yesterday a package arrived after two months and 5 days and lost hopes and resignation

the best thing to come out of dominican art history class so far

potentially, ever.

SxSW

• Today I am sick, with what I think is a cold, resfriado in spanish (although Doña Iris calls it la gripe, pronounced 'greepay', which I think is the flu but also seems to be a general term for being sick here). It's not too bad, though, thank goodness. My friend Jenna just got over a sinus infection and had to get antibiotics injected into her behind for some reason-- yikes.

• On friday CIEE took us on a visit to the Haitian border. We had to leave at 5:25 am. The bus ride took approximately five hours, during which we were blasted by air conditioning (it has two settings: on and off) which I feel is partially responsibly for my sickness. At the border we went to one of five main border marketplaces, Elias Piña, where we purchased such traditional artisan goods as jelly shoes, used american clothing and pirated dvds (mine is the Notorious B.I.G. movie). It was crazy and enormous and full of chickens and I felt really invasive taking pictures but I did anyway, as you can see.


• Some (ten) of us didn't feel like letting a free trip across the country go to waste, so while everyone else guagua-ed it back to Santo Domingo, we took a bus to Barahona, a seaside town in the southwest. It's really lovely and I'd recommend it to anybody who finds themself in this country. The whole south coast is refreshingly un-resort-ified. Loopy from lack of sleep we managed to find a good hotel for less than $6 per person (although the rat we spotted run across one room might partially explain the low rates). Friday night we spiked our smoothies with a little Haitian rum and made a fire on the deserted beach, where we threw sticks and paper into the flames and danced around to Aly's pathetically quiet ipod speaker and generally put on a gringo show the Dominicans should be sorry to have missed. It was one of the best times I've had here so far.



• Saturday we visited the most beautiful beach I've ever seen, where we were greeted by a sign reading "Welcome to San Rafael. Don't lose control." There's something about the color of the water meeting the sky meeting the rocky green mountainside that's like magic. The only drawbacks were the lack of fresh fruit juice for sale and the fact that the atlantic waves and riptide were not joking around. I tried once to play in the water and ended up scrambling back to shore with rocks in my ears and my bathing suit halfway off. It was cute.



• Other than this weekend, here are some things I've been doing:
  

1. Seen (for free) the National Theater perform Fiddler on the Roof in Spanish (even the songs!)
   
2. Come to the realization that at least two of my five teachers are not actually teaching anything, but rather occasionally giving us the names of books, texts and vague assignments and presentations to take up the time allotted for class.
3. Kept struggling with my work at Hogar Escuela Doña Chucha. The third graders are unspeakably adorable, the fifth graders are doing their best to give me hell (except the rare few who are timid and quiet, and Jessica, who keeps asking me to take her home for lunch), and I still wish I could actually do something to fix every problem in their lives, but I can't.
4. Done yoga almost every day.
   
   


5. Seen two versions of Carnaval-- La Vega and Santo Domingo. La Vega is the most famous and everyone talks about it. Don't go. It's nothing but a glorified capitalism/alcohol/noise fest devoid of soul, and to top it off, they beat you up (and if you're me/a white american, call you names and laugh as you run away crying). Santo Domingo's was a really fun parade of floats and costumes from all over the country, and while it was clearly a production of a government who exerts effort very selectively and ignores many serious problems, it was still cool to watch.



6. Took a spontaneous trip to Baní, a town west of the capital, where we rode motorcycle taxis through the landscape of dry fields, cactus and RIDICULOUS, gaudy mansions.
7. Eaten a LOT of coconut popsicles.
8. Continued to enjoy my favorite Brazilian telenovela with Doña Iris, Lazos de Familia (family ties). She's always telling me what's going to happen, but I don't even care. It's so good, when I go out at night part of me is secretly wishing I was staying home to watch it. (But of COURSE I'm not about to spend my Study Abroad Experience in front of the TV... although it does improve my spanish comprehension!) Plus they play bomb Brazilian music... with the occasional Shania Twain tune thrown in.
9. Played a fair amount of dominoes.

I'm excited for my Dad and Lizzie and John visit me, and for a potential weekend trip to Río San Juan on the north coast, and for my first taste of a Dominican karaoke bar, and for the travels Caitlin and I are planning for Semana Santa (spring break), and a potential trip to Haiti before I fly home in May, and other unexpected things. I love and miss you, my dear Americans. I hope you're doing well too.

19,002 words

seven weeks

Dominicanidad

The Dominican economy is two things: corrupt, and unstable.

