Tell It Only To Your Best Friends!

Honeymoon Part 1

2011-07-01T09:21:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

So J.P. and I got married last Saturday, and had the best wedding ever (in my un-biased opinion). We had a really nice ceremony at St. Mary's, a delicious dinner at my mom's house, a surprise dance routine, followed by dancing to my brother's band. The best.

We hung out for a couple of days after the wedding in Michigan, and on Tuesday night we left for Scotland by way of London. At the airport we told the people at the counter we were on our honeymoon, and they bumped us up to the most amazing first class seats ever. It was an overnight flight that had a three course dinner, seats that reclined to 180 degrees, and breakfast. Again, the best. JP and I could barely sleep we were so excited about the plane ride.

When we got into London we went into this weird "Yotel" in the airport, which was basically a ship cabin, to use the wireless and figure out how to get to our hotel. It turns out our hotel was on the opposite side of London. It was so far that it wasn't on any of our London maps in the guidebook. We took the subway up and got off at the stop the hotel's website described as being a "10 minute walk from the hotel". An hour later we were still dragging our suitcases around the neighborhood completely lost. Finally we found a bus map which was close enough that it had the streets we needed, and we schlepped our way up to the hotel. At this point we were totally exhausted, and as soon as we got into the room we fell asleep for 3 hours.

When we woke up we took the subway over to Islington, where Lucy used to live, and we happened to walk by her old apartment. We also had a beer in a pub I had been to before. Basically we went to all of the places in London I had already seen, but they were just as nice the second time around.

The next morning we took a train into Edinburgh from King's Cross Station. Obviously, being JP and I, we were really excited because we wanted to take pictures of us running through Platform 9 3/4 (from Harry Potter- if you don't know that I am surprised you read my blog). Unfortunately there was "construction", although we suspected the construction was a clever rouse to keep idiots from running into the walls of the platform. Apparently there is a fake platform outside, and JP took a picture of a random fellow-idiot running into the platform. On the way back we will be getting pictures of our own. Unfortunately King's Cross doesn't provide owls; I guess it's a BYOO type of tourist attraction.

When we got into Edinburgh we were amazed. London is nice, but Edinburgh is amazing. It is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen. We wandered around for a long time and ate steak pie and fish and chips. We had specifically booked a hotel near the bus station after the ordeal in London, and ended up staying in a super nice place right in the middle of town. We went on a ghost walk tour, which takes you into underground vaults and a graveyard, and that was shockingly fun (pun). This morning we wandered around again and had a Scottish breakfast- haggis included, and then got on the train again and came to Pitlochry, where we will be staying for the next 4 days. Our tour starts here. We were on the train and I looked out the window and elbowed JP to look at the beautiful scenery and buildings and over the speaker the conductor said, "We are now stopping in Pitlochry." Best. It is gorgeous. I will take lots of photos and upload them when I can. Anyway, this evening our tour starts and tomorrow we will do our first day on the tandem. Wish us luck!

Morning Internet Cruise and Engaged Encounter

2011-05-03T08:14:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

As the title suggests I am doing my morning internet cruise, and I realized that I have severely neglected my blog, depriving readers of my great writing talent. Okay, maybe that's a little much, but I thought I should update you all on my goings-on.

Lately I have been working, tutoring, exercising, and wedding planning. Work is going really well, we have seven weeks left of school (but who's counting?), and the kids are little Spanish-speaking parrots of yours truly. Scary. I have been tutoring a few days a week, which is awesome, and I joined a triathlon team with Colleen, J.P's friend from work. I have been doing workouts with them a couple times a week. The workouts are great, but ridiculously early in the morning. For example there is a swim tomorrow morning at 5:15, but it is almost a half-hour away, so I will be up dark and early at 4:30. It's fun though, and I have met a lot of people already through the team.

We are ramping up again with the wedding planning, and getting the last details worked out. It is now less than 8 weeks away! I can't wait to see everyone, and to marry J.P! We are super excited about our honeymoon as well. We are going on a tandem bike tour of Scotland, which means that J.P. is going to pedal me around Scotland. I am going to encourage him to think of me as a drag suit a la Michael Phelps. Isn't that romantic? Not to worry, I will help with the pedaling on the downhills.

Last weekend J.P. and I went to our "Catholic Engaged Encounter" weekend about 45 minutes away. We stayed in dorms (separated male/female obviously), and went to presentations during the day. I had kind of low expectations going in, and I wasn't sure how much time we were going to spend together and how much time we were going to spend making small talk with the people in our dorms, but I was pleasantly surprised that it was a really great weekend. We ended up staying in "cubicles" so it was not the bunk-bed situation I was picturing, and the presentations were around 15 minutes of listening to the presenter couple talk about their marriage, and then we had 20 minutes to write about what we thought about the topic, and then 20 minutes to discuss it together. It ended up being much more stimulating and interesting than I thought.

We got to hear a lot about the presenter couples' marriages, which was interesting because I am nosy, and helpful because they gave really specific examples of problems they had faced and how they worked through them. In preparing to get married I have found it very difficult to get any real information from married couples about the type of "hard work" and "communication" we will need to be successful, so I really appreciated the specificity of the presentations. One couple had been married for 48 years, and they seemed extremely happy together, but some of their stories were about years at a time when they thought there was no way their marriage would work. The emphasis of the weekend was that the goal of marriage is unity, and not happiness, which I had never heard put that way before. J.P. and I got a chance to talk about a lot of our plans for the future, and how much we love each other for 3 days, which, of course, we enjoyed.

The biggest drawback to the weekend was sleep deprivation. Friday night we went into the dorms at 11, and were given a very generous hour to settle in to sleep. By given an hour I mean the overhead lights were left on for an hour. I don't know about you all, but when I am living out of a suitcase and staying in a cubicle "settling in" takes me all of about 30 seconds. Luckily I brought my science fiction book to pass the time. The next day the overhead lights were turned on a 6:10, giving up an hour and twenty minutes to get ready for the day... again, excessive. We got to sleep that night around midnight again, and got up at 6:45. Worst. I need my beauty sleep, don't ya know.

Anyway, I can't wait to come home and see everyone! Miss you guys!

Trivia, Wedding Planning, and a Jewelry Party (This post was written 2/4 and never published)

2011-05-03T07:37:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody,

So J.P. and I have been hitting the greater Calabasas trivia circuit pretty hard in the last few weeks, and it turns out that we are not too bad at trivia (we aren't too good either, but I don't see how that is relevant). In our most recent trivia game we won a pitcher of beer, which we were pretty excited about, for least incorrectly guessing the length of a balance beam. I would have phoned a friend (Lauren, obviously) if that were allowed but it isn't. We have also been playing Trivial Pursuit and a new game called BezzerWizzer at home to hone our skills. I'm not sure that it is really working, but they are fun either way. We spent all of last weekend circled around our dining room table with Becky and Mike playing those two games. It was awesome.

We realized after our first trivia game that we competed against each other in the 6th grade quiz bowl finals. Guess who won? That's right, I did! Oh wait, were you all thinking J.P? Well for once he did not beat me in trivia, and my team went to another school to compete in a quiz bowl tournament (where we were promptly beat out of the bracket, but again, I don't see how that's relevant).

In terms of wedding planning we are getting down to the detail section of it all which, shockingly, I am enjoying. I was pretty sure I would hate it, but I forgot that I love crafts, so the more of it I can do myself (and when I say myself I mean with J.P. and Becky) the more I will like it I think.

Also, my friend Sarah from the D.R. has started selling jewelry. Many of you may remember her from my post, "Guess who's pregnant?" (Sorry about that one, Mary Lou) She has a website with some good stuff, so check it out. She and her husband Sean moved back to the states when J.P. and I did because in January of last year they realized that Sarah was pregnant. That pregnancy resulted in a really cute baby named Sullivan, and they are living in northern Florida now. See Sullivan below:

What a cheap trick showing you a cute baby to get you to go to her website and buy jewelry.

Go to her website and buy jewelry.

In case you missed all those hyperlinks above, her website it www.liasophia.com/sarahhadley

Thanksgiving Break

2010-11-18T13:31:00.000-08:00

Hey All,

Tonight, after a 3.5 hour credential-related class, I will be flying to Michigan! I am so excited about Thanksgiving I could just throw-up in anticipation. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, and as many of you know we couldn't make it back last year because the Spaniards who came to the Dominican Republic didn't sit down with the Native Americans and share their harvest, they just killed them all off with weapons and disease. What I'm trying to say is that we didn't have Thanksgiving break last year. Anyway, not only do I have it this year but I have A WHOLE WEEK OFF! And I accidentally extended this vacation by booking my ticket at 1:10am on Friday morning, thinking that it was Saturday morning. So I will be missing school tomorrow, and watching my sister dive in her State meet in Holland instead. I already have everything packed and ready to go. Just to make things that much better, Monica now lives in Ann Arbor, AND Betsy will be home from Africa the day after I get there! I am bursting with excitement. Considering, however, that my body has been intolerant to the California cold I think I will probably be in for a rude awakening getting of the plane in Michigan. The body is really a traitorous thing. You think that your years of Michigan winters would somehow make you permanently impervious to baby-cold, and then you miss one winter and you are worse off than ever. I mean, come on.

ANYWAY, I will see you all VERY SOON!

Yosemite

2010-10-24T10:54:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

So I spent the last week in Yosemite with 143 8th graders chaperoning a field trip. It was amazing! We stayed in tent cabins (with heat) and hiked around each day with an instructor from the Yosemite Institute. They do students tours and teach the kids all about the park. It was ridiculous. I couldn't believe I was at work. The kids were perfectly behaved, and I got to piggyback on their tour and see a lot of the park. We went on a hike up to Glacier Point where we could see the whole valley, we went into some caves where it was completely dark and the person in front of you had to tell you how to get through, we saw some rocks where the American Indians ground up acorns with grinding holes that had been used for 500 years, and we counted macro-invertebrates in the river to calculate the water quality. I think I might have enjoyed the instruction more than the kids. It was awesome. It is a beautiful place. Now I am getting organized for next week, and setting things up until Thanksgiving. Back to the school, BTSA, wedding planning for me!

Love and miss you all!

Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God

2010-10-13T13:59:00.000-07:00

JP and I are going to our first meeting with the priest at the church we go to out here. He's super nice, but still I am a little nervous. I wonder if people of other faiths are a little afraid of their leaders? Somehow I doubt it...

Wedding Planning (Part 1 of Probably Many)

2010-10-12T22:20:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

So since J.P. and I got engaged last month we have started baby-stepping our wedding planning. So far we are thinking that we will have the wedding ceremony at St. Mary's in Chelsea, with the reception at my mom's house. It should be a pretty fun and low-key affair, hopefully with tacos and music. We have been scheming about how to pay for it and what to do, and so far things have been going reasonably smoothly. I have about 85 (see: 1) excel spreadsheets with a million (see: 3) tabs each of all of the different things to keep track of. Yuck. I am turning into an excel monster. I have my budget on there too and I am literally inputting every dollar I make or spend. It is turning me into a major miser, but I feel very organized. I feel like there are a lot of decisions to be made right now with the wedding and life in general, and they are all hard to make because we have incomplete information. It drives me crazy. For example, we have no idea what our jobs will have in store for us next year so we can't even plan whether or not we will be living here. If we do stay here we can't plan where to live for the same reasons, and if we don't then there is no plan at all. I don't think this bothers JP, but it drives me crazy. It makes planning the wedding difficult for unexpected reasons as well. Like, if we continue to live in this house should we even register for anything, since we won't need any of it yet? Or, if we both have good jobs should we move into a smaller, crappier place for twice as much money so that we can live alone (probably not, especially considering that Mike and Becky are the best). I feel a little bit like I'm spinning my wheels with all of this, and I just need to be more relaxed and see what happens... easier said than done.

On a non-rampaging note, both JP and I love our jobs. I have great kids in my classes, and they are catching on really quickly. The class has been entirely in Spanish so far, and the kids are doing really well with it in general, although grammar gets tricky that way. I have been listening to Harry Potter on tape (well, CD, do you guys still say on tape? It feels weird to say anything else), and reading Anna Karenina, both of which are excellent. That Harry Potter on tape (there it is again) is excellent is no surprise because I have listened to it at least 3 times already, but I was a little intimidated by Anna Karenina and am pleasantly surprised by how readable it is.

In other news I am chaperoning an 8th grade field trip to Yosemite next week which is 6 days long, and should be awesome! I can't wait! I was told that I am in a "hiking group", and I don't really know what was meant by that but I like the sound of it. Anyway, I miss you guys!

Engagement

2010-09-09T19:45:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

So as you have heard from facebook JP and I are engaged! We are so excited, and have already started trying to plan. I wish we could have our wedding in a month, but I think we have to wait at least 6 for the Catholic church (bummer). We are thinking June, so hopefully the church will be able to do it. We will be getting married in Michigan, most likely in Ann Arbor.

Here is how it happened:

Last Wednesday (September 1st) was JP and my 4 year anniversary of dating. To celebrate we went for a hike on a trail called Backbone Trail. It's in the Santa Monica mountains and is a really beautiful hike. As we were walking along we stopped near the top and JP just got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. I was shocked. Honestly, I thought that when he proposed I would see it coming from a mile away, but I had no idea. Monica made the ring, and it is beautiful. The stone is peridot. It is beautiful. I love it.

Here is a picture of JP and I once we remembered that we should take pictures to share:

Here is a picture of JP telling his mom the good news:

Basically, I couldn't be happier. I am really excited about the wedding too. It is still in the most infant of infant stages, but we are thinking of a backyard BBQ type reception. Ah! So exciting!

California Here We... Are

2010-08-28T13:44:00.000-07:00

Hey All,

As most of you probably already know I moved out to California in July. I looked for jobs for a few weeks, and had to go for a quick trip back to the D.R. to get my stuff, and now I am working at a middle school here in Calabasas, and as a tutor. I am starting to get ready for the school year; setting up my classroom and get my lessons in order. JP and I are living with his former roommates Becky and Mike, which is awesome. I was really lucky to get this job at the school, and I am really excited to start teaching again. The school seems great, and I am going to have a bunch of cool technology for my class. Anyway, I just wanted to update you all. I will start posting again regularly soon.

Miss you all!

My Two Birthdays

2010-06-25T06:34:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

So I got home on Tuesday night, and every minute since then has been running around and having an inordinate amount of fun. On Wednesday I woke up early to hang out with my mom before she went to work, then hung out with my sister before she went to pole vault camp. When she left it was still only 7:30 or 8, and while I am a very annoying older sister, I figured that this was still too early to wake up my brother. So I toodled around the house for awhile and drank copious amounts of coffee, and then finally I took a shower, woke my brother up and told him I would be back in an hour and that we were going to Ann Arbor, and went out to the car with the wrong keys. I came back into the house 3 more times and came back out with the wrong keys, and all the while my neighbors across the street were sitting on their porch watching this happen. Having all Toyotas can be a little confusing.

Anyway, I woke my brother up for the second time, got him to tell me where the keys were, and went to the bank. I decided that my brother and cousin probably weren't interested in getting up, so I went to Ann Arbor for awhile by myself, and came home. All of this was accomplished by about 11:15, so I came home. My mom came back at around 12:00, and was very confused by the productivity of my day so far. She and I went back into Ann Arbor for awhile, and then back to the bank so that I could open a new savings account, and Monica arrived in Chelsea. We went out to dinner with my mom, dad, brother, cousin, and sister at Las Fuentes. Delicious. Monica, Lucy, Natalie and I then proceeded to the Brown Jug in Ann Arbor (3 times in one day) and had a few drinks.

Yesterday Monica and I woke up, had breakfast, and went shopping in Ann Arbor. I bought a ridiculous amount of stuff for ridiculously little, which was amazing. We came back to Chelsea, ran with my mom, and then went out to the Chelsea bars with Lucy, BETSY (This one from Africa), Natalie, and Jordan Silverman. So much fun. It has been SO good to see everyone, I can hardly stand it. All I wish is that we had about 6 weeks to talk to each other instead of 6 hours. I missed everyone and it was amazing to have them all here for my birthday. Best birthday present ever.

God Bless America (ATL I'm the Mayor)

2010-06-25T06:32:00.000-07:00

Say what you will about the United States, ladies and gentleman, but one thing about which there can be no debate is we really have a lot of cool stuff to buy. In the Santo Domingo airport I had a choice between bag after bag of mixed nuts for $5 (when the price is in dollars you know you’re in trouble) or a really bad sandwich for $7. I chose the sandwich. Big mistake. Conversely, in the Atlanta airport there is every kind of food a person could want (sadly I did not get the terminal with Qdoba, but I know it’s here somewhere, calling me). There is a Ben & Jerry’s here. A BEN & JERRY’S! It took every bit of willpower I possess to keep walking past those $7 ice cream sundaes. I had already shoved a week’s worth of Chinese food down my gullet and I felt like the ice cream would be overkill. I think I might be growing up. I doubt it though. There is also a nearly full sized book store in this terminal. I resisted that one too because if I buy a book I’ll never finish Huckleberry Finn. Speaking of which, has anyone read these Girl with the Dragon Tattoo books? Are they worth all the hype? How about that Edgar Sawtelle book? As sad as the rest in the Oprah Book Club? Fill me in, I’m out of the loop. One more thing, in the bathroom there was not only toilet paper (that you can flush by the way), and not only did the toilets flush on their own, and not only did the sinks turn on by themselves, but the soap dispensers are automatic too! What a country! (They are also filled with soap by the way, an added novelty.) Fellow Americans, we’ve got it good here.

Last Night in Santo Domingo

2010-06-21T20:39:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

So tonight is officially my last night in Santo Domingo of the 2009-2010 school year. It really has gone by fast. School has been wrapping up for a couple of weeks now, and I just finished my final checklist (and most importantly got my final pay check), so I am ready for summer! I fly home tomorrow, and while I am really excited to come home I am also really going to miss my friends here. We went out to dinner together tonight to say goodbye (although like true travelers no one actually said those words) to this restaurant called El Agave on Lope de Vega. Delicious Mexican food. They have mole enchiladas that are amazing. Anyway (does anyone other than me notice how much I talk about food?), throughout dinner all I could think about was when I would see everyone again. Hopefully at the very least we can videochat. Especially the Hadleys' (I hope you are reading this) so that I can see Baby Hadley when he is born. It has been a really eventful and great year, and I feel really lucky that I have had this experience. I have met some really great people and had some good adventures, and better still, I have a whole second year to enjoy. Thank you to everyone who made this year amazing. Sorry for the clip show, but here are some highlights:

- First day in the old apartment feeling like I was living in a palace
-Las Terrenas the first weekend
- Going to the cave bar with Doug and Stacy before we really knew them
-Moving to our apartment in Zona Colonial
-Sosua
- Constanza with Doug and Stacy for Doug and JP's birthdays
- Meeting Elizabeth and Rebecca and immediately ruining their iron (sorry guys)
- Thanksgiving at the Hadleys'
- Baseball game
- Trip out west with Hadleys' (and subsequently finding out Sarah was/is pregnant)
- JP's race in the city that he WON and Carnival in La Vega on the same day (deciding to stay another year based on that day basically)
- Portuguese classes and going to the Saturday night movies
-Goodbye weekend in Boca Chica for JP
- Nearly living at Doug and Stacy's (with a guest appearance at the Hadleys') for awhile after JP left
-Puerto Plata with everyone
- Ms. De la Cruz's bachelorette party/wedding
- Moving in with Brigitte

These are only a handful of the things I want to remember from this year. I will miss you all very much next year, and I really hope we keep in touch. Thanks for an amazing year!

Sarah's Baby Shower

2010-05-23T19:22:00.000-07:00

Last night after the wedding Stacy stayed over. In the morning we ate breakfast, did a little decorating, and then she went home to get the cake and get ready for Sarah's baby shower at 3. I ran to the store to get water, prepped the food, and then she came back and finished decorating while I finished the cooking and got ready for people to arrive. She did an amazing job on the decorations (see facebook). Brigitte, Sarah and Becky got here around 3, and Rebecca shortly after. We had guacamole, sushi, and cake, which was an amazing combination for taste and indigestion. We played a couple of games, one where you say whether it means you are having a boy or a girl for old wives tales, and another where you had to name the nursery rhyme. Sarah won the latter which I thought was a good sign. Also, we decorated onesies for the baby, which can also be seen on facebook. It was a really good shower, and I think everyone had a good time. I was just really happy to have everyone over and to do something for Sarah.

In other news, I am coming home in less than one month! I will see all of you so soon!

Ms. De la Cruz's Wedding

2010-05-22T23:11:00.000-07:00

Well, Ms. Bazzi now. Stacy and I went as dates, can you say that? The wedding was gorgeous, Ms. De la Cruz looked beautiful, and everything was totally over the top. A bunch of my students were at the ceremony to see her dress, and they were so cute (and much better behaved than in class I might add). The wedding was a full mass (which I took to mean that I didn't have to go tomorrow morning), and then Stacy and I came back to my apartment to drop some things off and pick up my camera. We got to the reception, went through the receiving line, and then sat down with some teachers from school. I saw Alex (who I lived with at the beginning of the year) and her boyfriend Poli, which was nice, and we ate a bunch of delicious food. I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a little while that was awkward, but after a couple of cocktails everyone was on the dance floor. Stacy and I sat out a few more songs than we would have liked because they were merengue (a.k.a. couples only dancing), but after awhile they brought out some marti gras-esque party favors and played some drumline music and we went out and danced around. We had some champagne and wine and chocolate-fountain-dipped-fruit and mini-muffins. The party favors were these really beautiful silver ring boxes. The problem was that there was only one for every two people. Stacy and I had each secured one anyway when someone took Stacy's. She scoured the room for a spare and eventually one of the other couples left and she commandeered theirs before their seats had cooled. On the way out we also stole some flowers. Actually a lot of flowers. Sorry Ms. De la Cruz/Bazzi/Lourdes. The other kids were doing it! Good time. I also died laughing several times at Stacy blowing into her marti gras noise maker. I have a video of it. It sounds strikingly similar to a duck caller that you use for hunting except for she was wearing a marti gras mask, which hunters do not usually do.

