This week The Scene International joins Arts & Sciences junior Emily Ruskamp, who is studying abroad in the Dominican Republic.

Two weeks ago we spent 10 days living in the rural community (campo) of Majagual.

We were there to build an aqueduct with the community because prior to two weeks ago the community had to walk a couple kilometers to get water. Now my family there has a faucet right outside their house and a running, stand-up shower.

For the first few days I showered with a five-gallon bucket and a small scoop to dump water on myself, which is how they’ve always done. When my dad, Teo, showed me the line he had built to the shower, he was so happy and so proud of it, and my three little brothers were just screaming with excitement as Teo would spray them with their new hose.

Each of us students lived with a different family (a few people were in pairs). My Dominican parents are Tania and Teo, and I have three brothers, Manuel, 8, Noni, 6, and Ariel, 4. For the first few days Ariel just stared at me bashfully from behind Tania’s legs, but by the end, he was attempting to play Dominoes and Casino (a popular card game) with me.

Each day when we students would gather for meals we would talk about how our families were, and each day I would tell them how amazing everyone was, but Ariel still wouldn’t talk to me. He finally talked to me about four days before we left, and the night before we left he said my name for the first time. It was just after I had given them a picture of my family and he walked through the door with a photo from a magazine that he found somewhere. He held it up to me and said, “Mira, Emilia!” and preceeded to tell me that one of the women in the picture was Tania and the other was me. That moment was — Indescribable, really.

There were many moments like this. I became especially close with Teo, who would walk me to dinner every day and tell me about all the different fruits and foods growing in the area.

He is a cacao farmer, and one morning he brought me to work with him, which is a big deal because most of the men in the community were even hesitant about letting us girls help dig the trench for the aqueduct tube. But he let me go with him and he taught me how he cuts down the pods and let me help. It was a great morning, just Teo and me walking around under the shade of the cacao and cocoa trees, two of my brothers and a friend playing nearby.