Ahorita!!

If you were to look up the word "ahorita" in the dictionary it would say something along the lines of "right away; at this very moment". In the Dominican Republic, they definitely do not use this definition!! Here, "ahorita" literally means anywhere from a half hour to about two hours...You can imagine my shock the first day when my papa told me we were leaving "ahorita". I grabbed my stuff and started to get my shoes and he just looked at me rather perplexed. I have definitely learned my lesson!

As I have mentioned before, time is very different here than it is at home. Here, the focus is much more on the event itself as opposed to the exact time it begins or ends. When my papa tells me that we are leaving for church exactly at 9, I know that we will be leaving at 9:30 at the earliest (it takes time to finish eating the breakfast that is made every morning, get the car to actually start, and lock the three different gates/doors leading into our house!)

This past Wednesday I went to my first Dominican wedding (I say first because I have two more that I am going to get to go to!) The wedding I went to was scheduled to start at 3...We left our house for the wedding at 3:40...At first I was nervous that we would be late , and then I realized the ridiculousness of my nervousness! The wedding didn't end up starting until 5:15!! No one waiting for the wedding to start acted as if the waiting were anything out of the ordinary. When it did start, it was quite an event, with an entire sermon embedded in the ceremony! The reception consisted of dinner and cake (no dancing :/ because here, it is very embedded in the culture that Christians don't dance) Even with the simplicity of the reception, we didn't end up getting home until around 10pm!! 

Time definitely is not in any way the focus here, which takes some getting used to, but it is also teaching me the beauty of not really needing to run life by the hands of a clock :)