Lifestyles Tropical Beach Resort

2010-05-19T18:04:00.000-07:00

This weekend we went to a resort called Lifestyles, which sounds like it is some super weird alternative resort, but actually it was a pretty typical one from what I have seen here. There was a little more MTV Spring Break type music and volleyball at the pool, and there was a three-way kiss spotted, but from where we sat it otherwise seemed like a pretty relaxed resort. Because we booked through this travel agency called Cheap Caribbean we got to use the VIP beach, where they brought food and drinks out to you on giant beds on the beach, which was pretty amazing. They also served lobster one night at the buffet which was out of the ordinary. The first night there Rebecca, Doug, Stacy and I were determined to stay out late enough to go to the electronic dance party, which we did, but when we got there it turned out to be a standard club, except the people were much drunker than normal on the free drinks, and there were dancers on little stages wearing outfits that left little to the imagination (i.e. rhinestone thongs). When I relay these scenes they seem much more shocking than they actually were, and I think this may be because I am now seeing this through my Aunt Kris' eyes (thanks for reading Aunt Kris, sorry about the horrifying images). The next day we ate and lounged around on the beach, and went to bed early. In the morning Stacy and I played tennis for roughly 4 minutes, at which time a little boy who was working at the tennis courts said "Finished." to Stacy. It took us a few seconds to figure out what he was saying, and then figure out what he meant, but what he meant was "Get off the court, there are people with reservations." We did as we were told. I went to the pool for awhile and then ate a last minute ice cream, and then we headed back to the city with Sean and Sarah, who graciously let us hitchhike back with them in their rental car.

This week has been pretty busy, the kids have exams so we have been getting ready for that and tutoring has been busy too for the same reasons. I have been going to the gym, which I am going to continue. This Saturday is Ms. De la Cruz's wedding, and this Sunday we are throwing Sarah a baby shower, so things should stay busy. I miss you guys and can't wait to see you all this summer!

Ms. De la Cruz's Bachelorette Party

2010-05-19T17:52:00.000-07:00

I wrote this blog last Sunday night when I got back from this party, pretend you are reading it then.

I just got home from Ms. De la Cruz’s Bachelorette Party. I was really apprehensive about going because I always feel like kind of a weird outsider, and I didn’t know what to wear or what time to show up, but I think I did okay on both fronts. I came roughly an hour and a half late (a safe bet here), and wore my purple wrap dress with the highest heels I own (also a fairly safe bet), I ended up sitting with some teachers from school and possibly making some friends with them. It was really fun. We played a few games which I think Ms. De la Cruz was horrified to play in front of her mother, one was writing 69 on the wall with a marker between your knees, another was asking Ms. De la Cruz questions which she had to answer blindfolded giving a number. The numbers were taped all over her body and she couldn’t see which one was which. It was pretty funny. I think she was reasonably embarrassed about it but I guess that is kind of the point of a bachelorette party. All of the guests had names which were from mildly to incredibly inappropriate, ranging from “Besos” to “Vagina”. I think those of you who don’t speak Spanish can probably figure those two out. Anyway, it was a really good time and I am really glad I went.

Last Day of Moping

2010-05-03T18:50:00.000-07:00

JP officially has been gone 2 weeks, and I have been moping around a lot since he left. I haven't really felt like doing much, and have tried to use every opportunity to sit around my apartment by myself. My friends have very graciously taken me in on many occasions for dinner and to hang out, and so kept me from becoming too reclusive. Sarah asked me when a reasonable deadline would be for me to be done moping around, and I told her today, so I guess this is it. I am not taking my Portuguese class anymore, so when my tutoring finished early today I didn't quite know what to do with myself. I came home, read Brave New World, and made dinner. It was a very good last day of moping, but I think tomorrow I am going to very proactively seek out things to do after school (prepare yourselves, friends). I am going to see JP in June though, from the 3rd to the 6th, woot woot! And I will be home in the US on the evening of June 22nd, just in time for my birthday. If anyone is interested in doing something on June 23rd, let me know. Anyway, love you guys, thought I should let you know that I was alive and coming out of hibernation.

Apartment Voyeurism and Xiomara Fortuna

2010-04-25T06:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Rebecca, Stacy and I wandered around Gasque (a neighborhood near mine which is much more residential) looking for apartments for next year. We saw a wide range, from am ultramodern one that is just being built with a really nice balcony, to a dark one with furniture that your grandma would pick out if your grandma had horrific taste (mine doesn't). The latter apartment was in a really nice new building, but after seeing the furnishings Stacy said, "I think this place is haunted." We also went into one where the maids had a separate elevator, and there was a private elevator that opened right into the apartment. It had a huge ocean view and was enormous. It was possibly the nicest apartment I have ever set foot in, but apparently they knew that because the rent was $3000 a month. Ah, well. A girl can dream.
After we had seen a number of apartments we went back to Rebecca's and Doug joined us. We ordered a pizza, and then attempted to go to a folk dance. We ended up in line at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, and it turned out to be a concert of this lady called Xiomara Fortuna. We decided not to go, but then a guy came running after us and "invited us", meaning that we could go in for free. I think they understood our hesitation to enter as that we couldn't afford the tickets. Anyway, it seemed more awkward to refuse than to just go in so we went in.
It was the weirdest concert I have ever seen. I feel like I was missing something because the audience was going wild. Maybe this woman is a really famous Dominican icon or something, but I have to tell you all I didn't get it. She was wearing this extravagant constume and no shoes, and none of her songs were any good. It was all very strange and all 4 of us were counting down the songs to the end (there were 16). We didn't want to leave early and be ungrateful that they had let us come in, so we waited until the very end at which point we escaped into a cab and went home. Today I am going to go to mass if I can get my lazy self out of my apartment, and then to the beach.

Crackberry

2010-04-21T03:58:00.001-07:00

So I have given up the idea of getting an IPhone in favor of getting the inferior and far less expensive Blackberry. I haven't been able to track one down yet, but apparently someone's cousin brings them back from the states and sells them cheap (legit). I just found out this morning though that you can tether them to your computer and they provide internet which is pretty sweet. Has anyone actually done this? Does it work?

Fighting the Good Fight

2010-04-20T17:24:00.000-07:00

Not to be a drama queen, but I really miss JP around here already. The hardest part is that our apartment seems half empty (not half full). I'm sure I'll get used to the emptiness soon, but I won't get used to JP not being around. Worst.

Today after school I went grocery shopping, went to the bank, was told by our landlord's assistant that I could move into my new apartment and promptly told her I would rather move in with Brigitte, and then went over to Brigitte and Bastien's for the Swiss version of fondue. I ate roughly 3 times my stomach's normal capacity and drank my body weight in white wine (not necessarily a health night), and had a great time. It turns out the Swiss eat something akin to fondue as campfire food, while we Americans only eat things that come manufactured in factories and that we can put on the end of a stick, so uncivilized we are. The meal was a delicious salad, pickled beets (which I like for the first time in my life), boiled potatoes, and some delicious Swiss cheese that is baked and then eaten with the potatoes. I don't know about you guys, but I have never had anything close to that within a ten-mile radius of a campfire.

Anyway, the day was good, although I am still moping about a little, and I am going to poke around online, read Ender's Game, and then go to sleep. Overall a successful second day living alone in Santo Domingo.

Weekend in Boca Chica and Japer Leaves Tomorrow

2010-04-18T18:51:00.000-07:00

We decided to go to a city about 45 minutes outside Santo Domingo called Boca Chica to go to an all-inclusive resort for a day. We wanted to do something all together because JP is leaving tomorrow morning. We booked the hotel through this Canadian travel site called Sunwing.com. Please, for the love of all that is holy, do not use this website. We all got confirmation emails, and then a phone call and another email saying that we had to fill out some form. The form was asking us to send them all of our credit card information as well as two forms of government ID copied front and back over email. We, obviously, did not do this. When we got to the hotel our reservations had been cancelled. After 3 hours they eventually sent a representative and we finally got into the hotel system, except Brigitte had to pay the full hotel price because she did not have her credit card (it was stolen). Nice. Once all of that was worked out we waited an additional 2.5 hours to get our room keys. It was literally the worst service I have ever gotten. The hotel was called Oasis Hamaca, in case you want to put that on your list of places that you should be wary of going. The hotel itself, actually, was great. The food was good, it was huge, there were a bunch of things to do, just the service was a bummer.

Anyway, the good thing was that all 10 of us (Matt, Becky, Sarah, Sean, Doug, Stacy, Brigitte, Bastien, JP, and I) were there together for the night. We had some drinks and dinner at a Mexican restaurant there, hung out on the beach in some strange and probably dangerous beach hammock/swings, looked around for an illusive karaoke and then went to bed. This morning JP and I went out in one of their kayaks to a little mangrove island, swam, tried to play tennis without shoes and got kicked out of the tennis courts, played miniature golf, and over-ate. Basically we had a full-scale all-inclusive resort experience. We are home now and JP is packed and ready to go. Worst. I think I'll try to sabotage his departure somehow. I have to go to dream up a solution to this problem.

Love you guys.

Keeping Up With The Jones'

2010-04-14T19:32:00.000-07:00

I make it a big priority in life to not buy the newest, coolest thing just because it is the newest, coolest thing. I try to use things until they wear out, and buy things that are good values.

That being said, I want an IPhone.

I don't just want one, I want one bad. Ask J.P, I have been searching the internet for days getting all the specs about IPhones and other ridiculously overpriced electronics. I think the idea of staying here has set into my brain and this is my weird way of nesting. It would be very expensive to have one, but I could call home on Skype from anywhere, and I would always have a little piece of internet in my pocket. Blogging community, what's a girl to do?

Cafe da manhã

2010-04-04T18:14:00.000-07:00

Morning coffee is how you say "breakfast" in Brazil. Those people have got things really figured out down there. I am going to go to sleep tonight thinking about my very own cafe da manhã for tomorrow.

Coffeecoffeecoffee

2010-04-04T10:10:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter Everyone!

This morning marks the end of Lent, during which I gave up coffee. As many of you know, I like my coffee. As a teacher coffee is as essential to productivity as books and whiteboard markers. Without it I have to say I was not my best. Substance abuse? I think so. Anyway, this morning I had my first cup and savored it lovingly. I was surprisingly uncaffeinated afterwards (disappointing). JP and I went to mass, which was very brief and delightfully unorganized (ex: "Okay, everyone who wants to take communion come forward"). Are you proud Mom that we went to church? Oh, who am I kidding, you don't read my blog (sigh of self-pity). After mass JP and I went to this diner called La Cafetera where we go often for coffee and juice. I had not yet experienced their cappuccinos, so that was the first order of business. Let me just tell you, Cafetera cappuccinos are a hell of a drug. After I drank it I was shaking and having daydreams about running several miles outside. For those of you who know me this was almost an out of body experience. JP and I did brief grocery shopping and then came home, by which point I was literally high on caffeine. JP went to bike and I danced to my ipod and cleaned our entire apartment without pause in about 45 minutes. I love coffee. I feel a little like a crazy person, but at least this crazy person is living in a clean place. I hope you guys all had a great Easter morning, I miss everyone. Family, take some pictures today when you get together and post them on facebook and tag me in them. If you don't feel motivated to do that you should make yourself a cappuccino and then you will want to do that and then create a new social networking site afterwards. I promise.

Love you guys. Feliz Pasqua.

Oh sure, Oprah! I'd love to be on your show!

2010-03-31T11:12:00.000-07:00

Okay, so maybe that's a bit much. My friend Kerry and I have been doing a project with our students where they write pen pal letters back and forth to each other, and the Monroe News wrote a story about it! Sadly, my name is not mentioned in the story but know that I am the Ashton School of Santo Domingo teacher. Here's the link.

http://www.monroenews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100331/NEWS01/703319989

Back in Santo Domingo

2010-03-30T13:35:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

So we're back in Santo Domingo now, JP ended up feeling worse, not better, today so we decided to head back to the city and at least deal with boredom in our own apartment and not on a ranch in the middle of nowhere. We took a taxi back from the ranch because I thought the guy said that it was $1200 pesos, which is around 35 dollars, but actually he said $2200 which I realized only when we got here, worst. I am now feeling a little ill myself, which I can only hope are sympathy pains and not the onset of whatever JP has. More on that later...

Rancho Wendy

2010-03-29T14:05:00.000-07:00

JP and I are on a ranch right now in a city called Bonao. It's "rustic" which basically means that all of the buildings are constucted out of poured cement and little else. It's super cheap though which is nice. JP and I got the deluxe room ($20 per night) and it has air-conditioning (sometimes) and a tv and dvd player, which has been nice because there is little to do here after dark. We did play some games of pool last night though, and discovered that we have almost matching talents (or lack-thereof). We came here because we wanted to do some hikes up into the mountains, but JP came down with some mild food poisoning, so we are hoping to get started tomorrow. It is really beautiful up here, but unfortunately much hotter than we thought it would be. There are mountains all around but it isn't high up enough to mediate the temperature. There is a pool in the back yard though, so JP and I got in there this afternoon. Hopefully tomorrow we'll be able to hike up to the waterfall and swim and cool off. We might ride around with the owners a little later and check things out. It's a little awkward because we are the only guests here and it's kind of like staying in someone's house, but it's also nice for that reason. Also, the food has been delicious. Pretty good Semana Santa so far, not including the food poisoning.

Student and JP Trash Talking Each Other

2010-03-27T14:33:00.000-07:00

There is a kid at school (6th grade) who JP constantly trash talks. He played basketball with the kids a couple times and beat them, and then tormented them about it. This one kid keeps telling JP that he is friends with Shaq and Kobe Bryant and that they have taught him a few tricks and that as soon as he gets taller he will "win" JP. It's really funny. Yesterday JP was swimming after school in the school pool and the kid left him a note that said,

Mr. Severin,
Im' Better than you much Better twice Better triple Better

with hugs, (kid's name)
ps. Im better than you
ps. again: Happy Holy Weekend

This kid is my student so I guess I need to work a little with him on punctuation, and I guess he didn't get much out of our apostrophe unit, but the note was hilarious. Later when we were all in the library he and JP were showing each other pictures of different animals and saying it was each other's family photo album. He then showed Mr. Severin a picture on the computer in the library of a hideous monster and said he didn't know that Mr. Severin was famous. It was pretty funny.

Sunday Morning

2010-03-21T05:58:00.000-07:00

I have been waking up at 7 or 7:30 on the weekends lately. This is sort of annoying because I want to sleep in, but it has also been really nice because I am awake before everyone else in the city (it feels like), and I have some time in the morning to laze around and look things up on my computer. Today I tried to make reservations for JP and I for Spring Break. We are going to try to go to this place called Rancho Wendy up in the mountains. They have super cheap rooms and lots of hikes and stuff. It sounds awesome. Hopefully they aren't full.

JP heard back from Nokia on Friday. His start date is May 3rd, so he is going back to Michigan on April 19th. We bought his ticket yesterday. I am really happy and excited for him and really bummed for me. Brigitte, Bastien, and I looked at other apartments in the building yesterday. We are all thinking about moving in together. We found one but then found out it had been rented. We are also supposed to give 2 months notice before we move out, so I don't know if we are even going to be able to move out of our apartments without losing the deposit. Everything is very up in the air right now, JP says it's like we're in a pinball machine, and I think he's right. It will all settle down soon though hopefully. At least we have tentative Spring Break plans now, baby steps.

St. Patrick's Day

2010-03-17T18:20:00.000-07:00

Or should I say Just A Normal Wednesday In The Dominican Republic. Lame. I wore green to school today and was literally the only one. Bummer. I said happy St. Patrick's Day to the kids and they responded with things like, "Wow, is it St. Patrick's Day?" Clearly they have never visited Michigan State University. I was missing my East Lansing friends today. I remember walking to my car last year at 6:45 a.m. to teach and the bars had lines down the block. Those people knew what St. Patrick's Day was.

Anyway, rant aside things are going well here. We are trying to figure things out for next year which is a pretty slow process, and kind of stressful. The focus at the moment is here, Mexico, Ecuador or Brazil, in order of probability. What do you guys think?

El Cabito- Las Galeras

2010-03-01T13:14:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

This week I started tutoring a kid who is trying to take his completivo exam in order to pass 10th grade (he is now in 11th). On Friday after tutoring Stacy, Doug, JP and I got on the road to Las Galeras, a city where we have gone before in Samana. When I say got on the road what I mean is that I went to Stacy and Doug's to wait for them to get back from the rental place, then we went to the grocery store to get snacks and use the ATM, then we realized that our bank was not working, then we went to another store to visit their branch of our bank, then we realized there was a 2 hour line, then we tried calling the bank to no avail, then we took stock of the cash the 4 of us had, then we decided just to go anyway, then we got stuck in traffic, then 2 hours later we were out of the city and on our way.

We got to Las Galeras around 12:15, after having left school at 4:45. Worst. We stopped on the way for dinner in Samana, at a place called Mini Restaurant La Carpa, which was an RV serving burritos very cheaply among other things along the side of the main road. It was actually amazing and was right next to the water. When we got to Las Galeras we had to go down some windy roads and then up some very sharp hills to get to our hotel, El Cabito. The advise we were given by the owners of the hotel was, "Whatever you do, don't stop on the hill." When we got there we realized why they might have said that, it was treacherous. We basically collapsed into bed when we got there. Here is the cabin we stayed in:

We woke up to Doug talking to their cat on the balcony, calling her a baby actually, and Stacy and I went for a run/walk and the boys went on a run together too. We came back and ate a delicious breakfast, and also realized that one of the tires on the car was flat. JP fixed it, almost single-handedly, despite never having repaired a flat before. I must say that he did an amazing job. The people at the hotel were so nice, they took the flat tire into town and dropped it off at a repair place, and hired someone to deliver it to the house, so by the evening we had the original tire back and repaired. All of this cost roughly $8. It was pretty awesome for having a flat tire.

We didn't really do much the rest of the day. We read and hung out, and JP scared me half to death and all the way to rage with his swimming antics, which you can read about in his blog. Mary Lou, imagine triathlon nationals minus the rescue kayaks plus huge surf and cliffs and coral, awful. Luckily he survived. We had a really good dinner together and met a kid who is going to medical school here in Santo Domingo. We went to bed at 9:30, we are becoming old people, and woke up at around 7:30 to the dulcet tones of the cat mewing from her bathroom prison. Stacy and I went for another run and laid on the beach for a little while, before packing up and coming back to the city.

It was a really relaxing weekend, minus the hour when JP was swimming, and I was actually rested for once when I went back to school today which was nice.

Best Weekend Ever/ J.P's Race

2010-02-21T17:13:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

So far I have had an amazing weekend. Some big decisions are coming up for JP and I for next year and where we want to live, but we are narrowing down the options and getting close to making those decisions once we hear what the man behind the emerald curtain (Nokia) has to say. The highlights of the weekend were going to the falafel restaurant on Friday night with Doug, Stacy, JP, Rebecca, and her boyfriend Dante who is visiting from Peru, finding a delicious French bakery, going to IKEA, and going bowling yesterday, and today JP WINNING HIS FIRST RACE!!!

We went to Mirador Sur really early this morning for the race, JP biked and I took a cab, and when I got dropped off they dropped me at the wrong end of the park, so I had to walk the 5k to the race start. At first I was kind of bummed about it because I was afraid that I would miss the start (which I did) but as I was walking I really enjoyed myself. It's a hideously ugly park, but it was really quiet and it was really nice to be outside so early in the morning mostly alone and walk. I saw JP for the first time as he ran past me and yelled "They went off too early!". The whole race was kind of jumbled up, and I couldn't tell what place he was in, but in the end of the bike he rode by me and yelled "I'm winning!". When he started running I went the rest of the way toward the finish, and ran the last stretch as he did. We were both really happy. He always does really well in races but this was his first actual win. I was so proud of him. Now we are getting ready to head to La Vega, this other city, to see what's going on there for Carnaval, apparently it is the main city for it. For some reason they celebrate Carnaval here through February (sacrilege) but I am still planning on partaking in the festivities as long as they don't involve coffee which I gave up.

Later....

Okay so I just got back from La Vega where we went to some Carnaval festivities. I am really glad we went, it was crazy. There were a ton of people in ridiculous costumes which included but were not limited to men on stilts, children covered with mud, and a man dressed up as Osama Bin Laden with a fake gun pointed at himself. It was ridiculous. I am going to upload some pictures so you guys can see it.

Mom and Lauren Come to Visit

2010-02-18T13:13:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

Last Wednesday night my mom and sister flew in to Santo Domingo to visit. They came in at 11:35 at night, and JP and I went to the airport with a very nice taxi driver to pick them up. While JP and I waited we played a game where we quietly guessed how much everyone in the airport weighed. My guesses, of course, were incredibly accurate and JP's were all very high. When they got here they were exhausted from a long day of traveling so we went to bed as soon as we got home, but it was really really good to have them here. When we got back to the apartment we didn't have power, (Welcome to Santo Domingo!) but miraculously our generator was actually working so once JP fiddled with it for awhile we were okay. On Thursday during the day JP and I went to school and they wandered around the Colonial Zone, got some catcalls from the men on the streets, had some Yogenfruz, which is delicious frozen yogurt, and had lunch. When I came back from school we went out to dinner at this restaurant on the boardwalk/ocean where they were introduced to some Dominican food, good and bad. My mom had some really good fish, they ate tostones, and my sister and I both had crab that was heavy on the sauce, heavy on the bits of shell, and light on the crab meat. Stacy and Doug met us there which was really nice because they all got to meet each other, and more importantly, sing their praises of JP and I to my mom which I didn't hate.

On Friday morning we took the 4 and a half hour bus ride to Cabarete on the north coast. We stayed in a small all-inclusive resort, the same one where Stacy, Doug, JP and I stayed in October. The first night there it rained, which made me nervous that they were going to have traveled all this way for a rainy weekend, but luckily it was the only bad weather we had. We spent the weekend eating, lying on the beach, jumping around in the waves, getting knocked down and dragged underwater by the waves, (my sister has the bruises to prove it) and eating more. It was great. Super relaxing. By Saturday night my sister was getting a little annoyed with all of us wanting to go to bed early and not do anything at night (if I haven't told you all I'm a old person now, worst), so on Saturday night we went to a bar next to the resort and hung out for awhile. They were having some weird fashion show for one of the stores in town (Miss Jay would have been horrified) and after that was over we just sat in some chairs on the beach and chatted. I was really glad that my sister had convinced us not to be lame.

