Adventure Part Three: The Beach

Downtown Cortecito

Getting checked into our hotel was a challenge.  First, we had to find it.  We had reservations in Cortecito, a small village made up mainly of chintzy souvenir shops with thatched roofs in the middle of a huge resort area called Punta Cana.  When we approached a stretch of gigantic all-inclusive resorts with gleaming white limestone gates and fountains surrounded by palm trees, we started looking for signs for Cortecito.  We didn't see any, and after awhile, we asked the bus conductor how much longer it would take to get there.  It turned out that we'd passed it.  It also turned out that conductor was the nicest person we'd encounter that day: He got off the bus with us, brought us across the street to a bus going the other direction, told that bus driver where we needed to go, and paid for our fare out of the money we'd paid him earlier to get on his bus.  We thanked him heartily and drove off.

Our hotel sign

After that, we found the front of our hotel easily enough.  Before we could check in, though, three of us needed cash, so we left our bags in the hotel lobby with the other girls and set out in search of an ATM.  We made the mistake of asking a taxi driver for directions.  He insisted that there were no ATMs near by and tried to charge us $10 to drive us to the closest one.  We stupidly got in his cab but somewhat less stupidly refused to pay anything more than about what we'd pay in Santiago ($3-4).  He drove us to the other side of the block.  It was large block, to be sure, but not that large.  It would have taken us three minutes to walk there.  Angry, we told him of course we didn't need a ride back, and he drove away.  We walked up to the ATM, located at the edge of a resort parking lot....and found ourselves face to face with an out-of-order sign.

We walked up the resort's long cobbled driveway to a place where a valet and a few other workers were standing in the shade, and we asked them where the next closest place to get cash was.  They told us it was down the road a long ways and we'd probably want to take a taxi.  We looked at each other, rolled our eyes, and started walking in the direction they'd pointed us, which brought us back into the center of Cortecito.  We stopped in a cigar store to get a second opinion, just in case the ATM really was that far away, but the man behind the counter told us it was only a kilometer or so.

3 kilometers in...still nothing

We decided a kilometer was nothing and started down the road.  A long, empty, dusty road.  A really long, empty, dusty road.  In fact, we trudged down the road's sandy shoulder under the humid tropical sun, getting honked at by passing tour buses, coming across nothing but a few scattered lottery stands and a patch of tin shacks for at least 20 minutes until, at long last, we came across another little town.  Joyfully, we spotted the ATM and ran towards it....only to discover it didn't work with our cards.  A security guard and a local man who had just withdrawn his own money noticed we were having trouble and tried to help us, but they couldn't figure out what was wrong, either, so we asked them if there was another ATM nearby.  They told us there was another one farther north, but we'd probably want to take a motoconcho (motorcycle taxi).  As reluctant as we were to take another taxi in that town, we were tired and thirsty and sick of walking, so, figuring that the men had been nice to us that far and had nothing to gain from us taking a taxi, we followed their advice.

Success!

Ryshona and I got on the back of one motorcycle, Miranda on another, and we sped off.  After five minutes of feeling the wind whip through our hair as we giggled about how weird it was that we were there, riding a motorcycle for the first time down a gravely road in the middle of nowhere in the Caribbean, we got to the ATM.  We tentatively approached it, crossed our fingers, held our breath, put one of our cards in, pressed the right buttons....and, seconds later, cheered as the machine spit out a wad of the most beautiful Dominican pesos we'd ever seen. 

We took another pair of motoconchos back to the hotel, explained our delay to the girls who'd been waiting for us, and had our hearts break when they told us they'd found a second ATM right there in Cortecito.  About 15 minutes after we'd left.  Just next door to the one that was broken. 

View from our room

The pool!

Seeing the inside of the hotel helped us recover a bit, though.  Even though our hotel was one of the few non-resorts in the area, the decorating schemes of the bigger resorts seemed to have rubbed off on it.  It was gorgeous (from the outside, at least), made up of four 2-story buildings with about 10 rooms each surrounding a courtyard of palm trees, lush grass, an aqua pool, and gazebos with straw roofs.  The rooms were also the only hotel rooms we'd been in that weekend that were decorated, with paintings on the wall and matching bedsheets, and it looked clean, except for the gross rusted-out bathtub floor.  (No bedbugs, though, Dad!)  We changed out of our sweaty and dusty shorts into our swim suits, covered our arms and faces with sunscreen, and set out for the beach.

The beach at last!

Adorable souvenir shacks

 The beach was gorgeous, like a postcard of the Caribbean: white sand, crystal clear water, rainbow-colored parasails, rows of sailboats leaning against each other.  There were no real regulations to separate boating areas from swimming ones, so motorboats kept streaking past, whipping around teams of dads and sons on innertubes as they grabbed the edges and tried to stay on as long as they could.  The water was cold but not freezing - perfectly refreshing - and so salty you could float effortlessly.  I'm sorry to those of you who are in Minnesota right now.  It was just so perfect!

