friends found a Groupon for an all-inclusive resort and I thought it sounded nice to go sit on the beach for a week. I didn’t really know anything about the Dominican Republic and I didn’t do any research before getting there. But when we got there I was shocked by how poor it was. We took a bus from Santo Domingo three hours north to Puerto Plata. During the bus ride I noticed that there was trash everywhere on the side of the road. And there were places where I saw people burning trash and where I could tell that trash had been burned. I also went on a boat to watch my friends go parasailing and one of the locals who was with us had a drink and he went to throw his cup into the ocean and I stopped him. He said that he loved the ocean but didn’t understand what was wrong with throwing his plastic cup into the water. The language barrier prevented me from fully explaining the issues of polluting the ocean, but I did what I could. It was so shocking to see so much trash on the ground when I know from school that it could be leeching terrible things into the soil and the groundwater. And to see people throw things into the ocean where I know it could kill marine creatures or wash up on the beach and cause problems there. While I am sure there are also people in the United States who do now know/care about littering and pollution, it just seems like there is such a disconnect between here and there. Maybe it’s because it is so poor so people have other things on the top of their minds to worry about besides littering, but if people were educated about the health of the environment, maybe they would realize that we are all part of one big cycle and polluting the land just comes back around to hurt you.