On Sunday we went to the beach for a bit, and for a minute I was sure we were going to die because this guy who looked like a mad scientist flew over our heads in some kind of contraption that could only be described as a high-powered fan strapped to a lawn chair which were attached to a large kite. made the long trek back to the city, and by that time I had started to feel sick, probably because I hadn't been boring the night before, and ended up having to stay home from school on Monday because I still wasn't feeling well. It was too bad because it is the first time I have gotten sick here and it was while they were visiting. We did end up walking around later in the day, going to eat pizza that evening, and buying the bootleg DVD guy out of all of his current movies before packing everything up and going to bed. It was really good to have them here. I wish they could have stayed longer.

Someone's Pregnant!

2010-02-04T16:29:00.000-08:00

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT! After finally getting clearance to announce this on the World Wide Web, I am excited to tell you all that my friends Sarah and Sean ARE HAVING A BABY!

We went out of town with them 2 weekends ago, and I had a conversation with them at this beach that you see in the picture about when they thought they might have kids, and their answer was basically "anytime now" which surprised me a little, and then I found out 2 days later that they suspected all along that Sarah was already pregnant! Neither of them speak much Spanish, so they asked me to call their doctor and make an appointment, and then to come with them to the Ultrasound/Doctor's visit. I think they felt like I was helping out, but little did they know I was dying to go with them! I think I may have come along even if they had specifically asked me not to, I was so excited to see the baby and hear the heart beat. Sarah is my first friend who has been pregnant, so I am beside myself. Stacy is going to plan a baby shower for them before we all leave. Sarah's tentative due date is September 19th. Ah! I am so excited! (Thank you Sarah and Sean for giving me clearance to put this in my blog!

Artistas Unidos por Haití

2010-01-31T19:42:00.000-08:00

This morning I woke up and decided that I would get everything I needed to get done by 2 o'clock. JP and I went out for breakfast on El Conde, which is the next block over, and we ate at this restaurant, La Cafetera, that makes amazing egg sandwiches. JP and I each got a juice and a coffee and shared a sandwich and our total was around 7 dollars, sometimes I love this country. We went grocery shopping and then came home and I set to work on my Portuguese homework.

The class I am taking has an absolutely ridiculous amount of homework. Between classes we generally have 10-20 pages of a workbook to do, and some other rather large task to accomplish. I am embarrassed to admit that last Wednesday I didn't go to class because I hadn't finished my homework. I should probably be fired as a teacher for doing that, it's like being a police officer and committing felonies. Anyway, this morning I finished writing a 2 page paper in Portuguese as well as around 10 pages of my workbook while JP rode his bike in our living room. By the way I finished at 2:14, pretty close.

I was looking around online and I found that there was a big concert at Estadio Olimpico. It was a benefit concert and the proceeds were going to helping Haiti. There were a bunch of Dominican artists playing there so we decided to go. When we got there we were dropped off at one of the side entrances, and we couldn't seem to find our way to the ticket booth. I asked a nice looking police officer where it was, and after leading us around for about 10 minutes he offered us a ticket out of his pocket. We politely declined because we needed 3 tickets, and then he found us two more from two separate scalpers and we were on our way. Just to be clear, what I am saying is that I bought scalped tickets from a police officer. It was a little weird. Oddly enough though, I think I got better price from the other scalpers because he was standing there.

The view of the stage from the bleachers.

Me, Stacy, Doug (pre-tooth chipping pizza)

Haitian/Dominican Flag Party

So we went into the concert and it was a big festival inside a baseball stadium. They had set up food tents and a big stage, and as the day went on the acts got longer and better. There were some questionable outfits that lead the audience to wonder if it would be possible for underwear to be worn underneath them, but the music was really good. We had some pizza that was so delicious that Stacy chipped her tooth on a piece of it (seriously). We ended up leaving before the main act because we realized that we would have to stay until midnight to see them, but overall it was a really good show. It was nice to be outside all day and the music was great. Good day.

UPDATE: I can prove we were there; they posted pictures of us on the event website! Check us out!
Celebrities- Doug, Stacy and I

Reader Poll on Host Family

2010-01-30T12:35:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

Today as JP was working out I was working on my mountains of Portuguese homework. I finally finished O Pequeno Principe (The Little Prince) and did a write up of the characters. The class is moving ridiculously fast and after 3 weeks I am already writing papers, I like the teacher's style but it is a whole lot of work.

Anyway, when JP got back Rebecca asked us if we could help her move stuff into her new apartment in Gasque. She and Elizabeth are both moving out this weekend because Elizabeth is moving back to D.C. Worst. This has made me start thinking about how my days in this beautiful apartment with JP are numbered. I think he will probably have to leave in March or April to go to LA, at which time I will have to find a slightly cheaper apartment. Hopefully I can find one in the same building, but I was also thinking of looking for a host family. Any thoughts on this readers? I think it would be really good for my Spanish/ Dominican cultural immersion, but possibly bad for my social life because I would not be able to come and go quite as freely as from my own apartment. What do you guys think?

Home Cooking

2010-01-26T12:45:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

So I had a not-so-good day at school today, followed by a not-so-good cab ride home, and by the time I got to the apartment I was a mess. I talked to JP for awhile while he rode his bike and then decided to make some food to calm my nerves. I made rice and black beans (which, other than eggs, was all we had in the house) and wished for the millionth time that we had some tortillas so I could have a burrito. Then, a light bulb! I can make my own tortillas! I looked up a recipe online and made some tortillas. They ended up more like small pitas than tortillas, but I think the idea will take us a long way. I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

The Southwest of the DR

2010-01-24T11:10:00.000-08:00

This weekend Sarah, Sean, JP and I decided to rent a car and travel west. Before we left we read in my guidebook that there were waterfalls, beaches, places to hike, and other generally cool stuff on that side of the island and that tourists don't often go there. There really aren't many big resorts on that side of the island, mostly small hotels and restaurants, so it doesn't draw in huge crowds like Punta Cana and the other developed cities.

We met up at 12:30 on Thursday afternoon at the rental car place, and rented a white sedan. We drove first through San Cristobal, which is where the famous dictator Trujillo was from, and then a number of small towns along the highway. We stopped in Azua for some Pollo Rey (think KFC Dominican style) and then continued on until we got to a city called Paraiso, which is about 4 hours outside Santo Domingo. We had some trouble finding the hotel, and when we did we weren't entirely sure we wanted to stay. It wasn't a lot to look at and the rooms weren't as cheap as they looked like they should be. We went to another hotel in the neighboring city of Los Patos, which was considerably nicer and only slightly more expensive, but that one was full. After eating dinner in Los Patos in a restaurant called Pula where delicious meats and placemats abounded we headed back to the first hotel, Hotel Paraiso, with our tails between our legs, played Bananagrams and spent the night.

The views on the way to Paraiso were completely ridiculous. Much of the drive was overlooking these enormous cliffs out onto the bluest water I have ever seen. The beaches were not sand but white rocks of varying sizes made smooth by the water. It was extremely beautiful. If you stood on the beach and turned around mountains were right behind you. It was the most beautiful place I have seen on the island so far.

The second day we were there we went to the beach in the morning, but quickly realized that although they were unique and beautiful, the stones were not very comfortable to sit on, and there was no shade to prevent us from getting sunburned. We went down the road a ways to where people have damned up the river into small pools that you can swim in and that lead down to the beach. These too were very beautiful, and there were lots of Dominican kids swimming in the pools. The waves in the ocean there were very big and powerful, and took me down a couple times when I tried to get into the water. We sat at a picnic table and had some food and eventually decided to see what else we could see in the area. We drove down to another hotel which ended up being very expensive, and then continued on to check some hotels in Barahona. We didn't succeed in that either although we did tour a coffee factory. When I say tour what I mean is walk into and when I say coffee factory I mean a relatively dark barn with coffee strewn all over the ground and a man outside seemingly bathing the factory's roosters in a metal tub.

We eventually ended up back at the expensive hotel for lunch, and after lunch we wandered around their grounds. There were huge cliffs here too overlooking the water and we walked down to the beach, and then came back up and sat in rocking chairs on the edge of the cliff and looked out at the water. It was a stunning view.

We ate dinner later that night at the same restaurant as the night before in Los Patos, and then went back to the hotel. Sean and Sarah looked up things to do for the next day and JP and I fell asleep at 9:15.

The next morning we decided to head back east and check out some of the beaches closer to Santo Domingo. We tried to go to a beach called Ocoa, but after a wrong turn that lead us into an Ocoa in the mountains we realized that there were two cities by that name, one in the mountains and one on the coast. We turned around and went towards the other one, stopped for lunch at a big hotel that turned out to also be way out of our price range (are you guys noticing a pattern of poverty here?) and eventually found a place that had some small sand dunes and a dark sand beach. JP and I swam around and looked at the small coral reefs off right off the shore and then we headed further east (and got lost about 7 times on the way) and stayed in a hotel in Playa Najayo, which is about an hour from the city. We had dinner when we got there and I watched some guy with a flashlight swim around underwater while we ate, which I thought was fascinating and Sean and Sarah (who are from Florida) did not think was out of the ordinary (they explained that he was probably fishing for crabs). This morning we lounged around on the beach for a little while and then drove back to Santo Domingo.

The trip was really relaxing and beautiful, and renting a car made it way more enjoyable.

The Little I Know About Haiti

2010-01-19T11:47:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

So my dad suggested that I let you guys know what I know about Haiti. I'm sorry to disappoint, but that is a very short book. Here is what I have experienced here over the last few months and in particular in the last week.

So Haiti and the Dominican Republic share an island called Hispañola. Haiti is considerably poorer than the Dominican, so many Haitians come here to find work. There appears to be a lot of animosity towards them, and many of them occupy very low income jobs (readers, these generalizations make me uncomfortable to write, so know that they are not true of all Haitians or Dominicans, and are based solely on my own experiences and perceptions). I know personally 4 Haitian people, two who work in my school, one as a teacher and one on the maintenance crew, and two who are brothers and own a fruit stand nearby. You all may remember Sergio who I buy fruit from and have talked about before.

During the earthquake I didn't feel anything, but many of my friends did, including Brigitte who lives in the same building that I do. I heard accounts of it ranging from 20 seconds and being barely noticeable to it being 1 minute and a little scary. As I didn't feel it I'm not really sure the truth of it, probably a lot depends on the kind of building you were standing in. Anyway, after the earthquake we said a prayer in school for the Haitians (it's a private school) and the administration made up a list of what the people of Haiti needed and assigned each grade an item to bring. The sixth grade brought cans of tuna, but the list also included many other canned foods, bottles of water, medicine, etc. It was suggested that we not bring clothes or money to donate. Clothes because they were not an immediate need, and money because it has a way of getting lost. Trucks came to the school and picked up the items and carried them over to the border, where presumably other trucks took them into the country. From what I have heard the border is closed at this point. The school is continuing to gather supplies and medicine to send.

As for the Haitian people that I know living in the DR they have had a very hard time getting in contact with their family members because of the lack of working cellphone towers, phone lines, and computers due to the earthquake. I heard that the man who works on the maintenance crew went back to Haiti last weekend to find his family, but he was in school on Monday so I am not sure. The fruit vendors told me that some kind of emergency service has been set up to help people locate their families, but I am not sure what it is or how it works. The worst part for people in the Dominican Republic seems to be not knowing.

As for Haitian/Dominican relations it seems that this disaster has brought the two countries together. The DR seems to be offering a lot of aid at least from an individual standpoint, and the Red Cross here is working hard to help as well. I'm not sure what is happening from a governmental standpoint, but the tensions that existed before between Haitians and Dominican seems to at least temporarily have lifted. Again that is just my perspective.

Victory is Ours

2010-01-19T02:16:00.000-08:00

Dear Readers,

Just wanted to say thank you for rallying around the cause of crushing JP. He has been getting kind of uppity lately because his blog has been getting more hits, but yesterday I got almost twice as many thanks to you all. Is this a petty disagreement? Yes. Should we just be happy for each other when our blogs are successful? Probably. Did I win 100 pesos because of you? Yes I did.

Thanks again.

Portuguese Classes, Long Weekend, Bayahibe, etc...

2010-01-18T13:00:00.000-08:00

Hi all,

JP and I have started getting really competitive about whose blog gets more hits, so I decided to post an update, please refresh the page now to pad my stats (seriously, do it twice).

Okay, quality before quantity (well, I guess in this case quality is literally coming after), last weekend JP and I went back to the beach city of Bayahibe. I hung out on the beach on Saturday reading while JP did laps in front of me like he was swimming in the world's largest endless pool and then I took some cough syrup (not recreationally, I had a cold) and went to bed early. On Sunday we rented a kayak and went down the shore.

I was good for about 10 minutes of paddling and after that JP bore the brunt of the work, but the coastline was beautiful and we found a small beach all to ourselves to hang out on.

Unfortunately, shortly after a man came up to us and informed us that it was actually a private beach and that we had to leave, so we got back in the kayak and went back the way we came to a smaller beach covered in driftwood.

We made a shelter out of the beach blanket and JP went out to swim again and I read my book.

The two coolest things we saw that day were a pelican diving for fish right next to us and a school of fish jumping out of the water (soon to be consumed by the pelicans). It might have been the best trip to the beach we have had yet.

I started Portuguese classes two weeks ago, and am going to my fourth class tonight. They are at the Brazilian cultural center and they are amazing. They go really fast though and I have a ton of homework, but it's keeping me busy.

This weekend we have a 5 day weekend and we are going on a mystery trip with the other foreign hires. It's a mystery because we all want to go somewhere but no one has planned anything yet. We all agree that we want something cheap and are indifferent about what that is. Readers, please send suggestions if you have been here are you have them.

Earthquake in Haiti

2010-01-13T11:27:00.001-08:00

Hey all,

As you know yesterday there was a really major earthquake in Haiti, the worst in 200 years. I just wanted to let everyone know that I am safe. In fact, although the earthquake was felt in Santo Domingo, I am so unobservant that I didn't notice it.

Robbery Updates

2010-01-06T13:14:00.000-08:00

So today was the kid's first day back to school (yesterday was ours), and I had a grand total of 6 kids in my homeroom. We did normal activities but everyone was tired and it was kind of a slow day.

Apparently no one fed Brigitte's fish over Christmas break, so when she came back to school all but one were dead, and the live one was eating the only remaining dead one in the tank. We all came to the conclusion that the live one had survived by eating the others in the tank, but today we realized that this was not so when some kids started yelling, "Ms. Widmer, Ms. Widmer (that's Brigitte), there is something in the plant!" Some things would have been more accurate. There in the potted plant were the corpses of the dead fish. Apparently someone had forgotten to feed them but had been able to clean their dead bodies out of the tank and place them in their final resting place, the one potted plant in the library.

Anyway, after school JP and I went with Mr. Sanquintin to the Judicial Palace to file a police report about our little robbery. This is the second branch of the police that we have seen, the first just sent us off. After filling out a very vague police report they told me to come back on Monday and to bring the footage of the crime, which I told them they could come to collect at my building. I don't really see these criminals behind bars anytime soon.

If I can get a copy of that tape I will post it on this blog as well. Don't watch it if you think it will make you nervous for our safety because it might.

The Robbery- Don't Panic, I'm Fine

2010-01-05T11:36:00.000-08:00

Instead of describing what happened late Saturday night I am just going to give you Stacy Hollingsworth's description:

"First of all, I'm fine, Doug is fine, and our friend Caitlin is fine. :) Don't be too alarmed by the story you are about to read - we knew about the dangers when we moved here. I wanted to send you a personal account of what happened before you read it in a facebook update or something equally impersonal.

Last night, around 1:30 a.m., Doug, Caitlin, and I were robbed at gunpoint. We had stepped outside to wait for our cab, when we saw a white, late-model, white Honda Civic with black windows speed toward us and stop. They paused in that spot, then drove a little further and stopped again. We thought, at first, that it might be our taxi. Doug said something to the effect of, "Oh, look, we have a speeder" (referring to our taxi driver). Before we knew it, two men jumped out of the car with huge guns, one cocked his, and both started yelling at us. They shoved one gun into Doug's stomach and pointed another at his leg while they searched his pockets. He said the barrel felt warm, which means that it was probably just used. Caitlin, thankfully, didn't have anything on her except her apartment key, which they didn't seem to notice; she said, "No tengo nada," and they left her alone. They didn't even really come near me (thank God); I had the presence of mind to hand them my purse and pull out my pockets to show that I didn't have anything (although, now that I think of it, I could have gotten myself shot by reaching into my pockets). I was so afraid that they were going to abduct or rape me - I was just reacting to that fear, I guess. They took our shopping bags, realized one had two ceramic bowls, then dropped it and shattered one of the bowls. As they ran to the car, Doug turned to try to memorize the car make and model, and they started screaming at him. He says that he felt like the guy was considering whether to shoot him; thankfully, he decided against it. Immediately after, a guy started yelling and running towards us. Reflecting upon it, we're pretty sure he was trying to help, but in the moment it just freaked us out. All of us stood there for a second, dumbfounded, until I finally said, "Open the door, Caitlin!" and proceeded to make the process more difficult for her by continually saying "hurry up, hurry up, hurry up" (poor Caitlin). She scrambled to unlock the door to her building and we all hurried inside and shut the door. Whew - what an experience! They got away with 30 newly purchased hangers, some soap, two floormats, a bag of American change, my purse (including my sunglasses, cell phone, and Dominican debit card, my house and classroom key with my new "Idaho" key ring [bummer] and about $30)...in my opinion, not much! I had my engagement ring on - luckily they didn't think to look at my hand. The funny thing is that I had my hands up and the diamond turned around so that it was facing them (I usually walk with it turned in to deter robbers). Doug had his credit card, Dominican debit card, ID, and about $60 in pesos in a pocket they didn't search. Caitlin had her keys in her hand - they could have forced her to open the door and then robbed their apartment. All in all, we were so so so lucky, it's amazing."

Welcome back to Santo Domingo! Again, Mom, I would just like to repeat that I am fine. Luckily you don't read my blogs that often so we might not find out about this. It was a scary experience but a good lesson for us. I think we have all been feeling so safe here that we have stopped taking some basic precautions that we will be taking from now on.

Close Encounter with the Mother Ship- Atlanta Airport

2009-12-19T18:12:00.001-08:00

JP and I landed in Atlanta about an hour ago and made our first contact with US soil in 4 and a half months. I was so jarred when I came back from Ecuador having never done this before that I was sure I would have almost no reaction this time; having spent all the shock I had over my own country a few years ago. Also, the DR is a lot more similar to the US than is Ecuador. However, I still was extremely surprised by how weird it is to come back to your own country and have it feel unfamiliar. When we got onto the plane all of the flight attendants spoke English as their first language, which was weird, and then when we landed all of the people we have seen in the Atlanta airport (obviously) also speak English as their first language. It is so weird to be able to use my own language to communicate with service people. It’s like planning to go through an obstacle course and then realizing that it is just a plain soccer field. “It was brighter, shinier, and cleaner than I ever imagined Atlanta being. I have always thought of Atlanta as an armpit of America, but after Santo Domingo I realized that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” Those are JP’s very offensive words, not mine.

Once we got into the airport we had a burrito (amazing) from Qdoba, and the lady behind the counter was super friendly (service with a smile is something I forgot existed). I thought, “What an extraordinarily friendly lady!” and then I went to get a coffee and that lady was also super friendly. I then remembered that in the US people are encouraged to act that way to customers. I also used US DOLLARS for both of these transactions, which I fumbled awkwardly trying to be sure I counted it right. It’s better than when I came back from Ecuador though and tried to pay at the Dunkin Donuts in the Miami airport for a bagel they had already made for me with the only money I had, Ecuadorian change, without realizing it. Now I am sitting waiting for the plane and JP is getting his calves massaged by a chair in Brookstone or something. I really didn’t expect to be surprised by anything here. I am a little glad that I am.

Murder Mystery, Last Day of School, Spilling Coffee of Bedspreads, and other updates...

2009-12-19T11:05:00.000-08:00

Hello all,

The last few days have been pretty crazy with finishing up school for break and all. On the last day we decided to turn our classrooms into specific activities and the kids chose which one they were going to go to each hour. It was pretty cool. My classroom was "Murder Mystery" we did a mystery where Santa was killed and someone in the room did it. They had to draw a picture of their character and go around interviewing people and trying to figure it out. While they did that I read them clues. It was pretty fun. The first round was all sixth graders, and they got pretty into it, and the second round was a mix of sixth and seventh graders. In the second round someone told a bunch of people who the murderer was about 20 minutes into the game, so that was a lot less fun. After working with seventh graders for an hour I was very very happy to be a sixth grade teacher.

After the activities all of the kids in my homeroom came back to the class, opened their construction paper stockings, and we had a "shared snack". More delicious food brought right to me in my classroom. We listened to Michael Jackson, ate, cleaned up, and then the kids went home for the day. After going to pick up my check which included a 2 hour wait we came home, paid our rent, enjoyed the warm weather for the last day, and then went to Stacy and Doug's for dinner. After dinner Stacy foolishly gave me some delicious coffee and then invited me to sit on her white bedspread so she could show me the Christmas presents she had bought for people. I should have known better than to agree, but in less than 5 minutes I had successfully dyed their bed tan and it had to be immediately washed and bleached (Sorry about that guys).

This morning JP and I woke up, finished getting everything together, JP worked out, and then we came to the airport. We were promptly told that our flight had been delayed. We have been wandering around the airport for awhile shopping and poking around, but we still have another 2 hours at least until our flight leaves. Worst. I went into Duty Free, which oddly enough is called "Dufry" here (for those of you who don't speak Spanish this is not Spanish, just a perversion of English). To be fair it says on the sign "Dufry (D) Tax and Duty Free Shops". Weird. Anyway, I found some really nice perfume there and you can buy it in regular sized bottles or in a box of three small bottles. I thought that was the most brilliant thing I had ever seen so now I am looking them up online to see if they are ridiculously over priced. If anyone is dying to buy me a Christmas present let me know fast before my boredom leads to impulse buying. Anyway, hopefully we'll get home tonight at 11:45. I'll see you guys very soon!

