Diving into the Dominican Republic: A fun week of cultural immersion

A+tropical+paradise

Kiera Pagano

A tropical paradise

For the final week of summer, my family and I decided to go on vacation for a week to the Memories resort in the Dominican Republic.

The Dominican Republic is a Spanish-speaking country, but since many of the resort guests are English speakers from America, most of the staff speaks both languages fluently. I had a conversation with our waiter at a restaurant about learning to speak English, and he told me he had only been learning the language for one year. His English was better than my Spanish, and I have been learning it for three years longer than he has!

The currency of the Dominican Republic is the Dominican Peso, but the resort accepted both pesos and US dollars. The staff accepts dollars because the Dominican peso is equal to about two cents in US currency, so tipping waiters in dollars rather than Dominican pesos gives them more money.

The Memories resort has the largest water park in the Dominican Republic, but sadly it is not on the beach. However, the resort next door to Memories, called the Royalton resort, is located on the beach. The two resorts made a deal together so that guests from both vacation spots could fully enjoy their stay– guests from Royalton were allowed to travel to Memories to use the water park, and, in return, guests from Memories are granted access to the Royalton’s beach.

Although the only languages spoken by the staff are usually English and Spanish, the resort was international, and I overheard many of the guests speaking other languages as well. I overheard people speaking in Russian, Portuguese, German, French, Albanian, Chinese, Italian and still more. These languages were spoken privately to family members and friends, not to the staff themselves. However, the resort still makes their best effort to have as many languages as possible accessible to the guests. Restaurant menus in the resort contained the same menu translated in English, Spanish, Italian, French, German and Russian so more guests can know information about the food they want to order. To actually order the food, however, you must be able to order in either English or Spanish.

Overall, the resort was a wonderful experience with a diverse culture and a friendly, optimistic staff. My family and I would definitely like to go back to Memories resort again!

0.00 avg. rating (0% score) - 0 votes