Sunset

Pretending to be models

After taking a walk as the sun set and turned the fluffy clouds all sorts of pretty shades of pink and purple, we looked for a place to eat, and discovered that everything in Cortecito shut down at 8 o'clock sharp, except for two expensive seafood restaurants.  After mulling it over and deciding that, if we were going to have to spend that much money on food anyway, we might as well spend it on something less gross that seafood, a group of us asked the man at the front desk of our hotel for a recommendation of somewhere to go to get dinner and maybe ice cream.  We followed his advice, bit the bullet, and took another taxi to a super touristy shopping mall full of luxury clothing stores, polished stone floors, delicate fountains, and American restaurants.

Even classier than Southdale

We ended up at the Hard Rock Cafe, where we were delighted to have, for the first time in weeks, hamburgers, French fries, and an apple crisp.  We were also, for the first time in weeks, surrounded by other Americans.  When we got there, a football game was in the last quarter and people all around us were wearing their Jetts jerseys and cheering or booing loudly with every play.  When the game ended and they'd cleared out, a small but decently talented Dominican band set up their instruments for a mellow set of songs, half of them in English and half in Spanish.  All in all a very touristy evening, but, honestly, quite relaxing and enjoyable after being away from home for so long, especially for the girls in my group who have been homesick since the first day here.

The pool and, in back, the breakfast area

The next morning, by the time most of us were up and ready, Miranda had already been at breakfast for about an hour and a half.  When we walked up to the open-air patio by the pool where a buffet of juice, cold cereal, rolls, and pineapple slices was laid out, we saw her talking to a middle-aged man, swapping stories of the small towns we'd been to and problems we'd had with buses (very much like Grandma makes friends at the cabin every year).  We didn't think much of it until it was time to go, and I walked up to them to tell Miranda we were getting ready to leave.

When we got back to our room, we asked her about his story, and found out...he was a spy.  Well, at least I firmly believe he was.  It's been a matter of ongoing debate between us, so I'll let you decide for yourselves.  This man told Miranda that he is a retired intelligence agent from Denmark.  Over the course of the conversation, he also revealed that he speaks seven different languages and has been to 25 countries outside of Europe.  As we'd noted the night before when he arrived as we were waiting in the lobby, he had trouble checking into the hotel because the man at the front desk had asked to see his passport, but, as he explained to Miranda, he is legally not allowed to show his passport anywhere but airport security checkpoints.  So, reading between the lines, I believe you'll agree that he had to have been a spy or, at the very least, and ex-spy.

And, on that note, I'll wrap this up.  To come some time this week: an account of this weekend's trip to the rural mountains, including such adventures as mixing cement by hand, drinking coconut milk straight from the coconut, and sharing a river with a cow.  In this place:

Personally, I thought it was even more gorgeous than the beach.

Adventure Part Two: Caves and Chapels

To leave Santo Domingo, we had to take another bus company, one that wasn't quite as organized or classy as they one we'd taken the day before, but that just made it more of an adventure.  As soon as we got to the bus station, the bus drivers and ticket takers who were milling around the parking lot started motioning frantically towards the bus and shouting at us: "RomanaRomanaRomana!  Are you going to Romana?  Get on the bus!  GetonGetonGeton!"  Scared that it was about to leave, we clambered up the bus steps...and realized we were the first people aboard.  So we sat down on the ripped brown plastic seats near the front and waited as moms with toddlers, elderly couples, and 20-something adults filtered in.  As we sat there, one street vendor after another got on the bus and strolled up and down the aisle, shouting out the names and prices of things they were selling: gum, calling cards, water, oranges, and bags of a whiteish cheese that looked a little like fresh mozzarella.  Even when we started moving, vendors would hop on at one corner, walk the length of the bus loudly showing us their cans of pop or chocolate bars, and hop off at the next block. 

Instead of having set stops, this bus (and most of the ones we took over the weekend) let people on and off whenever they wanted.  As we passed through Santo Domingo, the conductor stood at the open door with his head sticking out, yelling our destination to everyone passing on the sidewalks in case they decided to take an impromptu trip.

Wait...wait...Okay, run!

Our destination, the Cueva de las Maravillas (the Cave of Wonders!), was located on the side of a mostly empty highway, surrounded for miles only by fields and a few grazing cattle and horses.  When we got close, the bus pulled over to the gravel shoulder of the highway and the conductor got off with us.  He motioned to us to stay at the side of the highway while he looked to see when it would be clear.  As soon as there was a break in traffic, he waved us forward and we sprinted across the four-lane road.

Success!

For Katie

The path leading to the parking lot of the cave was long and clearly not meant for foot traffic - there was no sidewalk, so we walked at the side of the road and, at one point, had to pick our way across a grate that would have held tires fine but would have tripped us if we hadn't been careful.  To either side of us were more fields, and even though they were populated by birds, horses, and red wasps, it was very quiet.  It seemed like we were out in the middle of nowhere.  When we got closer, though, we saw met up with another handful of people buying tickets and waiting for a tour.