Underwear Pockets

2009-12-14T14:10:00.000-08:00

School today was a bit of a nightmare, I don't know who is more ready for break, me or the kids. I gave out an obscene amount of punishments because of the way they were acting.

After school JP and I came home, I bought a zipper so that I can make some kind of pouch to keep my money in on the way back to the states. I am seriously considering sewing a money pocket into my underwear\ (paranoid? I think so). We came home and now we're watching Ray on tv. That's right folks, the power is back on. Later tonight I am going to clean our apartment and pack my bag to come home. I would estimate that I have about 6 articles of clothing to bring home that will keep me at all warm. I gave all of my winter clothes at home to my sister too, so hopefully she will lend me some or I am going to be an icicle. I think I'll probably have to sleep in all of the clothes I own to stay warm. That aside, I can't wait to come home! See you guys on Sunday!

JP's Triathlon in Las Caletas, Market, Power Outage

2009-12-13T15:28:00.000-08:00

Hi all,

This morning JP had a triathlon in Las Caletas (as seen in post heading). It started at eight and it was around 30 minutes away which meant we were out of bed at 6. Yuck. We called a cab and JP's friend Jonathon came here to ride with us and we drove over to the race site. The cab driver happened to be a cyclist named Jose so when we got to the race he stayed there with us to watch. It was kind of a weird race because it started at Las Caletas, but ended back in Santo Domingo, so JP biked home but the taxi driver took us back for free, which was awesome because it was pretty expensive to get all the way over there. JP had a great race (seizure free I might add) and ended up coming in second place by only a few seconds. He said that he lost the race in transition, which is a huge bummer, but he did really well.

When we came back we went back to the Parque to get some final Christmas presents and souvenirs, and after awhile JP came home to go biking. He is crazy. I stuck around because I knew Doug and Stacy were going to be coming to our part of town. I ran into Sean, Sarah, Matt and Becky also. We all wandered around the market together and then went to lunch at La Cafetera, which has delicious and cheap sandwiches.

After that I came home, JP and I watched the tail end of Twilight, and then the power went out. We have spent about an hour trying to occupy ourselves with one computer and not enough candles to really see with, but I think we'll make it.

The biggest thing on my mind right now is COMING HOME! I can't wait! I love it here but I am so excited to see everyone. I have all of my Christmas presents laid out on the floor and I keep looking at them and getting excited about giving them to everyone. Love you all, see you in 5 days.

Taking Out Stitches (Not for Weak Stomachs), China Town, Joey Verge

2009-12-12T10:11:00.000-08:00

The other day JP asked me if I would take his stitches out 2 days early. The stitches are holding a cut on the top of his head together. I said no for two reasons. 1. I don't know how to take out stitches and did not feel comfortable making a first attempt on JP's head. 2. I thought that we might as well leave the stitches in the full time to be safe.

JP asked me several more times to take them out and each time I said that I did not want to for the above reasons. I suggested that he have the school doctor take them out if he wanted them out early because at least she would know what she was doing. JP had asked me earlier in the day on Thursday, and then in the evening he disappeared upstairs. He came down about 2 minutes later and said, "I started taking my stitches out and I can't finish it, can you do it?". He sat down at the kitchen table and handed me my manicure scissors. I had glanced at the cut on his head when he first got it, but I hadn't seen it quite so up-close and personally.

Not only was I having to look directly at it for an extended period, but I was prodding it with scissors and I could smell it. It smelled like when I was a kid and my dad used to hunt pheasants and then hang them up to drain in our garage. I tried to take them all out but when I got to the last two I asked JP if I could take a break for a second. I sat down on the couch and tried to regain my composure. JP was like, "Are you okay?". He said that all of the color had drained from my face and that I looked like I was going to pass out. Honestly I thought I was going to throw up. After that brief intermission I went back and finished taking out the rest. It was a horrifying experience and I am very glad that I chose teaching instead of nursing because after that I realized that I am really not cut out for it. It makes me nauseous just writing about it. I didn't want to take them out because I was afraid I would hurt JP, but I had no idea that I was going to get so sick. I felt like a big baby.

Yesterday Doug, Stacy, Sean, Sarah, Becky, and Matt came over. We hung out here for a second and then walked to Parque Colon. They are having some kind of artisan craft festival there, so we wandered around and shopped for a little bit. It started to close down so we went up to China Town and had dinner. We sat at an enormous table with a lazy-susan in the middle and ate some delicious Chinese food. We seemed unable to talk about anything but school though which I think we were all bummed about, but try as we might we couldn't seem to change the conversation.

Today Stacy and I are going to go shopping for some final Christmas presents. We are going to look around in that market again and see what we can find.

The reason that Joey Verge is in the title of this blog is that he told me about this program where you can make photobooks, and I downloaded it on a whim. Normally I make books with iphoto, but this program is amazing. The best part of it is that there is an option to turn your blog into a photobook. You just type in what website you use for your blog and your user name and it fills the book with your blog entries and photos, it's awesome. Tuli, you need to look into this. Anyway, thanks Joey, good suggestion. I hope you all have a great week and I'll see you next week when I COME HOME!

Episodio Epileptico

2009-12-06T07:38:00.000-08:00

Yesterday morning JP biked to the pool early in the morning to swim, and then came home and we went Christmas shopping. I am getting close to finishing my shopping now. We were out for awhile and it was really hot (89 degrees). When we came home JP went for a run. We were planning to go to a play at 6 at Casa de Teatro which is near our house. I started getting ready to go while JP was gone, but at around 5:30 I started to get a little worried because JP is usually really punctual and I had no idea where he had gone running or how to get ahold of him. I thought that maybe I hadn't told him what time the play started and that he thought it started at 7. At around 5:45 I got a phone call on JP's phone from some woman who asked me if I spoke Spanish and then told me that she was calling from Centro Medico and that JP had had a seizure and was there. I ran downstairs and got into a cab, calling Stacy on the way to tell her that we actually probably would not be having people over later that night because JP was in the hospital. She asked me what hospital it was and then met me there bringing water and a book for me (good friend).

JP had hit his head somehow and had been given stitches. They also said that he had been really aggressive and they had to strap him to the hospital bed and sedate him. He has bruises now all over his arms from that. When we came to the hospital JP was in a tiny room with blood on the wall which at first I thought was leftover blood from the last patient (gross/unsanitary) but soon realized that it was from JP's own head (scary). I had to go to the pharmacy and get an injection for him and bring it back to the hospital for the nurse to give him.

Once all of that was done the three of us got in a cab and came back to our house. JP went to bed and I woke him up every 2 hours to make sure that he didn't have a head injury using questions that his mom gave me. He is much better today and doesn't have a closed head injury. He feels fine now but a little sore from all the bruises and the head wound. All is well now, thank God, but I just wanted to let you all know what happened, and that everything is fine now.

Classical Guitar is Nice and Other Revolutionary Thoughts

2009-12-04T17:46:00.000-08:00

Last night JP, Brigitte (I recently learned that I have been spelling her name wrong this whole time, no "d"), and Bastien went to a classical guitar concert at the Teatro Nacional. One of the guys playing is a cuban guy named Ruben who Brigitte has guitar lessons with once a week. They played some of the most amazing music I have ever heard. I have never seen anyone playing a guitar and felt like it was an art form rather than a hobby, but in this case it was. They played extremely complex pieces and it looks like it was the easiest thing in the world. Ruben played a couple of songs about his daughters who are still in Cuba who he is trying to bring here and they were so beautiful and sad. I was really glad we went because I have never seen anything quite like that.

Nuestra Señora de Altagracia

2009-12-03T02:23:00.000-08:00

Two days ago the principal came to our class and asked me to choose 2 students with the rest of the class to go on a field trip the following day to an all-girls orphanage to interview some girls. We held democratic elections including campaign speeches, nominations, and a secret vote. Two great kids were chosen. Later that day my principal asked me to let her know if there were any teachers who wanted to go and chaperone. Naturally I wanted to.

Yesterday at 10:45 I took about 20 middle schoolers down to the cafeteria to eat lunch and we went with a few parent drivers to the orphanage. It was about a 20 minute drive and we went into a not-so-nice part of town. We got lost on the way, but we finally found it. When we walked in there were 65 girls sitting at long cafeteria tables in blue shirts with khaki skirts on. They seemed to be sitting according to age with the youngest girls in front and the oldest in the back. The kids were asked to interview 4 girls and ask them questions about their lives and Christmas wishes. At first they were really nervous, and none of my little sixth graders wanted to work with the high school girls, but finally we walked over together and they got started. It started out with all of the Ashton School kids on one side of the room and all of the girls from the orphanage on the other, but shortly after the kids starting interviewing the girls everybody was talking and laughing and mixing together. It was a really cool experience for the kids and for me.

We are supposed to be going back later in December or in January to give them some things, and I am really excited to go back with the kids. It was such a good experience and all of them really seemed to enjoy themselves. I'll try to post pictures on my blog soon.

Love you all.

Thanksgiving 2.5 and the Afterparty with Diddy

2009-11-29T07:47:00.000-08:00

After I wrote you all yesterday we went over to Sarah and Sean's for Thanksgiving 2.5. It was amazing. Sarah made an enormous turkey and there was so much food it was ridiculous. We had about 2 entire dishes per person and I think I ate my body weight in dinner and pie. After dinner we talked and played Wii for a few hours. When I say "we" I mean the boys and there were some fightin' words flying around about Mario Cart. Apparently JP is getting quite the reputation with the other boys for being a trash talker (no surprise there). While they played I drank coffee after coffee and ate piece of pie after piece of pie and chatted with the other girls. Great Thanksgiving.When we left at around 8 we came back to Zona Colonial to go out. Stacy, Doug, Brigitte, Bastien, Nick, JP and I all hung out here for awhile and had drinks/coffee. We decided to go out (Stacy, Doug, Nick, JP and I) and we went to this bar called Doubles.

When we walked out of our apartment a car smashed into another car right in front of us, which was kind of scary, but everyone seemed to be alive enough to get really really mad at the other car so I think everything will be okay for them.

Usually when I go out dancing here I try to go to Dominican places that play merengue and bachata and other forms of Latin dance music, but we were meeting up with a girl that Nick wanted to see who was at Doubles. Imagine The Post in East Lansing type of music. Lots of techno mixes. It was amazing. When we first got there JP and I were doing the shopping cart and the fishing pole and other dances of that sort, and we were getting a lot of weird looks from the Dominicans which made it even funnier. I would like to think that they thought that was how gringos dance. We ended up staying at the bar until around 4 a.m. It was a great Thanksgiving. Delicious food, good company, and ridiculous dancing.

Thanksgiving 1.5

2009-11-28T06:25:00.000-08:00

You probably all thought that because I am out of the United States that I would miss Thanksgiving this year since it is an American holiday. Well the joke's on you people because I am celebrating it two and a half times. At school on Thursday we had a "shared snack". There are a lot of things that rich kids do that is annoying, but bringing bad shared snacks is not one of them. We had every kind of delicious fried Dominican food that exists in miniature, cupcakes from people's parent's bakeries, and everything else a greedy teacher could want. It was nice because we went around the circle and all of the kids said what they were thankful for, and almost all of them said their families (one said money, but there are always a few bad seeds).

On Thursday night JP and I wanted to celebrate on the actual day so we planned on having dinner at our house. We invited our neighbor and then Doug and Stacy, so we ended up having a mini-Thanksgiving party here. We had wine and rotisserie chicken, mashed potatoes and stuffing. It was delicious. Rebecca, our neighbor, brought this pumpkin cheesecake which she had half-frozen which was amazing. We ate on our balcony. It was a really good Thanksgiving day. Because we didn't have school off for Thanksgiving all of the Americans at school decided to celebrate Thanksgiving together today, Saturday, so that we could devote the entire day to the festivities as God and the Native Americans intended.

I am currently making mashed potatoes to bring over there and JP woke up early and make cinnamon corn pudding which I snuck a bite of and it is delicious. I will let you know how Thanksgiving 2.5 goes afterward, but there is going to be a turkey and a Wii, so I imagine it will be pretty good.

My Life in Ruins (The movie, not my life)

2009-11-19T19:00:00.000-08:00

Today after school JP and I went to the grocery store and then took a taxi back towards Zona Colonial. I dropped him off at Centro Olympico, which is where he uses the pool, and then came home and took a short nap, which was delightful. When I woke up I was planning to go to this talk about Egypt nearby. This entire week there is a big film festival happening throughout the city. I have been wanted to do more in Spanish (which, lately, I have been succeeding in) and so I thought going to some of the workshops would be a good idea. I walked over to Bridgitte's apartment to see if she wanted to come, but realized after talking to her that the talk was not, in fact, in Spanish.

She and Bastien (her boyfriend) were planning on going to a different theatre and seeing "My Life in Ruins" which for some reason is a part of the film festival, so I decided to go with them. I don't know how many of you guys have seen it, but it is a little bit on the stupid side. What made it amazing though was the audience. We were probably the only people in the theatre who were over 17, and many of them were in school uniforms. It was free to get in and it was in this really nice cultural center, but it was in a pretty bad neighborhood. It was the loudest theatre I have ever been in but it was hilarious. Every time the main character talked to the man she liked the crowd whooped and yelled. They laughed hysterically at the smallest jokes, and basically screamed throughout the entire movie. I thought it was great and by the end of the movie I was having a great time.

When we left there was a random fireworks show outside which my mom would have thought was very dangerous (because it was). It was about 50 feet from the building and it was so close that ash was raining down into my eyes and got into Bridgitte's contact. It was cool nonetheless, but we had to go to a colmado to get some water to flush her eye out with. Worst.

Great night at the movies.

Long Absense

2009-11-08T07:02:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

I haven't posted in awhile for 2 reasons. Kind of a good news, bad news situations. First, on Monday night I watched Walk the Line dubbed in Spanish. It is called Johnny y June when it's dubbed apparently. Anyway, I was coveting June Carter's clothes and I started obsessively looking up 50's and 60's patterns on the internet so I could make my own. Unable to order anything online and not in possession of a sewing machine I couldn't sleep that night because I was plotting ways to make clothes. Those of you who know me well know that sometimes my brain gets on one track and will not get off it until I have accomplished whatever it is (such as move to Latin America).

Anyway, by the next day I decided that it would be kind of ridiculous to buy a sewing machine without making a single article of clothing first, so I went to the store near our house after school and bought some fabric and a sewing kit. When I say sewing kit I mean a glorified version of those little emergency sewing kits that my mom is always trying to force me to take with me wherever I go, "Just in case". With scarcely enough thread I made an a-line skirt from directions I found on the internet. This took me two days. I basically haven't seen the light of day since I started this little project but I have been happy as a clam. After I finished that I started working on a wrap dress because I bought way too much fabric. I also found a store that sells thread and zippers and the like about a block from my house which was very helpful when I ran out of red thread. I have a bunch more material now and I am going to start working on another skirt later today.

The bad news is that I was so wrapped up in sewing that I didn't realize that damage I had caused to my computer by trying to "fix" the internet connection at school. It wasn't connecting to the internet but in my sewing frenzy I didn't even notice. JP and I were a tag team of destruction on my poor, unsuspecting computer. After I had destroyed the internet connection JP took his turn to try and fix it. In doing so he somehow deleted Safari, which is my sole internet provider, and so I had to reformat my hard-drive. I had everything backed up so this wasn't a huge problem, but I am still working out some of the kinks that this caused. But now, obviously, I am back on the internet writing to you all so life is good.

JP and I stayed in town this weekend to relax because we have been traveling so much and because we just bought our plane tickets home so we are trying to save a little money. We have the day off school tomorrow because of some Dominican holiday, so we are enjoying the weekend here. I feel like we are the only people in Santo Domingo though because everyone left for the three day weekend which is nice during the day and bad for going out at night. I think it is high time you all come visit. Thanksgiving anyone?

Coming Home

2009-11-02T14:44:00.000-08:00

I bought my plane ticket to come home for Christmas! I'll be there December 19th- January 3rd! I can't wait to see you all!

Constanza

2009-11-01T17:14:00.000-08:00

So the last week has been crazy. JP had really bad food poisoning (he has been kind of a sickling ever since we got here), but luckily he recovered in time for us to go out of town for the weekend. To be honest, I kind of wanted to stay in town this weekend, and by the time Friday rolled around I was feeling so worn out that I wasn't sure that I would make it to Constanza, but I am so glad that I did because it was the best place I have been so far in this country. We ended up going in a taxi instead of a bus, it was a little minivan taxi, and for only a few dollars more each we were way more comfortable and they picked us up right from the supermarket where we were. The ride took about 3 and a half hours, and the driver was getting really irritable on the way and started saying things like, "How much are you guys paying?" (something that had been agreed upon between his company and us before hand) "I won't do it for that much." At this point we just stayed quiet and pretended we didn't understand because we were three quarters of the way there and that was a ridiculous thing to say. It was really dark by the time we got there though and the roads are really windy and dangerous so we did end up giving him a little extra money for his troubles.

Constanza is a little city up in the mountains which has waterfalls and beautiful green forests all over the place. It is where most of the potatoes, strawberries, and flowers are grown for the whole country. It is fairly high up, which was delightful because the air was cool and dry as opposed to the hot wet air of Santo Domingo. We went to this place called Rancho Macajo, which is a little ranch owned by a lady with a little restaurant and a bunch of cabins. We rented one of the cabins which had two bedrooms and a kitchen and was $60 a night. Not too bad. The lady who owns it makes delicious food and also has a bunch of random animals around, including a caged monkey named Lupo.

We ate dinner there on Friday night, and were thrilled when we got cold enough to put on jeans and sweatshirts, and watched part of a movie and went to bed. Saturday morning we got up, JP, Stacy, and Doug walked down to the colmado to get supplies for breakfast (a walk which turned out to be about an hour long) and I stayed back at the cabin to boil water. I didn't mean to be the weakest link in that job list but it turned out that they had to hike down quite a ways to get food, and then an equal distance directly up hill to get back while I wrote in my journal and read and made sure the water didn't boil over.

After they came back and we ate we all pilled into the ranch's pickup truck driven by a friend of the owner named Amauri. We headed another hour or so up the mountain to this national park with an enormous waterfall called Aguas Blancas. It was amazingly beautiful, and I'll post some pictures on here so you guys can see. JP and Doug climbed around on the rocks for awhile and then Stacy and I started to climb up the trail. We were just trying to get a better view but it turned out to be one of the most intense hikes I have ever been on, which, of course, thrilled JP to no end. There were parts of the trail where we had to use rope to climb up and down. It was very very steep and had been created by nothing more than other hikers in most parts. There was a lot of climbing over rocks, hopping small streams, and holding onto branches to avoid plunging to an untimely death involved. Moni you would have been right in your element. I did alright but as you all know I tend to be a little skiddish about hikes of that caliber.

Once we got to the top though the view was amazing. There was a small pool that JP immediately jumped in, and Doug was right behind him. The water was freezing. It was raining a little bit but it was nice because we were hot from the hike. We stayed up there for a little while admiring the view, I almost slid down the rock into the waterfall but JP caught me, and then we started hiking back down. The hike down was easier than the hike up in terms of physical exertion, but it was much more nerve wracking and the rain had made the traction even worse. I hiked down behind JP though so I wasn't very nervous.

After getting back from our hike we were starving. We ordered some food in the restaurant at Rancho Macajo and then headed back to the cabin to take showers. Once I learned that there was no hot water (I was already really cold) I decided against it (big surprise). I was the only one not to shower. As you all know, Monica, again, you especially, I do not like to shower if it is going to make me cleaner but colder. This is why I was so filthy throughout all of Bolivia. Anyway we went back up to eat and I had rabbit for dinner. I had never had it before, I felt a little guilty eating it because Stacy has a pet rabbit at home, but that didn't stop me from cleaning all of its little rabbit bones of meat. Even though it was Halloween night we decided to go back to the cabin, drink some tea and go to bed. We are getting more and more boring as we get older I think.

This morning JP and I made the walk down to the colmado for food, which we did fairly early and it was really nice. We came back, made breakfast, and caught another cab back to Santo Domingo. This one was a much more experienced mountain driver and we got back in record time.

Constanza reminded me a lot of being in Ecuador in the Andes. It was so beautiful. I think JP and I will definitely go back there soon and stay in the same place again. Those of you who are planning to visit and want to hike that would definitely be some place we would take you.

I hope you all had a great halloween, miss you all and love you.

Adventures wandering around

2009-10-24T08:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday J.P. and I both missed school because he needed to go to the hospital for a check up after all of the weird health things he has had lately and I needed to translate for him. We had some trouble getting the day off and then even more trouble when we went to two hospitals and were not able to be seen in either of them. The first hospital looked like a U.S. hospital. It was big and clean and had plenty of nurses working information/appointment desks.

The second was like falling into the third world. There were a couple of information desks which were behind glass so you had to ask your questions through a small hole at the bottom like you were at a high security bank or a convenience store in Detroit. We were told there that we could not be seen until Monday unless we wanted to go into the emergency room. We decided to go just to see if we could get in (sorry Lucy, we were being that drain on the system that you so hate). In the U.S. when you go to the "Emergency Room" you go to the waiting room, wait forever, and then finally get in to see the doctor. Silly me, I assumed that was what this was going to be.

We walked into the room and there were about 6 beds which did not have curtains around them filled with very very sick people and then chairs lined up against the wall with more sick people waiting to be seen. The doctors were going from bed to bed to check out the patients while everyone else watched and heard everything that was said. JP and I quickly realized that our emergency was not like these people's emergencies, so we got the hell out of dodge. On the way out JP said, "I didn't want to stay in there because I thought we both might get really sick." Very wise, JP.