I'm not going to go google any statistics for you, but way too many people are poor, nobody makes enough money, lots of things are too expensive and lots of things are really horribly low quality (healthcare. education. to name a few.)

It's not that they don't have enough money. They just finished, for example, the first subway line in Santo Domingo. Today I rode it down and back (it goes N-S, they're working on an E-W one for sometime in the next century), and it is FAN-CY. It's very nice. Smooth, modern, clean, efficient (seeming). One glistening piece of evidence that the government has got some $$$. And although the specific ways and people are so hidden and complicated that I believe there are few people who have a great depth of knowledge on the subject, COR-RUP-TION is decidedly a big presence in the network of those who decide the fate of the country. How infuriating is that?

Secondly, the country is financially resting on three rickety, ridiculous stilts, and these are

1. tourism!
2. free trade zones (zonas francas)
3. remesas

I think tourism is pretty self explanatory-- but development for the sake of attracting tourists often ignores the needs (and/or the existence) of the people who live in the country, and also of that thing we like to call "the environment." 

Free trade zones are bad news, you may or may not understand them better than I do but for some reason or another large sections of the country are available for everyone and their mother's corporation to build giant factories, also known as sweatshops, and be exempt to some degree from taxes and other annoying expenses. So Nike may be like "i'm going to build a shoe factory in the DR," and lots of people (many of them women, many of them single mothers) will work there in the usual sweatshop way of long hours horrible conditions and low wages. And then one day Nike will go, "why would I pay women $1 a week to make shoes for me in the DR when women in Indonesia will make them for 50¢? See ya!" and the jobs will disappear, etc. Who benefits from this situation besides the corporations is pretty unclear.

Remesas, the third pillar of the Dominican Economy, are-- get this-- money sent to people here by relatives who have emigrated to the U.S. !!! This is not a very good situation for anyone. But the pay here, as they say, no rinde... it doesn't get you very far.

I learned all these things in my favorite class, which is the compliment class to the "volunteer internship" part of the program. In this class we get real information which immediately helps us understand where we are and what the deal is and how someone someday might be able to theoretically help with some of the country's (and the world's) problems. 

The actual "internship" that I am doing is working in a home/ school for girls between the ages of 6 and 14. The work that I am doing is mostly teaching english to the third and fifth grade classes. I also spend time hanging out with the girls at recess and planning friday afternoon activities for the kids who don't have families to go visit on the weekend. It's a really lovely place, getting to know the kids is so much fun, and trying to teach english with no experience or training is definitely a valuable experience for me. But I have also realized, from talking to the internship coordinator and other students, from reading an interesting, controversial speech by Ivan Illich called "To Hell With Good Intentions", and from my own thinking, how hard it is to actually do valuable "service work"-- just how much is required, and how much further I have to go. You first need to know where and what you want to help with, you then need extensive knowledge of and experience with the context you will be working in, and training with people who have done what you want to do, and even then I believe the process will be a learning experience in itself. These things-- the specific goal(s), the extensive knowledge and research, and the training-- are things that I simply do not have. Thus, although I may supposedly be doing "volunteer work," all I am really doing this semester in Santo Domingo is learning, learning, learning. And that is alright with me-- great, actually. You got to be a sponge.

These things are amazing:

• $2 assortment of fruit from the vendor a block down from CIEE: pineapple, papaya, mango, cantaloupe, watermelon and more
• Helados Bon frozen yogurt bar
• 75¢ made-to-order empanadas with hot sauce and ketchup
• Parque de los Haitises:  1600 km of prehistoric looking coastal tropical rainforest wilderness. Arguably the best-kept secret and the coolest attraction this country has to offer.

More later! And no more economics lectures! I mean who do I think I am? Geez.

Your homework is to find the meaning of these phrases:

¡Vaya al Carajo!

¡Coño!

¡Tú ta toda la vaina!

proof

Mima, Daniela and I visiting Daniela's university, Altos de Chavón School of Design. It's a reconstructed medieval tuscan village located inside Casa de Campo, a gated community for the rich and famous. Weird, but really, really pretty.

This is the Chavón river seen from the school. Potentially the most beautiful place I've ever set my eyes on in person.

I was lucky enough to be sitting next to this fellow on the bus (and I wouldn't even have noticed if it wasn't for Caitlin pointing it out).

Two lovely ladies (Aly and Caitlin) admiring the stars at the open air bar/concert venue La Espiral in colonial Santo Domingo.

The legendary Johnny Ventura tears it up at the (free!) outdoor traveling music festival Sol Caribe.