Question Number 3

Do you have electricity and running water? Is the water safe to drink?

The easy answer to that is: Sometimes, yes, and no.

Well, electricity in the DR is an interesting question. Sometimes it goes off for an entire afternoon, or in the evening, or overnight. It really varies, and especially when it is hurricane season our electricity is less consistent. The worst part is when it is so hot in the afternoons with the sun beating off of the tin roof without a fan when there is no electricity. Generally we just grin and bear it, drink lots of water, and continue on with the day...although all we want to do is lie around and sleep.

Yes we always have running water. We have a thing called a Tinako (whoa, don't know how to spell it but that's how you say it!) on top of our landlord's house that makes flows with gravity down to our house...as long as our power isn't out for a long time we'll have plenty of water. Generally our water runs with a pump (when there's electricity).

No! The water is not safe to drink! We buy 5 gallon bottles of water for our house (and that's what we have at school to drink) and we have a pump, so that's how we get our water for drinking. I, personally, use the tap water to brush my teeth, but many others don't. And, knock on wood, I haven't gotten any parasites yet! :)