After that little hospital adventure was over we picked up our missing laundry from the lavandería (laundry mat meets dry cleaners) and walked home. JP went to swim at Centro Olympico and I went wandering around. I did a little bit of shopping with no luck, and then I found a used book store. I went in to see if they had any books in English but there were about 6 of them and they were all terrible looking. I started to browse the Spanish books then this guy came up to me and told me that he worked at the store too but he also sold some face cream that he wanted me to buy. His exact words were "The cream would take those little marks on your face right off." I don't know what marks he was talking about but I do know that after that I was far less inclined to buy from him. He then told me that he did massages to remove fat and cellulite and relaxing BATHS in the back of the store and asked me if I would be interested in either of those. I said I would not. He then asked me if he could have my phone number. I said he could not. He then asked me if I would like to go to church with him. I said I would not. I told him that I had a boyfriend and he asked me if he lived here in the Dominican Republic. I said that he did. He finally relented and went away. Good Lord. I have never been so annoyed in my life. Also it's too bad because I really liked the book store (I bought Gulliver's Travels in Spanish, "Viajes de Gulliver") but I will definitely never be going back there again lest I get offered another relaxing bath.

After that I went in search of coffee. I found this place that I want to take everyone who comes to visit out for a nice meal. It was this two story place with really beautiful french/italian music playing and delicious food. Unfortunately I don't know what the name of it was, but it was one street east of Duarte and two blocks north. I had eggplant and rice and beans. Yum.

After that I decided to go to the salon to get my hair straightened. This is a cultural experience that I thought I should have. All of the Dominican women I know go to the salon at least twice a week and get their hair blown out. Any time they are wearing their hair down it's because they have gone to the salon. It's sort of strange, but I felt like I should be a part of it. The whole salon process was nice, I got my hair washed and then someone went to town on straightening it, but basically the second I walked outside it began to curl again. It is just too humid here. I guess I won't be doing that again.

I met up with Stacy and we went to a mall to shop (Acropolis). We didn't really have any luck so we went back to their apartment, picked up Doug, and went to get a beer and some cheap Mexican food. The best thing about this city is the number of restaurants where you can get pretty cheap food. After dinner we all came back to my side of town and hung out at our apartment with JP and Bridgitte. Overall, a very eventful day.

Wednesday- School, Laundry, Red Tent, Walk

2009-10-21T18:28:00.000-07:00

The kids were behaving so badly last week that it has been all I can do this week not to tell them that the reason that Ms. Dark is suddenly mean is because nice Ms. Dark is dead and they killed her. I keep these things to myself and I just give out a lot of recess forfeits. Ah well. Hopefully it will improve their behavior. In school today they did pretty well, peer editing in English and answering some review questions in Social Studies, but they still need some work.

After school JP and I headed back to our side of town and got dropped off in Chinatown. We ate at that restaurant again (Restaurant Dragon I), and as usual, it was amazing and our final bill between the two of us came out to around 7 dollars. I love that place. They have Dominican side dishes too which I think is funny, like fried plantains. As we were walking home from the restaurant I found a watch that I had to buy, which some of you may see because I am going to buy some for you for Christmas. When we got home we dropped some clothes off at the laundry for the first time (we have been doing our laundry in the sink and hanging it on the balcony from the windowsills).

I finished The Red Tent today (if you haven't read it please do it's amazing) for the third time. I love that book. When I came home from work yesterday I made some tea and sat on our balcony and read for awhile. Life is good.

After JP came back from the gym we went for a walk around the city for an hour or so and looked for places to eat in the future. Not such a great idea probably because we were walking so that my pants won't feel so tight from all the delicious food I've been eating here. Ah well. If I walk far enough to get the food I figure it's fine.

Tomorrow JP and I have to stay after school late because we have to go to this thing at school called a Hamburgada (if that's not Spanglish I don't know what is), which is a night for the parents to come and eat hamburgers. It's a fundraiser for the school and all the teachers are required to attend. Fun fun. At least I'll get a free hamburger out of it.

Conference and Las Galeras

2009-10-18T18:20:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

So Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I went to a work conference here in Santo Domingo instead of going to school. It was perfect timing because I really needed a break from the kids and I think they needed one from me too, and I got some really good ideas for how to make my class a lot more engaging. I have been having some problems with classroom management lately and I have been getting really angry at the kids about it but when I started thinking about it I realized that I have been a pretty boring teacher lately, so I think that we are both to blame. Anyway, I hope that this week is better. Speaking of which, are any of my teacher friends interested in having our kids be penpals or epals? The letters would have to be in English but they could be about Dominican culture. Webconferencing between classes would also be an option if I can figure out how to get around the school's security.

So after the conference on Friday afternoon JP, Bridgitte, and I headed for the bus station and we met Doug and Stacy there. We were running a little behind and JP was feeling like a bad athlete because he has had Dengue and I was feeling like a bad teacher so we were both in pretty stressed moods. To be honest I was a little nervous that the trip was going to be really bad because I had such a storm cloud over my head, but 2 hours and a bus nap later I was a new person. JP ran the next morning so he felt better then. We got off the bus in a city called Samamá and had to transfer to a very small bus/conversion van called a guagua. Guaguas are a very cheap way of getting around but the drivers pack as many people as possible into them to maximize their profits and they generally do not have air conditioning. This was no exception. In a bus that is supposed to seat 11 there were 20 of us and very loud bachata music. Stacy was recovering from a bout of food poisoning so she was very uncomfortable but I had a great time. The view from the guagua (pronounced wa wa, like the sound a baby makes) was amazing and I happened to really like the bachata band that they were playing full blast (Aventura).

When we arrived they dropped us off at the hotel where Stacy and Doug had made reservations. They had read about it in the Lonely Planet (hollachagurl and give her a job) and had talked to the lady on the phone, but Bridgitte, JP and I hadn't decided where we wanted to stay yet because we were going to try to find a cheaper option. We got to this hotel and the lady showed Doug and Stacy the room while we all waited. We were sitting and chatting when Stacy and Doug came and had just enough time to say "The room is really small and we don't want to stay but she's saying we have to pay her." (This place was called Villa Casa Lotus if you're wondering where not to stay in Las Galeras.) Sure enough, the woman came storming in behind them and started saying that because they had called ahead whether they stayed or not they had to give her the full amount in cash. She was being very aggressive about it and they told her that they would not give her the money, and that the room was much smaller and worse than the one she described to them. At one point during this discussion either Brigitte or JP asked her how we could get back to town and she shouted at us, "That's not my problem, that's your problem." It was all very weird and we ended up sneaking around her out the door. She had her main henchman, some Dominican guy, follow us into town to try to get the money, which he could not. We went into the hotel where we wanted to stay and sat down at a table to get a drink and he continued to sit at the bar for around an hour before he finally went back to the hotel. It was an adventure for the first hour in Las Galeras.

The hotel we did end up staying in was called Gri Gri, and it was the most backpacker place I have seen so far. It was a hotel/bar with really good food and drinks and really cheap rooms. Perfect. The next day we went to this little beach next door to the hotel swam around a reef (which, unfortunately, was dead) and had lunch in a glorified tent. Lunch was fish that we had seen being brought up the beach an hour or so before with tostones, (fried plantains, what were those called in Ecuador again?) fried eggplant, rice and beans. It was so delicious. The lady that served us had curlers in her hair and opened our beer bottle (I swear I am not drinking all that much here) with a strategically placed nail in the side of a tree. I wished so badly that it would be socially appropriate to take a picture of that to show you guys.

That night we went back into town and ate (actually for the second time) at this place owned by an Italian lady that had homemade everything; pasta, jam, butter, bread. Yum. I think this was the best food weekend of this trip so far. We ended up eating at this place a total of 3 times. It was so good. We sat around and chatted for awhile and went to bed early. The town was really peaceful and didn't have a lot of people, so it was a really nice relaxing weekend.

This morning we had breakfast at that same place and then wandered down the beach. The water here wasn't as clear as in Sosua, but the beach itself was the most beautiful I have seen so far. There are a bunch of little islands with palm trees on them just off the shore that I am going to swim out to next time, and you can see the mountains from pretty much anywhere on the beach. I will post my pictures so you guys can see. We came back on a bus that was pretty much the same situation as the guagua on the way, except for it was supposed to be a regular bus, and it took us 4 hours instead of the 3 it should have to get back because we kept stopping to cram in more passengers.

When we got back we went to eat delicious and ridiculously cheap chinese food and then came back to the apartment. I got some work done and now here I am. I am starting to really love it here, it is so beautiful. As you can tell from my blog though, I am going to need to start going to the gym way more often. Yikes. I love you all and miss you!

Time Traveler's Wife, Roof Party, Otherwise Lazy Weekend

2009-10-11T18:55:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

So this weekend may have been the laziest weekend of my life. I feel like I have just discovered television and already it is ruining things for me. Our apartment has tv and about 90 channels, and since I basically haven't had a tv in a year and a half all of a sudden I realized that I can watch it instead of do anything else. This is a less than positive development in my life which I will have to fight against. On Friday JP and I came home from school and he was feeling really sick (he talked to his mom and she thinks he has dengue fever, worst). We just hung out around the apartment all evening and watched movies that we bought on the street on my computer. I got some really good movies here. If you guys haven't seen Lymelife or The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas you should. On Saturday I woke up and watched movie after movie with JP again stopping only to go to the store for supplies. Finally, some of our friends called and I went with them at around 10:00 to our friend Nick's house. He was having people over to drink and listen to merengue on his roof. It was really fun and I spoke a lot of Spanish. I ended up coming home at around 5 a.m, which is the first time I have done that here and it was lovely. Today JP was feeling better and I was feeling not so good from last night, so we hung out for awhile, walked around on El Conde, and then went to see The Time Traveler's Wife (just came out here this weekend) with Doug and Stacy. It isn't as good as the book of course but still was really well done. Go see it everyone and read the book too, it's amazing. Love you all and I hope that your weekends were slightly more eventful than mine.

Back to School Night

2009-10-08T18:25:00.000-07:00

Last night at school was Back to School Night. This is when the parents of all the kids come to school and go to each of their kid's classes so that they can figure out what it is their kids are doing all day. I decided to do mine in Spanish, which I was nervous about for about a week in advance. I went through my syllabus and translated the things I needed to beforehand which really helped. When the parents first got to school they had a presentation about the new things going on in the middle school, and then the seventh and eighth grade parents went upstairs to start the class rotation and the sixth grade parents stayed for a welcome-to-middle-school-type presentation. Some of our kids had been chosen to be guides, I think they were calling them edecanes, and they dressed up and escorted the parents around. They were so cute I could have puked. Anyway, when the parents finally came up to my class I had to firmly grip my syllabus to keep my hands from noticeably shaking, but the parents were very patient with me and laughed politely at my jokes and everything. Thank God. It was the second time since I've been here where I have really felt like I stretched my Spanish abilities, and I felt really good about it. Thankfully, I found some vocabulary and verb tenses that had been lying dormant in my Spanish lexicon for a long time and it came in very handy. Overall the Back to School Night went far better than I expected.

Today we went to school and reviewed for our upcoming language arts and spelling exams. The kids took their social studies exam and they did amazingly. I was really happy with their results. We played some review games during which I pretty sure the other teachers throughout the hall thought I was murdering my students from their screams. JP has been coming to school all week this week sick as a dog. He had a bad fever a few days ago and spent a round 13 hours at school for his own Back to School Night. He is feeling much better now though. When we came we watched a bit of Harry Potter and wandered around on El Conde for awhile. I think this weekend we are going to go out around here which I am really looking forward to. Hopefully I can use some Spanish, we'll see. I am working on sending emails, please keep them coming I love hearing from you guys!

The Tale of the Mysterious Bug Bite

2009-10-08T14:57:00.000-07:00

I woke up in the middle of the night on Thursday night to a sharp pain on the third toe of my right foot. After 2 seconds or so it started to itch like crazy, so I reluctantly got out of bed and went to the bathroom to see what it was. Being half asleep I couldn’t really see it, but decided it would be a good idea to scratch it as much it felt like it should be scratched, which was a lot. This resulted in me spending the next half an hour awake lying on top of my own foot to try to soothe the pain/itching that was radiating throughout it. When I woke up in the morning it still itched, but having learned my lesson I left it alone. During school it was bothering me under my shoe so when I got a chance I took it off to look at it. My toe was bright red and had swelled to twice its natural size. I was on my lunch break so I went to JP’s class to show him. He tried to get me to go to the school doctor, but when I got down to the infirmary she was outside lounging in the sun with some of the other staff and I felt weird pulling her away or worse, whipping my huge swollen toe out in front of all those ladies. I tried to ignore it.

That night we took a bus to a city called Cabarete. Doug, Stacy, JP, and I were going to catch the 4 o’clock bus, but Doug and Stacy had an electricity bill to pay so they followed us at 5. Here they cut off your electricity (I have heard) the first day that your bill is late. Also, you can’t pay online or mail in your payment; you have to pay at specific locations around the city. You also have to know where those locations are and be able to speak Spanish. Not super efficient. JP and I took the bus to Sosua (National Prostitution Capitol, remember?) and then got on the back of a mototaxi and rode the 14k to Cabarete. There we found our hotel, checked in (the hotel was called Tropical Beach Hotel, not a terribly imaginative name but pretty nice), and scarfed down some last minute dinner before they closed. Stacy and Doug arrived not long after and we went to a pizza place so that they could get something to eat too. We saw some prostitutes in the bathroom (unisex, weird anyway and especially weird in an establishment with prostitutes) and on the street, but not nearly as many as in Sosua. There were actually women in this city who were non-prostitutes (although most of them were sunbathing topless by day).

We wandered around for a bit after the pizza place and went down to the beach, where I indulged myself for the first time all day in scratching my foot. I tiptoed around it (no pun intended) and then vigorously scratched it by digging it down into the sand. It felt good and then horribly, horribly bad but the salt water helped. After the beach we were all really tired from the 4 hour bus ride, so we went to bed pretty early.

The next day I woke up and my foot was a swollen as ever, but there was a distinctive bulge/blister on it. Get ready, this is about to get gross. Being me, I tried to pop it, which didn’t work. We all went to breakfast and then down to the beach. There I finally just got on with it and scratched my toe, because it was itching worse than ever. It broke open and then after a few seconds a liquid oozed out. The magic of all of this was as soon as that happened it didn’t hurt or itch anymore. My body was right the whole time, it really needed vigorous scratching to get the poison out. While I was satisfied by that I am still wondering what on earth the bug was that bit me, and what was it doing in my bed? I think it might be time to consider sleeping with the windows open. I consider this event the first good one of a great day.

Next I settled in to reading Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. I have read one and a half of his books before and I have never really gotten what all the fuss is about, but now I see. I read it cover to cover sitting in that chair on this lovely beach. It is excellent. Read it if you haven’t. I think it converted me to a new, made-up, religion.

After that I got some free piña coladas from the bar, went to one of the pools and played with a beach ball with Doug while JP ran and Stacy got a massage, and then showered and went to dinner. We had wine and a really good dinner (served with a side dish of sneaking the Haitian kids food through the railing) and then dessert and coffee (without which no great day would be complete) and then sat by the pool and waiting for the night show of African dance to start. We sat at the edge of the pool with our feet hanging in the water and watch as the dancers ran around the stage to various Lion King and other miscellaneous songs wearing next to nothing (think zebra thong for the lead) and screaming Hakkuna Mattata and cracking a whip. I could not figure out if any of them had actually seen The Lion King before. The dancing itself was pretty cool, and there was a fire breather, but the lady in the zebra thong gyrating to “He Lives in Me” was a little off-putting, especially because I think that song is about God.

After the show we had some last minute free drinks and then went to a bar. We had consumed enough where Stacy and I felt certain that we could get the whole club dancing. After two hours and a lot of sweating we had not succeeded, but we had fun trying. We went down to the water and then back to our hotel rooms for the night. It was a simple day that included everything I like. It was amazing. Not to mention I was no longer thinking about my toe, which was nice.

Sunday we ate breakfast, sat by the beach for awhile, swam, wandered around the city, went back to Sosua, got on another bus, and rode 4 hours home. When we got back I went running with JP which was really nice and something I really needed after the amount of food I consumed this weekend.

Boring me

2009-10-01T18:30:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

I haven't blogged much this week because I have been tired and my life has been pretty simple and boring. After all the craziness of the last few weeks this has been a delightful and welcome change. This week with the kids has been particularly bad, their behavior has been an all-time low, but otherwise everything is going really well. JP and I are loving our new apartment and neighborhood. JP joined a gym down the street and I am thinking about doing the same because the ol' work pants are getting a little tight. Notice that I am thinking about it, and not actually doing it. I don't want to do anything rash. If the gym sounded unappealing in Michigan you better believe it sounds unappealing here with the constant heat and humidity. I'll sleep on (and eat on it) it for another week or so before I decide.

On a less than positive note for my already too-tight pants, JP, Doug, Stacy and I are going to an all-inclusive resort for the weekend to celebrate Stacy's birthday. Those of you who know me know that I am not a huge fan of the all-inclusive thing, but I am actually really looking forward to it this time. I am not looking at it as a chance to venture out into a new city, but instead as a chance to do nothing and to have piña coladas brought to me while I lounge by the beach and read. Does this mean I am getting old? I promise that I still really like to venture around new cities! Please don't disown me as a friend, Moni.

Last night JP, Bridgitte, and I went with Nick to his two friends that we met last week's house (Harris and Mike). Was that sentence grammatically correct? Anyway, we stayed for a few beers and I met some more people. I am so happy to be meeting people that I feel like a middle schooler all over again. Like me, please like me! I got a couple girls' phone numbers so hopefully I will extend my network here. If I can be half the social butterfly I was when I was actually 12 (or 1/4 the social butterfly my sister is) I should be in good shape.

This was kind of disjointed. If my students turned this in I would make notes about structure and transitions. Sorry. Hopefully they don't read it. Love you all.

Stacy and Doug's Apartment, Wok, Tangerine

2009-09-27T08:47:00.000-07:00

So yesterday after I blogged I went to the ATM, and then with JP to the gym down the street that he is joining to help him sign up (totally unnecessary, he did it all himself anyway, his Spanish is getting really good). I wandered around on El Conde again trying to buy some dresses that I would be cooler in. It was scorchingly hot yesterday. I felt really thrifty by the time I got home, I had gotten 4 dresses for a little over $40. Even though you would think things like that would be super cheap here most clothes are imported so they are really expensive, I'm going to have to stock up when I get back. I came back from the after a couple of hours of wandering and read for awhile and hung out at our apartment. Bridgitte was allowed to move in yesterday at 5 so we moved her stuff down the hall into her new apartment.

At around 7 I headed towards where I used to live to go to a night out with Stacy, Melissa, Alex, and one of the other teachers I work with, Zara. We went to Stacy and Doug's house and had some beer while Doug politely listened to his head phones and sat on the deck to give us space. We left after an hour or so and went to dinner at a restaurant called Wok. Really delicious chinese food, pretty upscale restaurant. We chatted and tried to avoid talking about work. After dinner Melissa and Zara went back home and Stacy, Alex and I tried to find a dance club to go to.

You don't really appreciate how bad driving in the city is until you are with someone you know driving. Alex drove us last night. With cab drivers you don't really think about it, but Alex was having to dodge holes and had several narrow misses with other cars. Finding parking is also nearly impossible. The first club we tried to go to had boards over the doors, so we tried another which had kids around our (their) students' ages in line, so we tried another near where my old apartment was which had around 100 men in the same striped button-down shirt and gelled hair. This one was just right. Well actually, the music was pretty bad and the drinks were expensive (for here, $15 for two drinks) but we had fun. They played a remix of Will Smith "Miami" which brought back good Ecuador memories of Moni, and some other equally bad stuff, but we danced around for awhile and then called it quits and went home. Overall it was a good night.

Saturday Morning in Zona Colonial

2009-09-26T07:23:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

So yesterday we went back to school after our day off on Thursday, which confused most of my sixth graders into thinking it was Monday and many of them asked me for the homework for the week, which they received on Monday already. I had to explain to them that it was not Monday. Sad. After school I went to get a sandwich and coffee with Stacy at this place near school called Sonoma, which is delicious. JP met us there after his run and we went over to Stacy and Doug's apartment where they showed us pictures of when Doug went through the window of a Ford Explorer on his bike, this really weird but funny video on YouTube called Waxinpoo (has anyone seen this?) and fed us delicious burritos. Overall a very good trip to their apartment. After about 3 hours there we decided to go to La Sirena (Target/Walmarty store) to buy food since we were already having to take a taxi back to Zona Colonial and Stacy and Doug came with us to buy wine. An hour later we had a cart full of groceries, seeds, and contact paper for me to do projects, and we left and came back to our apartment. We were both really tired but Nick had called and asked if we wanted to go out. We decided to go out and have a drink, and ended up having one of the most fun nights that I have had since I've been here. We got back and set our groceries down, and then went for a walk on El Conde, which is a street that cars can't drive on one block from our house. It's the main street for wandering around in Zona Colonial. We met him there and he was with this girl named Camila who also lives around here. She was here doing an HIV/AIDS/Syphilis project for Harvard Medical. Hopefully we'll see her again because I really liked her. Anyway, the four of us went to this Reggae bar and when we got there some of Nick's other friends were there and they brought friends. For the first time since I got here I was in a crowd of people to talk to. I loved it. Two of the guys, Mike and Harris, were also working with HIV/AIDS through the Clinton Foundation, and they had some Norwegian couch surfers with them and a Dominican girl named Miriam. It was really nice to meet some new people. I feel sometimes like it's hard to do here. We had a few drinks and chatted at the Reggae bar, which was called El Espiral (Moni you would love this place, picture lots of dreads, live reggae and jewelry stands). I really liked it because it was divided into two rooms, one was indoors and had the bar and the jewelry stands, and the other was a courtyard with the live music. It was great because it was quiet enough in the bar room that you could hear each other talk, and in the courtyard it was all people dancing. Best of both worlds. After that we went to this bar called Parada 77 (I put these names in for my own memories and also so I can be discovered by Lonely Planet) which was a small dance club with lots of salsa, bachata, merengue and reggaeton. Awesome. JP and I danced for awhile but then got into an argument about what kind of dancing we were supposed to be doing (I though Salsa he though Merengue... gringos), and we stopped dancing. I think JP was right though and I just don't know how to dance Merengue. Right after that they started playing reggaeton and they played Atrevete and after that there was nowhere to go but down so JP and I went home and went to bed. We felt like we were being lame because it was still a big party but it was already 2 and we had gotten up at 5:50. Great night. I think today I am just going t lounge around and walk around the city, and then later tonight a bunch of the girls from school are going to go out to dinner and go dancing, which should be a good time. I am in the process of updating my photosites so check them out.

Love you.

News

2009-09-24T16:29:00.000-07:00

Hello Loyal Blog Followers,

So JP and I resolved our housing situation. We have moved in together! We are living in the Zona Colonial in this amazing apartment. It is two stories and has two ocean view balconies. Ridiculous. Not as enormous as the last apartment but it makes up for it in character. Sorry I didn't tell you all before, I felt that it would be best if our families didn't hear about it via blog. It ended up making the most sense to live together because of financial reasons, plus we like each other.

That announcement out of the way we had the day off of school today. It's really nice having all of my friends be at the same school sometimes particularly when we have days off. I woke up early, ate some delicious oatmeal and drank coffee (JP made both, I think I am going to like living together), took a shower, and then wandered around the city for awhile. I was lured into some souvenir shops and bought some postcards and some amber earrings. Amber is really big here, so is another stone called Larimar, which is a little lighter blue than turquoise. After wandering for awhile I bought some flowers for the apartment and some fruit and came home, and then left right away again to meet up with Stacy and Doug. The three of us wandered all over. We went to this place called La Cafetera where we had a ridiculously cheap and good breakfast. I guess a lot of musicians and artists hang out there too so I am going to go there all the time, it's right by my house. We went around to some more tourist spots (I really wanted to be super touristy for the day) and went to this huge market called Mercado Modelo. There I was enticed to buy more jewelry (a pair of larimar earrings and a larimar ring) and Stacy bought a painting. There were chickens in cages sitting in front of freshly cut chicken breasts, fruit and vegetable stands, stands with crafts, and a bunch of places with Haitian Voodoo things. I told Stacy and Doug that even though I don't believe in any of that stuff I wouldn't mess with it either. It looks really intense. Lots of good luck charms but scarier things as well like potions and voodoo dolls.

When we came back we had a beer and wandered for a bit more, and then Stacy and Doug went back to Paraiso to go home. I walked around for a bit and then I came back and JP and I went up to the next block to watch a religious procession. It ended up being impossible just to watch because of the number of people so we ended up being part of the procession and singing things like Ave Maria and yelling "Que Viva!" to things that a guy in the crowd said that we couldn't hear or understand. The holiday today was the saint day of La Virgen Las Mercedes. There was a huge statue of a virgin being paraded through the city lead by hundreds of people and the army and navy bands. We marched along with them for a few blocks and then ducked out of the crowd to make our way over to the fruit market and buy some bootlegged DVDs. Sacrilege? I think so. Anyway, we bought both and we just got home a minute ago. Our home! Together! It's great. Bridgitte is staying here too while she gets ready to move into another apartment in our building. We are going to be one big happy family around here. I love you all. I'll give you the address as soon as I know what it is. As far as I can tell the apartments don't have numbers.

It's been a long time, I shouldn't have left you

2009-09-21T17:59:00.000-07:00

Hello blog followers,

Sorry that it has been so long since I have blogged, don't worry, everything is alright, although it concerns me that only my aunt and uncle (Kris and Chris) thought to ask. For future reference, if I don't blog it's a sure sign of trouble in paradise. That's right folks, prepare for a tale of woe, misery, and limited access to the internet. Okay, I'm still in the Caribbean so not really (the internet part is true though). Here are some of the major events since I last blogged.

I don't know if I told you all before or not but I decided to move out of my lovely apartment near school and into the Zona Colonial where I spend most of my time. JP has been living here for a little over a week now. He was staying in an apartahotel called Serena (if you're interested in coming down for a visit and you have really simple taste you should check it out it's ridiculously cheap). I have been spending most of my time down there because JP was there and Bridgitte was literally a block from him. We've been doing a lot of wandering around and drinking liters of beer on Bridgitte's massive balcony (sadly she is also moving). I came down one night and JP was cooking dinner with the man who guards the street who seems very nice and terrifying at the same time. Mostly because he is really friendly but has a huge scar from having his cheek cut. I didn't really go to my apartment at all this week except to change clothes, and then this weekend JP and I decided to travel to the beach. Lucky for us Sarah, Sean, and Bridgitte were also interested in the idea. We went to a beach about 2 hours from Santo Domingo called Bayahibe. It's low season right now so there weren't a lot of people except for some coming in on boat tours from bigger towns. It was a little town with some nice beach and a lot of fishing boats. Far fewer prostitutes than last week also which was refreshing, we did, however, see some male "escorts" escorting some overweight European women. Nice. We just relaxed there, we stayed in a hotel called Villa Iguana which was off the main path and was really nice for around $40 a night, not bad. We just played cards (I learned a new game called Golf) and ate and laid on the beach. It was just what I needed after a stressful week of looking for housing.

Okay, I'll admit, it wasn't exactly a tale of misery and woe. The real reason that I haven't been blogging is that I haven't been to my apartment in awhile and JP's hotel didn't have internet. Email me anyway though! Love you all! I promise to give you better blog posts in the future.

Thursday through Sunday

2009-09-13T18:25:00.000-07:00

Thursday-

I went to school as normal, and then afterwards I went into Zona Colonial with Bridgitte to look at apartments. It was Bridgitte's birthday so we were really hoping to find something for her as a great birthday present. She has been looking all over town for an apartment with a big balcony, and she found this apartment that is basically a balcony with rooms. She loved it and decided to take it. She moved in over the weekend. After that she, JP, and I went out for a few drinks at this restaurant by the ocean and then for a few more at a colmado. I think Bridgitte had a really good birthday and when she came home she found a present outside her door that JP had left for her. It was a basket of delicious foodstuffs. That boy is so thoughtful.

Friday-

JP took a job at the school! He is going to be a permanent substitute, and he is going to be filling in for a third grade teacher for 3 months while she is out on maternity leave. For now he will just be subbing for different teachers around the school. He signed the contract on Friday and immediately began work. We had a half day of school for the kids, so they were wilder than normal for a Friday, but we had a good class in Language Arts and then in our shortened Social Studies class we discussed 9/11 and the impact that it had on them and their families which went better than I ever could have expected. After the kids left all the staff stayed to work, and I didn't get as much as I wanted to done because I spent a good deal of my time talking to my roommates, so I think that I will be staying later than I would like this week. After school I rushed home to pack a bag, talked to Alex, and got in a taxi to go to the beach. This whole week we were planning on going to this city called Constanza, but then Friday afternoon we realized that the bus left at 3 and we got out of work at 2:45, so we just went to the bus station to pick something when we got there. We packed beach clothes. Things like this make me love life. We got to the bus station and aided by Lonely Planet and the information desk we decided to go to a city called Sosua. We got on the bus at around 6 and took off for the beach. We stopped somewhere to pick up more passengers and JP, Doug, and Stacy got off to buy food and use the bathroom and the bus pulled away and almost left them but finally heard me and another guy on the bus shouting to the driver. When we got to the city we overpaid for a cab ride, booked a room, promptly found bugs in the bed, unchecked out, searched for a new hotel, got lost, overpaid for another cab ride which took us back to where we started, finally got to the hotel we were looking for and realized that it was no longer operational. By this time it was about 11:30 at night. We wandered down the road and found another hotel, but it was too expensive. We found another one that was just right (get the goldilocks reference?) and we stayed there finally. Once we got settled in our rooms we went out by the pool and played cards for a little while, and went to get some food (curry sausage at a German restaurant at 1 a.m. very weird but delicious). While we were out we started to notice an inordinate number of scantily clad women. After watching them for awhile we started to realize that these women were finding men that they seemed not to know, sitting at their tables, laughing overly hard at their jokes with their heads thrown back, haggling over prices, and then leaving with them. These women were prostitutes! And not only were there prostitutes out that night, but we were the only people who were neither prostitutes or men looking for prostitutes. There were so many prostitutes that we were getting weird looks for being so out of place. This was going on at every bar all along the main road of the town. It was so strange I didn't even know what to think, so after sausage and a good hour or so of people watching we went home to bed.

Saturday-

We all slept in on Saturday morning and then went down to the beach. We stopped at the non-operational hotel which was a functioning restaurant overlooking the water and had a delicious breakfast. We went down to the water and booked a little snorkeling tour (Stacy and I had bought snorkeling equipment on the way down to the beach) and rented an umbrella. We swam around for about a half an hour in the most amazingly clear water that I have ever seen and then got into a glass-bottomed boat and went out to a small coral reef. We got in the water and swam around for an hour looking at beautiful fish and coral while our guide fed the fish in order to encourage them to swarm around us. This was admittedly a little inauthentic but very cool and much appreciated. After that we went back to the beach and splashed around for awhile and laid under our umbrella. When the sun set we sat on the deck of the same restaurant where we ate breakfast, The Waterfront, and had drinks and appetizers. It was a pretty perfect afternoon. We went home after that, took showers, and then went to eat dinner at a restaurant across the street where we spent the vast majority of the time trying to figure out if our waitresses were prostitutes and if the overly friendly chef was a pimp. For some reason they were speaking to us in English so I do not think they realized we could understand the heated prostitute/pimp argument they got into 20 feet from our table which confirmed our suspicions. After dinner we went back for awhile, chatted by our pool, met a guy from North Carolina who was working in the Virgin Islands and no doubt in Sosua for the sex trade, saw and old man and a scantily clad young woman come back to the hotel and then leave again 45 minutes later, and decided maybe it was time to leave. We went out to a bar where we almost immediately received our bill, a surefire sign here that they wish you would leave, people-watched for awhile, and then went back home to bed. Before we did Doug, Stacy and I decided to walk down to the beach. We stood there for a minute, realized the beach at night in this city was probably not a good idea, and then turned around and almost tripped over a sleeping homeless man that we hadn't seen on the way in. We decided that the day had been eventful enough and we decided to turn in for the night.

Sunday-

In the morning we went to the beach and swam for awhile, I read the Agatha Christie book that I stole from the hotel, and then we ate a delicious breakfast (more prostitute people watching) and checked out of the hotel. The bus ride back was about 4 1/2 hours, and when we got back we went to the store, JP came to my house to pick up some stuff, and he went back to his. This was one of the more eventful and interesting weekends of my life. On one hand it was a really tranquil weekend at one of the most beautiful beaches I have ever been with great company, and on the other it was a social research project on prostitution. Seemingly an incompatible mix it made for a great weekend.

JP Moved Out Yesterday

2009-09-10T04:02:00.000-07:00

So yesterday in school my first two hours were hideous, and then my third hour came in super prepared, they all had their materials, and they got right to work. They made my morning. I gave them all a present of a homework pass.

After school I came home for awhile, chatted with Alex, and JP gathered his stuff to move out (worst). So when we were ready we got a cab to Ciudad Nueva (close to Zona Colonial) and unloaded a backpack and a suitcase and moved JP into a little apartment there. It's a studio, and it's a lot more like what I imagined living conditions would be in the Dominican Republic. It is clean, and it has everything he needs (water, light, refrigerator, tv, fans) but it is a little bit dingy. The refrigerator is kind of rusty and there is a plug in stove-top to cook food on, there is no hot water, and the bathroom doesn't have a door, so it's definitely a little more rustic than the apartment that I am staying in, but I actually really like it there. It feels so much more Dominican to me (not because it's dingy).

There is a lot more going on on the street, and yesterday we walked up and were next to the motorcycle that was bringing the water we had just bought from the colmado, and as we were unloading it this guy I have seen around there a couple of times just walks up and starts helping us get things off the motorcycle to take in. So far, that has been how people are here. When we bought the water we asked a guy on the street if they sold the big bottles of water in the colmado behind him. He not only answered our question, but went inside, checked, and then ordered the bottle for us. He didn't work there he was just sitting outside reading the newspaper. So far the people that I have met really go out of their way to do nice things for others, even if they don't know them. It is really refreshing. Like Stacy, for example, lost her luggage on the way here, and two separate people at school brought her bags of their own clothes to school the next day so she would have something to wear. It's so ridiculously nice.

Anyway, I really like JP's new apartment, and I think I will be spending a lot of time there. It feels more real there if that makes any sense, where I am living I feel like I'm living in a bank or a mall or something, it's kind of a sterile neighborhood. Well, as sterile as a neighborhood with dead dogs and begging children on the street could be. I'll try to remember to take pictures of the apartment and my classroom and post them so you guys can see. Love you all!

Solo Adventure in Town, Big Bummer

2009-09-08T18:35:00.000-07:00

Today at school was one of those days. The kids were going wild, and by the end of the day I didn't have the energy to keep up with them. I doled out a few punishments and was relieved when lunch time came and I didn't have any more classes for the day.

I came home, got some money, left the apartment, bought a phone card because I had run out of minutes, and took the cab downtown to the Gazque area, which is the part of the city that Bridgitte is going to live in. Then I got a phone call from this guy who owns an Apartahotel in Zona Colonial where he rents out really cheap rooms long term. JP wasn't sure when he was going to be able to move into his apartment so I went to see if he could rent a room until then. This place is super close to the ocean, like half a block, and they rent out studio apartments for ridiculously cheap prices to foreigners. I think he is going to take a room there for awhile, because it looks like his apartment will not be ready as soon as we thought.

When I came back to the apartment we ate dinner and then Mitch, the guy who wanted to rent JP a room in his place, came to pick us up and we went over there to check it out. When we got there though, something didn't seem right. That something turned out to be that all of the bedrooms are filled, and JP can move in when someone moves out, but no one is sure when that will be. Tight.

Anyway, the day turned out to be kind of a bummer in the end because we thought that JP was going to be moving to this fabulous apartment a few blocks from here, but now he is going to be moving pretty far away. Don't worry all, we still like each other. Love you guys, email me soon!

Yo

2009-09-07T15:19:00.000-07:00

That's "yo" as in "what's up" not as in "I" in Spanish. I got home awhile ago from school for the day, and I realized that I forgot to blog yesterday. Sin of all sins. Are those called cardinal sins? I'm a bad Catholic. Anyway, I have spent the last hour (I wish I were exaggerating) trying to buy skype minutes and then call people on a very weak internet connection (by weak I mean weak and stolen from neighbors). No one answered their phones, probably because it looks like a crazy telemarketer number, but really it's a crazy ex-telemarketer's number. Get it? Hollaifyahearme Tuli, Shannon and Ann (sound that one out guys). So school went really well today, the sixth graders are starting to be manageable for me, and we have been doing really cool stuff lately. This week in Language Arts we are talking about eating bugs, which is fun with 11 year olds. I realized the other day that I could be their mothers. Weird. They are little free-thinking people. Granted, I would be a very young mother, having had them at the age of 12, but nonetheless, it's possible. It's been a pretty uneventful day so far, I did have a discussion with Melissa and Alex on the merits of castrating sexual predators, a cause I stand behind, but I think I may have really alarmed Melissa with my radical, and borderline violent and vengeful, political views.

Yesterday morning JP, Bridgitte and I went wandering around from this place called Ciudad Nueva near the colonial zone to where Bridgitte is going to live next year. It was a very long, very hot walk, and we stopped at a colmado for a beer on the way. It was the first time I have done that, and we sat in lawn chairs that said "Presidente" which is the biggest beer here on them. I felt very Dominican because I see Dominicans do that all the time and I want to be in the club. Granted, we were basically all by ourselves at this colmado (reminder, colmado is kind of like a partystore but it is open to the outside and people sit there and drink) so we were definitely not part of any club but I think it's a baby-step in the right direction.

After that we went to this place called Plaza de la Cultura, but everything seemed to be closed, so we took a cab home. I watched the better part of "Changeling" with Angelina Jolie, and then went out for Sushi for Sarah's birthday. We went to this restaurant called Aka where I have been before and it is really really good. Best miso soup ever, I think I have told you that before. Anyway, it was nice to get out and we didn't even talk about school which was even better. We came back, I finished Changeling (so good) and then watched half of The Reader. I think I am going to start watching half of movies at a time because it makes the end so much more interesting. Anyway, good two days, sorry to keep you all in the dark for so long about what I did yesterday, I'm sure many of you had trouble sleeping last night.

Tropical storm, shmopical storm

2009-09-05T18:37:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

So this whole weekend was supposed to be this big tropical storm, and all it did was rain for awhile yesterday. We probably could have gone to the beach and had a lovely time. Actually, to be fair, it was only a tropical depression, but still, when you stay home for the weekend you at least expect a cool storm to watch. Anyway, today Bridgitte, JP and I went to this city near Santo Domingo called San Cristobal. It was pretty cool, and I was really happy that we went because it was off the tourist path and reminded me what I like about Latin America once again. There was a market there that was not a handicrafts market, but a fruit and clothing market for Dominicans, and it stretched for blocks and blocks. To be honest, I felt a little like an intruder there because it was so obviously not geared toward tourists, but I am really glad that we got a chance to see and experience it. The only thing I bought there was a bootlegged CD, as if to prove that I am, in fact, a tourist.

We ate lunch at this really fancy looking restaurant overlooking the plaza which looked very expensive and turned out to be about $5 per plate, which is amazingly cheap by any standards and much cheaper than Santo Domingo. We took a little bus there and back which I haven't done all that much and I was glad to not be taking a taxi. We got dropped off back in the city in Chinatown, which I always forget is here, walked around for a second, and walked through Zona Colonial. We got a little lost and ended up asking a bunch of people on the street for directions, and they were so so nice and helpful. JP thought they were as nice and polite as in the midwest but I thought they were nicer.

After that we had a drink at a little restaurant by the Malecon and took a taxi back home. JP and I went in the pool and in a little while we are going to watch some stolen movies online. It was a really good day and I am really glad that we got a chance to see San Cristobal. I think I would like to go back there again and check out some of the museums and things like that.

Most importantly of all, our girl, Monica Hamlett, is finally fulfilling her dream of living on a beach and selling her jewelry on a blanket. The beach is called Los Angeles and the blanket is called the internet. Check it out, she makes really beautiful stuff. Tell your friends. Check out her website. I already bought this one below. The top one is for you.

Tropically Depressed

2009-09-05T06:19:00.000-07:00

Tropical Depression Erika (spelled wrong in a previous post) has rained on our parade. Get it? It's a pun. Because it's a tropical depression and that means lots of rain. Oh you got it right from the beginning? Sorry. ANYWAY, so we were planning, for the second time, to go to a city called Cabarete which is in the north part of the country and is apparently a really cool beach town. However, because of the inclement weather we decided to stay in Santo Domingo for the night, and maybe go on a little adventure tomorrow. We may either go to a city called San Cristobal, which I guess has a lot of historic sites and was also where Trujillo, the ex-Dominican dictator, was born. Another option is to go to the interior of the country and see some waterfalls or cave paintings or something like that and stay the night. I'm not sure which we'll do this weekend but I guess we have plenty of time to get around to all the cool spots. It is Bridgitte's birthday next week and she wants to go to San Cristobal, so I think J.P. and I might go there for the day with her and check it out.

School went really well today, I had a really good social studies lesson where the kids had to pretend that they were dropped down into a landscape with nothing and they had to figure out how they would survive and make a poster. It was pretty cool, we are going to finish it up on Monday. I am starting to feel very sorry for J.P though, because when things go badly for me at school I talk on and on about it, and when things go well I talk on and on about it. I guess that he'll be a teacher too before you know it (at the language institute) and then at least we can swap stories.

Later-

Okay so I abandoned my last post to talk to J.P. and Melissa, and then Doug and Stacy came over and we wandered down the street and got a drink with them. We had a hilarious conversation about Doug's first grade class (Doug, forgive me for publishing this). Apparently the other day one of Doug's first graders had a 5 peso coin and he was showing another first grader, and the other pulled out a 10 peso coin, and another pulled out a 50 peso coin and they were all showing each other their money and being impressed. Doug thought that it was ridiculous, and knew that he should tell them to put their money away, but realized that he had about 2,500 pesos in his pocket, so he did an "Oh yeah kids, well what do you think about this" (He, of course, did not actually say that) and pulled out his money and flashed it at them. He said that after he did pretty much every kid in the class got out their money to show and he had to send them all over to their backpacks to put it away. He said that the next day there was a noticeable rise in first graders bringing money to school and showing each other, and he had to make them all put it in their lockers, and he didn't tell his assistant anything had happened the day before. Hilarious.

Japer got a job!

2009-09-03T17:41:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody,

So today I went to school, had my classes (who behaved much better than two days ago), got fruit from Sergio at lunch (I think he is a little mad that I haven't been coming more often lately), met up with Melissa and got coffee, came back to school, did my planning for my SUPER COOL Social Studies project tomorrow (there is a chance that I am going to be the only one who thinks it's super cool), went shopping for some supplies for my classroom with my own money (bummer), and came home.

When I got here Japer told me that he got a job! He is going to be working at a language institute where the technology teacher from school works also. He is going to be giving English classes. It is about a block or two from here and very close to where his new apartment will be as well. Did I tell you guys that he found an apartment? Well, he found an apartment with two other guys and he went out to lunch with one of them (aw) and they really liked each other. The apartment comes with central air that he doesn't have to pay for, a full-time maid that he doesn't have to pay for, and at least one roommate that he likes. Pretty good deal. Job and an apartment for J.P, things are moving along nicely. He also is speaking a lot of Spanish and doing really well.

After I came home I cooked some dinner which consisted of rice, beans, and beef. The beef tasted like Ecuadorian beef (not a compliment, a close relative of shoe leather), but the rest of it was pretty good. Supposedly there is a possible bus strike this weekend as well as "Tropical Depression Erica" so it is not looking good for the beach. Our numbers for the trip are dwindling fast. I think J.P. and I might go anyway, but I'm not sure. On that suspenseful note, I am going to bed. Keep checking my blog to see what happens to me.

Love you guys.

Ms. Dark- Disciplinarian

2009-09-02T16:31:00.000-07:00

Today I wore my business attire to school instead of my uniform (white polo and khakis). This is what I do when I know that I am going to lecture the kids about their behavior (a.k.a. yell at the kids). For some reason, I can't imagine them taking me seriously lecturing them in a polo shirt. Anyway, with any luck by the end of the year they will be nervous if they see me come in dressed nicely. So I told the kids about the State of the Union address in the U.S, and I told them that I was going to give them a State of Our Classroom address. I told them about all the things they are doing well so far and all the things that they are not doing so well. It was a good little lecture and they behaved better for 1 hour, and then when they came back later they were misbehaving again, so they ended up doing silent book work. It actually was a pretty good day at school though. I felt as though the kids learned something about social studies because they were more focused than normal.

After school I went with some other teachers to get a drink and something to eat, and J.P. met us there. We talked about our trip this coming weekend and gruesome injury stories that everyone had (I didn't have any I just sat there and grimaced). I don't know how we got on that topic but some of the teachers had some really funny stories. After that J.P. and I went to the grocery store, came home, and now we are sitting around (not just J.P. and I, but everyone in my apartment) on our respective computers. I thought I would blog to you all and pretend to be working like everyone else. Anyway, love you all. Write me some emails!

Tuesday

2009-09-02T03:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was J.P. and my three year anniversary. His parents actually have the same one I think, so Happy Anniversary Severins if you are reading. Anyway, we celebrated it with such romantic endeavors as meeting for coffee after school so that I could talk about frustrations, getting frozen yogurt at the Walmarty place, and having a handstand competition in our apartment complex's pool, which we had to enter by climbing over the fence. While we were in the pool we saw our friend the squirrel-sized rat for the second time. It was actually probably our best anniversary yet, particularly the handstand competition. Unfortunately, I had so much work yesterday that I had to bring some of it home and go in early this morning, so I didn't get to enjoy it to the fullest, but I think we might go on some sort of trip together next weekend. Those of you who have been to the D.R, do you have any suggestions? This weekend is Sarah and Bridgitte's birthday so we are all taking a trip to Cabarete to celebrate. It should be really fun. Cabarete is the surfer beach that I thought we were going to a few weeks ago, when we ended up in Las Terrenas. We'll see where we end up this week. Love you all! Keep the emails coming!

A Bad Case of the Mondays (Beware of Too Much Information)

2009-08-31T17:12:00.000-07:00

By the Mondays I mean food poisoning. I decided that it would be a good idea to make oatmeal in the microwave with tap water. As many of you probably know, when you heat water in the microwave for three minutes it gets very hot, but it does not boil. As many of you also may be aware in order to kill bacteria you need to actually boil water. I did not do this, and in about 12 hours I made three bowls of oatmeal. Melissa yesterday said, “Are you sure you should be using tap water for that?” and I responded that I thought it was probably fine. Unfortunately, I was wrong about that. I went to school today but spent a very long 50 minutes with one of my classes waiting for a window where I could sprint to the bathroom (too personal?) and then left as soon as my last class left for the day. I came home and took a long nap which really helped, but since eating dinner my stomach has started to hurt again so hopefully it settles down. What a lovely post this was. Sorry.

Japer's Race, Zona Colonial, Being Chased by Wild Dogs

2009-08-30T17:31:00.000-07:00

We woke up really early this morning to go to J.P's Triathlon. Somehow he managed to find one within the first month of coming here, another in three weeks, the national federation of triathlon, and a team to train with. I think he was a bloodhound in another life. Anyway it was shockingly well organized and setup and it was on this really pretty beach inside the city. The beach inside the city normally is quite dirty and the waves are really rough, but this was inside a little harbor with blue water and no waves. It was really nice. For those of you who are interested in the details you should read J.P's blog, which is www.poohbeartri.blogspot.com. The name is because he gets honey all over things, not because we call each other by disgusting pet names.

Anyway, after the triathlon we came back to the apartment, showered, I scoped out my redneck sunburn, and we went to wander in Zona Colonial. I know you guys probably think we never go anywhere else in the city, and the truth is, you're right. We still haven't really figured out where everything is. You know how when there is a flood or a storm or something you are supposed to follow the rats or the little animals to higher ground? Well, in Santo Domingo we are basically doing the same thing only the rats and little animals are other gringos and higher ground is pretty buildings and places to buy souvenirs. We tried today to wander a little bit off the beaten path though, and we ended up in a residential neighborhood where we were followed down the street by a snarling female dog (those of you who have been to Ecuador may be able to guess how we knew she was female, hint to the rest of you, unspayed dogs eventually develop something akin to udders) and J.P. picked up a rock to throw at her if she got too close to us. Unfortunately, he kept the rock in his hand after we went around the corner and a Dominican guy who was sitting on his steps ducked and covered his head, thinking that J.P. was going to knock him out. J.P. surrendered the rock after that. I showed J.P. that cool restaurant where we went the other night, and we found our way back to the gift shop part of the city. The gift shops are kind of cute, but there is a really good restaurant near there where we had dinner, and then wandered around some old monuments. It was a really cool trip because we saw some parts of the Zona Colonial which were less touristy and a lot cooler, and also got delicious food.

After that we came back, I did some grading and lesson plan writing, and our power went out 5 times during that time. I am quickly learning to charge my computer whenever I can, and preferably at school where we don't pay for electricity. I have also been trying to satisfy my craving for airconditioning at school, hoping that if I use enough there I won't need it when I get home, but so far that hasn't been working out so well. Overall, except for the sunburn, it was a really good day in the city. I told J.P. that instead of teaching here I would just like to go to the beach and have weekends. I wonder if I could get paid for that? If you hear of anything let me know.

Oh yeah, he also wanted me to blog about a story I told him today. So a couple of weeks ago Melissa and I went over to the botanical gardens in the city to wander around. We were right outside the gardens about to cross the street when a funeral procession drove by. As many of you probably know catcalling is incredibly common in Latin America, and women are constantly accosted by a deluge of calls by nearly every man they pass. If they are not actually called to they are at least stared at. Well, as Melissa and I waited (respectfully I thought) for the funeral procession to pass none other than the hearse driver rolled down his window and called "Hola rubias" (which here means any white person) or something to that effect in a creepy voice. Now the catcalling is normally annoying and at times very uncomfortable, but never would I have thought that I would get it from a man driving a hearse leading a funeral procession. It was amazing.

Pussycat Dolls and Juan Dolio

2009-08-29T16:44:00.000-07:00

Friday I had a really good day at school. The kids are getting better and better as they figure out how to behave. One of my students did try to turn in the lyrics to a Pussycat Dolls song (“When I Grow Up”) for an essay about dream jobs and I had to explain to her, twice, why that wasn’t acceptable, but other than that things have been going really well at school. When I came home (we have to leave at three on Fridays because they fumigate the school) I tried to make myself a fruit smoothie with J.P’s blender (and when I say fruit smoothie I mean smashed up mango and rum) and it wouldn’t turn on. Any of you who know JP well know that his blender is his most prized possession. For those of you who do not know J.P. very well it should be obvious because he brought it with him to the Dominican Republic in his one suitcase. Anyway, there was some serious mourning to be done so we walked up to the grocery store to console him. He went to look at new blenders but he thought it was too soon. He set it outside on the balcony when we got home to see if the inside would dry out (the problem was that it got wet) and now it’s working! Mango and rum for all!

After we grocery shopped Sean and Sarah came over, and then Doug and Stacy and we went to the Zona Colonial for a drink. We found a different area there where I have never been and it overlooks the river and there are some restaurants and really old buildings. It was amazingly beautiful there. We went to this restaurant called “Angelo’s” and sat on the roof. We each only ordered one drink because it was ridiculously expensive but it was really nice up there. It was especially nice because all of the people I was with work at the school, but we didn’t talk about work. We sat and talked for a long time and then decided to plan on going to the beach on Saturday.

This morning I woke up early, had breakfast, and Stacy and Doug came over and Stacy, Doug, Bridgitte, and I went to this beach called Juan Dolio. It is about an hour outside of the city. We called a cab to take us to the bus station and he offered to take us all the way there, wait, and then bring us back for about $15 each, so we decided to do that instead of taking the bus. We got there and wandered down the beach for awhile, and then we sat down at some restaurant and tried to order food. They brought us menus and then asked for our membership numbers. We didn’t even know the name of where we were and obviously did not have a membership so we were politely told that we could stay at the table but could not be served food. Awkward. So we kept walking down the beach and then realized that there was no way out and Bridgitte was really thirsty. We walked back a little ways and then found a hotel that we could walk through to get to the road and the guy there offered to drive us to get water on the back of his motorcycle with Bridgitte and I for 50 pesos (divide by 35). We hopped on the back (sorry Mom) and went down to a place where we sat at a little bar and got waters and then beers (maybe a bit counterproductive). Stacy and Doug decided to walk instead of riding on the motorbikes, which was probably a smart idea but it took them awhile to catch up to us. We ate at this really nice restaurant and then laid in the sand and read while Doug played with some Haitian kids with boogie boards in the water. You guys should check out my photosite soon. I will put the pictures of the beach up there. If Las Terrenas was the most beautiful beach I have ever seen this was definitely in the top 4. It was so pretty, bright blue water, bright blue sky, white sand, palm trees, the whole bit. Come visit! Anyway, so far it has been a great weekend and best of all I have barely talked about work at all, which is a difficult feat when everyone you hang out with is a coworker. It’s been great. I think we’re all tired of talking about it. Love you guys!

Second Day

2009-08-27T15:48:00.000-07:00

Today was day two at school. I am trying to lay down the law but I think that I will have to keep fighting the good fight for a few weeks until they get the idea. Today I made a class walk back into the hallway, greet me, and come back in quietly 3 times before they came in the way I wanted them to. It's all a process though and I am working on it. After school I came back, ate, and thought about going in the pool, which I think I will do immediately after I finish this blog. I forgot how crazy school is and how exhausting it is for the first few weeks. I come home wiped out, but hopefully that is only temporary. I also forgot how at the end of the day you can barely remember anything that happened because everything goes by so fast. I only have about 45 minutes with the kids each period, which seems like enough time to greet them, get them to do their warm-ups, and then say goodbye to them. Hopefully once they get into a routine it will be better. Anyway, how are you all? Please send emails and tell me what you are all up to. If any of the teachers read this, what are you guys doing this year? Miss everyone!

First Day of School

2009-08-26T17:39:00.000-07:00

Hello All,

Today was my first day of school, and it went by so fast. I had 4 classes, 3 Language Arts classes and 1 Social Studies. I have two great classes and one great class that is a little squirrley, but we'll work on that. I think it is going to be a really good year and the sixth graders are going to be fun to work with, and more interested in learning than the high-schoolers that I worked with last year. Tomorrow I am giving a talk on how to pick a good book, which I am so much more excited about than they will be (typical).

I ate lunch with some of the other teachers after my first three classes (I have been speaking a lot more Spanish with them lately, which could either mean I passed their test or they are tired of putting in the extra effort to talk to me in English because I am such a bore), and then I did "lunch supervision" which means that I patrol the staircase and make sure no one goes up until they are allowed, and when they are allowed that no one brings food or drink upstairs. I was fairly successful in this today, but I think in the future when the kids get bolder I will have a hard time turning them down when they have a good excuse to go upstairs. I had my social studies class in the afternoon and then I was finished for the day. I planned things out and came home. I think that my weeks here are going to be really busy, filled with eleven year olds and eleven year old problems, but it was nice to start actually teaching again.

I keep meaning to take some pictures of my class to show you all, would you want to see it? I can't decide if that would be nice or like your dad's friend showing you home videos of family vacations. Speaking of which, I found a "reaction poll" that I could attach to my blog that said whether you thought it was "interesting" "fun" or "cool". That's it. Those were the only options. Even though they had such an ample word-choice bank I decided not to add it.

After school I came home and ate my weight in mango and olives, and then Bridgitte opened a bottle of wine and we had a few glasses and talked about libraries. Overall, today was a great success.

Last night (8/25)

2009-08-26T17:37:00.000-07:00

So tomorrow is the first day of school, and today I had a very busy day at work, but I think that at long last I am ready for the kids to start coming in tomorrow. I have been here almost a month now, and I have spent the whole time at school without kids getting ready, so even though I am nervous for tomorrow it should at least be more interesting with them around. They read a book over the summer called “No Talking” have any of you guys ever read it? It’s kind of cute, obviously a book written by a teacher. I just finished it today but it’s about this fifth grade class who has a contest boys versus girls of who can talk less. Good for the kids to read I think, it’s also about how disruptive talking is in school. I guess we are trying to trap them over the summer into behaving better in school, hopefully it worked. Anyway, starting tomorrow I have to pretend to be an adult again and be stricter than I feel like being, but so it goes. I’ll write tomorrow all about it and let you guys know how it went. Miss you all! Love you! Let’s schedule skype dates soon!

Great Day

2009-08-24T16:15:00.001-07:00

So I had a really good day today, and I am going to explain that briefly for keeping-tabs purposes, and then I am going to tell you about the analogy I came up with today for Latin America as a locked front door, and probably bore you, but bear with me.

-I went to school where I was very productive, and I think, miracle of all miracles, I may actually be ready when the kids come on Wednesday

-My principal wrote me a really nice note saying that the hard work I've been doing has not gone unnoticed, which was totally unexpected and made my day

-I went to lunch with Stacy and Melissa at the same place we went yesterday, I might start going there more often, there aren't a lot of people but it's delicious

-I came back to school and went to a meeting with the owner, and then finished up some other work

-I left, came home to pick up JP, and we went out for drinks with some other teachers

-JP and I went to the store to get some bread to give to the cute Haitian kids (we like to think of ourselves as really giving but mostly it's just fun to give them food, it's very selfishly driven)

Okay, so those are the events of the day. Here's my analogy.

So when I left school today I had stayed later to work and so as I tried to get out I found that the front door was locked. I'm not talking about a key lock, I'm talking about a huge metal grate pulled down over the door like the ones they use in the city or the mall at night. Because it was locked I had to go out the back door and walk two more block around the school so that I could get to where I would have started to walk home. On the way I saw a maid walking a pug which obviously wasn't hers and we said hello to each other, I passed a twenty-something girl and her way home from work and we also said hello, and then I went by Sergio's fruit stand and we waved to each other enthusiastically. By the time I got to the front door I had 3 interactions that I would not have had if the door had not been locked. This situation, to me, describes everything I think, love and hate about Latin America, and it struck me as the perfect way to communicate it to everyone else. Now for the explanation.

Okay, so in Latin America it sometimes seems that social relationships, and not hard work, are what get people what they want. I stayed late to work and so was locked in. Had I been friends with the door guy I would have found him (even if this took longer than walking) and he would have let me out. If I had been related to the door guy I would have a secret key to the front door of my own. Because this door was locked I had to go very far out of my way to get to where I should have started, which seems to be how everything works in Latin America. There are roadblocks, and even though no one can explain why they are there no one seems willing or able to do something about them, unless you have a connection through a friend or a relative. So as a foreigner I usually have to go around the block instead of through the front gate, because I don't generally have the connections I need. The front gate represents what I don't like about Latin America. The rest represents what I love.

As an American, I tend to get very frustrated by these roadblocks, especially those with no explanation or reason for being, because I have been raised being used to efficiency. However, on my walk around the block I had three short interactions with people who I would not have seen if I had gotten out the quick way, and here those mean a lot more than efficiency. Stronger networks exist here than in the U.S. because it is necessary to have a large number of people around you who can help you get the gate unlocked if you need them too. Sure I had to walk around some garbage in the street, and walk in the road in the places where the sidewalk is patchy, and hop over the parts that were still wet from the flash flood earlier in the afternoon, but at least I got to see some people and talk to them instead of just getting to my apartment more quickly, which sometimes I have to fight against being annoyed about.

I hope this makes sense to everyone. These things are why I'm here. Even when things are frustrating I just love the value of relationships that I have observed here. I know that I'm being stereotypical but it's my blog and I'll stereotype if I want to (you would stereotype too if it happened to you... BA BA BA BA BA)

Taxi prices, mosquito bites, haitianitos

2009-08-23T18:31:00.000-07:00

So JP and I tried to go to mass this morning because we were told that there were masses at the cathedral at 9 and 10 (aren't you proud, Severins?). Naturally, that information was wrong, and mass was at 12. We made it to another church though, La Iglesia de Altagracia, which was also beautiful. We were two of abut 30 people though, which was a little weird, and we were unsure if we were allowed to take communion or not because we hadn't been to confession (the practice in Latin America) but we went up anyway because most people did. Either they were really good Catholics or the confession thing isn't as big a deal here as it was in Ecuador. There was a really bad echo in the cathedral though so I would say I understood about 10% of the mass, and that 10% I understood because I know the words to mass in English. Not a huge success but it was nice to get out into Zona Colonial and have a non-touristy reason to be there. We had a lot of trouble getting a cab to come home because they were all trying to overcharge us. My favorite though was when we asked a guy to take us home for $150 pesos, which is the normal price, and he said it cost $200. We said, "We normally pay $150" and he said "Well sometimes the prices vary, gasoline gets more expensive". We told him that we had paid $150 that morning, and he still didn't budge, which I was pretty impressed by. Anyway we finally found a person to take us home for the real price, and then Doug and Stacy came over. Melissa, Stacy and I were going to go to this pool at a hotel called Dominican Fiesta. That's right, the name of the hotel is actually Dominican Fiesta. We got a cab against our better judgement because it looked like it was about to rain, and when we go there we found out it cost $625 pesos (remember, divide by 35, and you'll realize that is almost $20 USD) to get in. We turned right back around and got another cab towards home. One cool thing about the hotel though was that there was a little fish pond in the front filled with fish and turtles. We stopped on the way home at this place called Sonoma, which is a really good coffee and sandwich place, and got lunch. Melissa went home because she was getting eaten alive by bugs, and Stacy and I went to this cake shop and then I walked back to her apartment to see it.

Funny side note:

Melissa attracts so many mosquitos that no one else around her gets bit. This is not an exaggeration. When she was sitting there getting eaten alive we were fine, and shortly after she left we started getting bites. We don't know why this is. She doesn't like to use deet all the time, so she has been rubbing herself down with limes (apparently this is a natural remedy) before she goes to bed. I think this is hilarious. She thinks it is a burden.

Anyway, when I came home I talked to Melissa for awhile about how we were going to get ourselves into this community for awhile, and then JP came home and we went grocery shopping. There are tons of haitian kids on the streets here begging, and it is really hard because if you give them money they just have to hand it over to their boss, plus it encourages their bosses to get more kids on the street begging, but you don't always have food to give, which makes you feel like a monster if you refuse them. Today was great though because the two times I saw them I was leaving the restaurant with leftovers, and leaving the supermarket with tons of food. I have them my leftover sandwich and JP and I broke up a baguette and distributed it. It's so nice when you have something to give them. I think I might get a bigger purse just so I can carry granola bars or something for them. They are seriously the cutest kids I have ever seen in my life too. Anyway, overall good day. Also, I guess Stacy knows one person who knows others, so we are going to meet them and this should hugely improve my small network problem. Little by little my Santo Domingo world is expanding. Thanks for all the suggestions! I love you guys, keep the emails coming, I love hearing from you. Also, did anyone get the cave bar title of my last post? To understand better youtube "Gay Bar Homemade Video".

Early Riser

2009-08-23T05:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a really good day. Melissa, JP and I went to this swimming pool where JP swims. It is about a half an hour walk from the house and it was 88 degrees, and with the humidity it "felt like" 99 degrees. When we got there we didn't even need to swim because we were already soaked in sweat (what a lovely image). So we walked up to the gates and following JPs lead climbed over the fence and pretended not to understand the protests of the guards (they said, "You can't do that! You can't go down that way. Don't go down that way next time... as we got further and further away from them). We started swimming but pretty soon Melissa and I got kicked out because she was wearing a two piece bathing suit and neither of us were wearing swim caps. Apparently at some places in Latin America there actually are real rules that must be followed. We left JP there to finish his swim and walked back, stopping at a grocery store to feel the air conditioning for awhile, and again at a Lebanese restaurant I like and eating some delicious food. When we got home I read my book for awhile, and fell asleep on the couch, accidentally, for over two hours. When I woke up I got in the shower and got dressed up (because you pretty much don't leave the house here unless you are wearing a dress) and JP and I went down to Zona Colonial to get dinner and walk around. We ate at this place called Papa's or something, which was really cheap and delicious, probably the best meal I've had since I got here, but my stomach has hurt a little ever since, so in order to keep eating there I am going to pretend that it's because of something else. Anyway, after that we walked around for awhile, the Zona Colonial is really beautiful even at night, and when my stomach got too bad we came home and went to bed. Anyway, now we are going back to go to mass (what a fake good catholic) at the oldest cathedral in the "New World". It's the first time in my life I have been excited about going to church.

I want to take you to a cave bar

2009-08-22T07:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was incredibly productive at school and when I came home Melissa and I decided to try out the pool attached to our apartment complex for the first time. It was the most glorious after-school activity ever. Here in Santo Domingo you sweat while you brush your teeth, while you're just sitting, when you get up to get a drink, while you blog, so after school while I was sitting in the kitchen eating a snack and sweating we decided to go dunk ourselves in the pool. It was the best thing ever. Instead of sitting in our apartment sweating we just chatted in the water. I am going back down there as soon as I finish this blog. After that we came back upstairs, took showers, and after awhile we went to the Zona Colonial to have dinner with 10 of our closest gringo friends (by closest I mean only). Melissa started to feel sick right before we left so she didn't come along, but J.P. and I went. We had some 2-4-1 drinks (that's what the sign said) and dinner, and then when it got late enough so that we felt as though we wouldn't be the Americans who always arrive too early, we went to this place called Guacara Taina, which is a bar that is in an underground cave. We got there too early despite our efforts (I suspect it is impossible for Americans to arrive late enough. I am always 45 minutes too early) I had heard that it was pretty touristy, but actually I think that we were the only tourists there and everyone else was Dominican (They all showed up around 12). It was AWESOME. Dance party in a cave. Could not have been better. I want to go back there every day. It was like as dancey as the bars I used to go to in Ecuador, but it was in a cave! Like there were stalactites hanging from the ceiling! We danced for a long time until the two boys, J.P. and Doug started to overheat, but by that time it was almost 2, so we decided to call it a night and came home. It was the most fun night that I have had since I got there. I knew there was a Bungaloo 6 somewhere around here, and I have found at least one place now to go.

By the way, I can see that a good number of people viewed my blog the last few days, but only a couple commented on my post. I'm all for voyeurism but I need some suggestions people! You may still turn in your assignment for a deduction of 20%.

Read this and pretend you're in my class

2009-08-20T19:24:00.001-07:00

Okay, so today I went to school where I did a little bit of work, had a meeting about Love and Logic (a really popular teaching philosophy), did a little more work, came home, ate, went shopping to the walmarty store with Melissa and Alex, and read (Paulo Coehlo, Eleven Minutes, read it it’s good). It was a pretty uneventful day in which I did not do all the things I wanted to do, but overall it was pretty chill and good. I was hoping that JP and I would start those dance classes this week, but it looks like it will be next week because I haven’t mustered up the willpower to drag myself through the heat to sign up. By chance today he ran into some people at the pool who turned out to be the Junior Triathlon Team from Santo Domingo, so he is going to train with them, which is awesome, and ridiculously coincidental. I have been having a great time here so far, but honestly, I feel a little as though my life and routine is all contained in a very small pocket of places and people, and I need to branch out from that. I am going to try to use this weekend to do so. Here are my goals:

-Find a way to speak way more Spanish.

- Make some friends outside of my school and neighborhood

-Get out and about more.

And you, readers, are going to help me achieve my goals! In teaching, this is what we call an interactive activity. Actually it could be an information gap activity because you have ideas and you need to tell me them so that I can learn from your wise ways (get it? Like you’re filling in the gaps of my information?). Anyway, comment on my blog and let me know what your ideas are. Here is the assignment:

If you were a 23 year old girl living in Santo Domingo, what would you do to feel like you were not cooped up and you were using and improving your Spanish skills? How would you go about making friends in a new city?

Please double space responses. Readers will receive extra points for useful or amusing suggestions. Readers will also receive extra points for remembering that my family reads this blog (that means keep it appropriate). Standard English must be used in anything turned in in this class. This assignment is due by 8p.m. Eastern Standard Time Friday August 21^st. (Too far with the teacher thing?)

Thanks for your help guys, the more ideas the better.

Yesterday's Post

2009-08-20T16:58:00.000-07:00

Today was the kids’ orientation day at school. Whew. The first class I had were a little wild, but the next two bunches were very quiet and well behaved. I found out that sixth graders are very small, and look very much like sixth graders, without yet having the awkward look of seventh and eighth graders. My plan didn’t go as it was supposed to, as per usual, but overall the day went pretty well, especially after the first period (read between the lines, the first one was a trainwreck). I forgot how tiring teaching is though. I only had the kids half the day and I was exhausted by the end. But as promised yesterday, I was not going to laze around the apartment all afternoon. I came home, had some coffee, ate lunch, and then went for a 2 hour walk with Melissa through the botanical gardens which are north of our apartment. It took some convincing for them to let us in, apparently we were supposed to pay but we didn’t bring any money, but we got in eventually after Melissa demonstrated, through a combination of Spanglish and hand gestures. that she did not, in fact, have a purse or any pockets. It was so beautiful in there. It felt like you were in the jungle but there was a magically paved road in it. I will definitely be going back there. After we came home and took showers (even a walk leaves you drenched in sweat here) we decided to go to an Indian restaurant that Bridget found out about in her old edition of Lonely Planet.

This is where the adventures of the day began.

We went took a taxi across town to the neighborhood where we thought the restaurant was, and in its place was an Indian looking vegetarian place. This sounded good enough so we went inside and were greeted by two walls of buffet tables. Vegetarian Indian Buffet sounded nice, except that all the buffet tables seemed to be empty. In one corner there were four little trays of unidentifiable foods, and that was all the restaurant had. We decided to try another Indian place from the guidebook. We hailed a cab and stood on the corner consulting the guidebook to find the directions to the restaurant (a sure-fire way to get overcharged) and then were taken there. Or at least, were taken to the place on the map. There was nothing even close to an Indian restaurant in a 4 block radius. In fact, there were really no restaurants at all except for a chicken place and a fancy French restaurant. We circled around a few times before decided to get Japanese at a place close to our house (which was delicious, by the way, I had the best Miso soup I have ever had). It is very interesting trying to figure out what sushi is in Spanish/Japanese. We got it basically right, even though Bridget’s food didn’t come for a long time and the “Chicken Wonton Soups” turned out to be a plate of wontons. Apparently it was just a clever name. Anyway, after that Japer and I walked home (at night you get less, but still considerably, sweaty) and here I am, blogging to you all. Miss you! Can’t wait to read the piles of emails you are all composing to send to me!

Debbie Downer

2009-08-18T18:53:00.000-07:00

So tomorrow is the orientation for the middle schoolers, so they are all coming to school and coming to class for the first time. I will finally get to see how big my students are going to be. I wish I were joking but I really don't know. They are staying from 8-12 and going to all of their classes and then leaving and coming back next Wednesday for the start of school. Needless to say today was kind of a hectic day. I felt like I was running in a million directions with a million small tasks and several larger ones that I could not possibly finish today. Luckily, between this Wednesday and next I will have some time to prepare those. This was compounded by the fact that I left an organized classroom yesterday with numbers on all of my desks and the desks in order, and came back today to a classroom without desks. That was resolved later in the day though when they were discovered to have been moved to another classroom for the purposes of high school orientation.

Anyway, so I left school in a very crabby mood, not because of the desks, but because of the whirlwind day, and came home and moped around the house, carrying my storm cloud with me above my head. I read for awhile and then J.P. and I went for a really long walk around a part of the city where I haven't been before, which was exactly what I needed. I feel way less crabby now. Also, I found some things to do around the city, and decided that this would be the last day that I came home and just sat around after school, even if I'm tired. The good Lord wouldn't have created coffee if he wanted us to laze around our apartments' all afternoon. Tomorrow I think Melissa and I are going to go for a run and then I am going to go down to the Zona Colonial where apparently there are Happy Hours abound. Also I am going to sign up for dance classes. So, in summary, today I indulged Debbie Downer for hours and then killed her (hopefully).

Right Now

2009-08-17T19:28:00.000-07:00

Today I went to school, set up my classroom some more, skipped lunch because I was being productive, came home just in time for the tropical storm which looked pretty much like every day here (it storms every afternoon, it's the rainy season), went shopping with J.P. for food for him and odds and ends to make my room feel homier for me, came back to the apartment and looked for classes online, and worked out in our living room again with Melissa (this time J.P. coached us).

The good, the bad, and the ugly:

The Good

-Someone I knew from school yelled at me from their car as I was walking down the street which made me feel like I actually know people in this city, which was nice

-My room smells not like an assortment of scented candles, also nice

-J.P. and I each got a polo shirt for $5, and for $9 I got a great dress. I suspect the store where I bought it was kind of walmarty, but since I don't have the association I would in the U.S. I'll pretend I didn't notice

- I think we found a Merengue class to take, and I might take some other class on my own. There are cooking, art, language, and dance classes that I'm interested. I think classes will help me branch out and meet people and do something where I am not completely surrounded by people from school (who I like very much).

The Bad:

- In glancing over this post I realized I had used the wrong "to". Yuck. Don't worry I changed it.

The Ugly:

-My new polo shirt but not my new dress.

-Me doing balancing exercises with Melissa in our living room.

On another note, I guess Annie tried to call me and it didn't work and she ended up talking to some random man several times. I hope this hasn't happened to anyone else. Don't be deterred from calling, let's just meet on Skype instead of talking on my phone. I also, for some reason, can't receive international texts, so if you are thinking how rude I am for not responding, I am not getting them. Love you all. Thanks for the emails, let's take the next step and skype.

Earlier Today

2009-08-17T19:27:00.000-07:00

I am in my apartment watching my very first tropical storm out the window. I just got home from school an hour ago, luckily. Alex said that if there is a full-blown hurricane we just stay in our apartment and feel sorry for people who live in less-sturdy buildings, so I hope that’s the case. It’s pretty cool though. It just looks like a really bad thunderstorm. Apparently they have days off school for hurricanes like we have for snowstorms in Michigan.

Anticlimactic.

It was over in 5 minutes.

All Weekend

2009-08-16T16:59:00.000-07:00

Sorry that I didn't post this weekend. I was busy doing things other than typing on my computer so I didn't get a chance to blog, World (that's mostly a lie). Here's what I did:

Friday the meetings at school got cancelled so I had all day to do some work and set up my classroom which was nice. When I came home I read for awhile, and then J.P. and I went to the mall to get a few drinks with some of the teachers from work at TGI Fridays. Not only was it weird to go to TGI Fridays in Latin America, but also it was weird to go with teachers to a place called TGI Fridays on Friday. I felt like we should all be decked out in seasonal sweaters. I don't know if I told you guys, but J.P. is applying for a position there (The Ashton School not TGI Fridays), so hopefully we find out this week if he gets it or not. He'll either be a permanent substitute or an elementary art teacher, more likely the former even though the latter sounds way better. Anyway, we went out and spoke in Spanglish for a few hours and then came back with Doug and Stacey to our apartment. We had a few more drinks here, I posted my Friday blog, I tried to show Girl Talk to an unwilling audience, and then we went out to a few bars in the city.

I thought that we were going dancing, and we went to these bars where I think the people there thought they were dancy, but really they were just yuppy hipster bars. The first one reminded me of a bar I went to in Silver Lake in L.A. where everyone looked like they were in Where's Waldo the flannel shirt and fedora hat edition. We got ID'd there too which was weird, (but none of us had IDs and we still got in, I showed them my health insurance card) and Doug couldn't get into one of the bars because he was wearing shorts. We did find one bar that was kind of cool and a little dancier, but the music was ridiculously loud and by then we were really tired. We snuck into the VIP section, but when J.P. sprawled out on the couch we were ushered out. It wasn't the best night out ever, but these things take time. I have some other bars in mind for next weekend or whenever we go out again. It's all a weeding-out process. The bad clubs are to Santo Domingo as students like me were to Chem 141 at MSU. (Does that make sense?)

On Saturday I was the laziest I have ever been in my life. I read almost the entire book The Kite Runner and laid around. If you haven't read it you should. The one productive thing I did was go for a run with Melissa and J.P. We ran to these botanical gardens in the city, and I think I will be going there more often. Unfortunately, we ran the wrong way around and didn't find the entrance until it was getting dark and the park was closing, but I think we'll go back tomorrow. It seems that running here is something only very strange foreigners do, so we got a lot of catcalls and yells and a lot more weird looks. Oh well. We came home and planned on going out, but ended up all going to bed before 12 instead.

Today I was much more productive. We got up early and went back to the Zona Colonial. We sat down at this restaurant which is across a small plaza from the oldest cathedral in the Americas. I guess there was some big event there, I think it was one of the Dominican Independence Days today (they have 4 I think) and there were a bunch of camera crews and people watching. I think the president of the Dominican Republic was there and we saw a procession of people exiting, but I didn't know which one he was. Can you guys imagine sitting at a cafe in D.C. and watching Obama come out of some ceremony and just walk down the street? It is hard to picture. Anyway, I bought a really cool painting from some Haitian artists on the street and came home and hung it in my room. I cleaned a bunch and did some laundry, and Melissa and I did kick-boxing without music for a half an hour in the living room. I can only imagine what a spectacle that was. Now I am blogging, cooking dinner, and thinking about how I should be doing work for tomorrow.

Back to school tomorrow, and things are about to get crazy because this week the orientations start. I will meet my students for the first time on Wednesday, which I am looking forward too. I don't even really know what size sixth graders are, let alone their mental capacity, so it should be very informative. Miss you all, write me if you can!

Feliz

2009-08-14T19:13:00.000-07:00

I am going out drinking and dancing in Latin America this evening. This is what I was born to do. I am one happy camper.

p.s. I went out for a drink at TGI Fridays earlier. Weird. It was in the mall and it was hoppin' (I don't know how else to write that. Hopping?).

Picking Up

2009-08-13T17:37:00.001-07:00

This morning our power went out again while we were all getting ready. There is something wrong with our generator so lately if someone starts blow-drying their hair the whole house's power stops working. We have a reset button that we press and then it comes right back on again. This has happened the last 3 mornings in a row. I am still adjusting to the whole power thing here, but it goes off and on every day at last once, even at school. Luckily everywhere I am seems to have generators, but the weirdest thing about it is how Dominicans don't react at all. No one says anything, or even looks up from their work or shopping or whatever. Occasionally someone says in an offhand way, "Se fue la luz", which means the lights went out, but that's it. It's bizarre. I can only compare it to Michigander's reaction to rain or snow versus Californians. I guess eventually I won't even notice, but for now it seems kind of crazy. We also have hot water in the apartment now, a new addition, but you have to flip a switch and then wait a long time for the tank to heat up, so I am still taking cold showers because I am not patient enough to go through the process.

Anyway, we had a lecture on The First Days of School which was really great at school and I got some really good ideas. Then I went for a coffee with Alejandra and Melissa, and I mentioned that I majored in Spanish in school, which apparently I did not tell Alejandra before. We've been speaking much more Spanish since. I worked for awhile at school, came home, took a nap, and went shopping with Melissa and Bridget. Bridget came home shortly after, but I found a tiny black dress to wear out ("You Ain't Nothin but a Hoochie Mama" has been stuck in my head ever since). I was having serious Ecuador flashbacks to Quicentro, Moni. Especially when we thought about getting mall sushi and I thought about that time you had mall chinese food and then mall food poisoning.

I am starting to get more settled in here and get closer to the people around me. I am starting to figure out places to go and things to do that aren't work or reading at my apartment. We are going out tomorrow which will be the first time so I am looking forward to that. Plus I can wear my tiny dress. Hopefully that's culturally appropriate. Sorry Family. Anyway, I love all of you guys! Keep the emails coming and follow and comment on my blog! I like to rub it in Japer's face that my blog is more popular than his. If you would like to humor him you can read his blog as well, it's triathlon related though. His address is www.poohbeartri.blogspot.com. Miss you guys!

Zona Colonial

2009-08-12T21:10:00.000-07:00

So today at school the first three hours were spent in a conference about differentiated instuction (Holla MSU TE classes) and I was looing forward to it because I think that it is really interesting and something that I am always working to do better in my class. Differentiated Instruction is where you vary the curriculum for each student so that they can learn better However, I think Melissa summed up the conference best when she said, “I was having storytime in my head”. There were some really good ideas but it was very long.

Anyway, after that I worked for awhile, got more delicious fruit from Sergio. Sergio is a skilled fruit cutter, and he can cut fruit six ways from Sunday and he barely has to look at it. I watch closely to see if I can do it myself, but I think if it were on tv there would be a “Do Not Try This At Home” disclaimer flashing along the bottom of the screen. Unfortunately, Sergio is not always there. Sometimes his inept assistant is the one doing the cutting. Let me tell you, this is a lot less impressive and often involves standing really far back. So today I didn’t stand back far enough. He was chopping up bananas clumsily at breakneck speed and a large gob of banana mush flew from his knife and landed between my toes. Amongst other failings, Sergio’s assistant also does not speak Spanish very well, and so did not understand my request for something to wipe it up with. Consequently, I had to walk all the way back to school and to the second floor bathroom with banana squishing between the toes of my right foot.

After that incident I got a coffee with Bridget, and came back to the apartment. There we dissected the lecture we were given today, and decided to go to a jazz concert in the Zona Colonial. For those of you who don’t feel like breaking down that brain teaser the Zona Colonial is the colonial zone of the city. We all got dressed up nicely and went down there (everyone dresses up for everything here) and had a cocktail and some food and listened to some Jazz. This was the first time I had been to the Zona Colonial, and I will be going there way more often. It is the only part of the city I have seen so far that has a neighborhood kind of feel. It is very quaint. I really want to go back during the day and check it out. It was a really good day with my roommates, and I was glad to get out of the apartment. I am liking them more and more all the time. They all say the most hilarious things. After the jazz place we tried to hail a cab unsuccessfully, and some guy told us he would get one for us if he could just set the avocados he was holding at our feet and we would watch them for him. We agreed, and he set them down and ran off. He came back a few minutes later bringing with him a cab willing to charge us double the normal price and scanning our feet for his fruit (vegetables?). We politely declined and called a cab. On the way home we ran over a manhole missing it’s cover and experienced quite a loud noise and large bump and the driver did not react at all. Overall, great day.

Nausea, Heartburn, Indigestion

2009-08-11T17:41:00.000-07:00

Everyone that was in Ecuador with me, remember the stomach issues that we all had for months? Well, I think that those have begun for me now. WOOT! Too personal for the worldwide web? I think not.

Indigestion aside, I am starting to have a lot more work at school, so I am hoping to get it all done before classes start. I am making to-do lists that are getting longer and longer, but I am glad for all the time I have to prepare before the kids get there. Next Wednesday we are going to have an orientation with the students and they come for the first day the following Wednesday. I also have made friends with the Haitian guy who runs the fruit stand outside the school, his name is Sergio, and I bought a huge to-go box of cut up fruit for lunch today for a little over $2, which is awesome. Unfortunately, it may be doing not-so-pleasant things to my stomach. I came home and decided to take a break from work and read, and I read Drown by Junot Diaz. You guys should read it if you don't mind reading a lot of stories that are a little vulgar, kind of downers, but well written. He's the guy that wrote The Brief and Wondrous of Oscar Wao. Both of them take place in the Dominican Republic so they are fun to read right now.

While I was reading I started to wonder how much longer J.P. could possibly run he burst in the front door, bleeding and wet (I don't know how much longer I can continue to be surprised by these things). He had been for a long run in the rain and had tripped and fallen in a puddle/lake in the street. He cut his palm and bruised his knee, but is okay overall. His exact words were, "You have no idea what it is like to be completely submerged in third-world sewer water." I am glad for that, but I did feel sorry for him.

After that I went back to work and made a syllabus and looked over my curriculum again. Right now I am sitting with J.P. and Melissa discussing the pros and cons of Zombie movies so I have to go. Love you all!

Back to School

2009-08-10T18:18:00.000-07:00

Today I woke up, had breakfast with my roommates, and went to school. There I worked on mapping out the curriculum for the year, which I will have to finish tomorrow. I also unpacked a few boxes full of things for my classroom which I will also finish tomorrow. I will try to remember to take pictures to show you all when it is all set up so you can see where I'm working. It is nice to go to work on days as hot as today because I have air-conditioning there that I don't have to pay for. I try to sit as close to it as possible and if at any point during the day I am cold I feel that the entire day has been an success. After school I waited around school to chat with the realtor who has been handling finding JP and apartment, but she got there and before I knew it I had been roped into being the translator for the afternoon. I spent the next two and a half hours debating about what changes to make to which apartments in order for the others to rent them. My apartment renting vocabulary is improving though. I have learned words like "set" as in "a set of dishes like these will come with this apartment". When I came home I lay down on my bed and stared at the ceiling for awhile in an effort to regain my strength and thought about how maybe drying some of my laundry on hangers in my closet was not the best idea after all as my room now smells distinctly of mildew. As for the clothes, I think I will have to rewash all of them, or burn them. JP came in and we decided to go buy some books because I have run out. We walked down Lincoln (that's right, I live on a street called Abraham Lincoln. In fact, the cross street in John F. Kennedy) to a store which is like part IKEA, part Borders Books, part Meijer, part Home Depot. Amazing, they literally have everything I could ever want. Anyway, I got some new books, two in English and one in Spanish (I was feeling ambitious), and we wandered back home. I fought the urge to buy ice cream because I had already eaten it twice today, and now here I am at home. It was somehow very tiring for such an uneventful day and I am going to go read my new books and stop writing to you all. Miss you!

Now this one actually is Sunday

2009-08-09T18:22:00.000-07:00

I am exhausted from blogging so much. Actually, today was kind of tiring anyway. We got up early to catch the bus, made our way past the cows and mud puddles once again, and caught a public car (carro publico, isn't Spanish great?) back into the city. We found out that the bus we wanted didn't leave until 2 (this was 9:30 a.m.) so we decided to catch a different bus in another city. We got into a different carro publico and we driven to the other station. We paid a little more so that he would drive just us and we could make the bus. We would not have made it anyway, but the bus came a 1/2 hour later than we thought so we were there in plenty of time. This was a much nicer bus than the one we rode into the city on Friday, it was very big and air-conditioned. The one on Friday was very small and we were 5 in a 4 person seat. When we got off the bus in Santo Domingo we were assaulted by taxi drivers clamoring to overcharge us for our taxi fare, so we left the building and found someone outside who wanted to overcharge us, but had chosen not to enter the bus station. We didn't have the right change when we got to our apartment, so we played a little game where he pretended that he also didn't have change so we were going to have to pay more. This is my favorite taxi game. Eventually we went to the little corner store (colmado) and got change from them.

When we got back I did some laundry, and it was the first time I had really felt like things were very different here from the U.S. We are lucky enough to have a small washer and dryer, but the dryer is so loud that if anyone if trying to sleep, work, or think in our apartments or any of those around it I don't think we can use it. It sounds kind of like if you filled your dryer in the U.S. with tennis balls and then let it run. After the wash I wrung the clothes out over the sink and then hung them on the clothes lines on the balcony. While I was doing this I was very careful to drench the floor with water dripping from them so that I could slip on it later and then fall. Eventually, the moment had arrived and I reached up to hang something and my feet went out from under my and I came crashing down on the balcony. No one that I know saw it, but I can only hope that someone in another apartment caught a glimpse of it and is right now telling their friends about the gringa they saw take a digger this afternoon.

When all the falling and washing was done J.P. and I walked through the rain to the grocery store. It was my idea to buy groceries and his to do it during a hurricane. We got a lot of strange looks in the grocery store when we came in soaking wet. Anyway, we got a bunch of groceries and took a cab home. Since then I have eaten much more than I needed to and am already thinking about my next move in that area. Anyway, I love you all. Hope you were ready for these long-winded entries. Miss you guys! Check out my pictures when they are posted!