Perfect cave entrance.

The cave was opened to the public in the early 2000s, and the people who designed the project did a great job with it - the whole area is beautiful and runs remarkably smoothly. We bought our tickets in an airy and bright building made out of pale limestone and then headed past neatly trimmed hedges to meet up with the rest of our tour group.  Surrounding the footpaths we took to get to the cave was a really beautiful garden of local trees, flowers, and bushes, and I was so busy gushing about how pretty it was that the entrance to the cave took me by surprise.  It was amazing, though.  It looked exactly like a cave should look: huge dark lumpy rocks covered by a net of dangling vines.

The inside was even cooler.  There was a system of motion-activated lights, so as we walked along the path that had been built for visitors and listened to our guide tell us about the history of the area, different sections of rocks would suddenly light up, and a new patch of alien-looking stalagmites and 800-year-old cave drawings would appear.  Although, technically, taking pictures wasn't allowed on the tour, in one chamber our (very friendly) guide told us he was going to go sit outside for a minute and wouldn't notice any cameras going off, wink wink.  So my friends whipped out their cameras, and I have these pictures to try to show you what it was like inside.  Lots of unbelievable shapes - the rocks and columns that have been formed by the water dripping and leaving tiny bits of calcium for millions of years look like something out of a science fiction movie.  This chamber was especially eerie, because right in the middle was a small, perfectly still pond of water that was so dark it reflected everything above it just as clearly as a mirror would have.

Cute, but strange

Although I don't have a picture of the Taíno Indians' cave drawings, I put up this picture from the internet so you could see what they were like.  They were so strange-looking, not at all like pictures I've seen from caves in Europe.  Honestly, they looked a little like the drawings the kids at my preschool make - lots of stick figures that look vaguely like people or animals.  Some of them even had smiley faces.

Smiling like he didn't just try to beat up his friend

Around the path out of the cave, there was another grove of gorgeous trees and then...an iguana enclosure.  It was like an exhibit in the zoo, with a path going by an enclosed habitat of logs and grass and bushes that housed 48 iguanas.  I have never seen that many iguanas up close before.  When we first got there, most of them were lazing in the sun and their caretaker was setting out some plates of vegetables.  As we stood there, watched them, and asked questions ("How old is that one?"  "What do they eat?"), they iguanas started to get more lively.  One iguana ran a few yards, which was bizarre.  I had no idea iguanas could move that quickly or that they look so awkward doing it, with their legs flying to the side and forward at the same time.  A minute later, a fight almost broke out - two iguanas began to stare each other down and making hissing noises.  Their caretaker ran between them, shooed one of them to the other side of the enclosure, and started shaking his finger at the other and telling it "Stay...stay..." in the same tone you would use with a dog.  The iguana seemed pleased with himself, though - he started smiling.  That's him in this picture.

Lorena is squished

Eventually, we had to leave, so we sprinted back across the highway to the side we'd gotten off on and waited.  As no buses make regular stops by the cave, the only way to catch one is to stand where we were standing and try to flag down ones that passed.  We did so, and the first bus we saw pulled over and stopped to let us on.  Assuming this meant that there was room on the bus, we started to board...only to find out there hadn't been a single empty seat so we had to stand in the aisle.  I was the last one on board, and the conductor was literally shoving me to the side with one hand as he was just barely able to pull the door shut with the other.  Soon, though, people started getting off, and I was able to sit on a cushion between the driver's seat, the passenger's seat, and a second pull-down passenger's seat.  Much more spacious.

We arrived at la Romana, a really cute little town, and had dinner at a pizza place that looked a lot like the Burger King in Minnetonka.  Different color scheme, but a big plastic play place, chunky plastic cubbies for kids to leave their shoes, a main dining room for adults, and a smaller dining room close to the play place for families.  The pizza had fluffy crust and tasty sauce, and we finished the meal with a delicious Nutella dessert pizza.

Personally, I wasn't a fan of the concrete

Next, we caught a cramped, dingy, non-airconditioned bus to our next destination: Higüey.  Higüey is fairly small town in the DR, but it is the site of the country's most massive pilgrimage...to the Basilica of our Lady of the Highest Grace...which happened to have taken place the day before we got there.  We got there in the evening, and it seemed like most of the people had cleared out.  The massive parking lot by the church was empty except for a few lone stands that had sold rosaries, fast food, and prayer cards to hoards of people the day before.

To the Virgen

The next morning, however, some of the girls in my group and I went to Mass at the basilica.  Since a visiting monk I'd talked to the night before had given us the wrong Mass time, we arrived about an hour early and had time to see the painting of la Señora de la Altagracia that the basilica is famous for.  The painting is located above and behind the altar, but between the painting and the place where the priest sits, there is a raised walkway, so people can walk up a set of steps from a side door, walk to the painting, and descend down the other side, all while being almost hidden from the view of the people in the pews, which meant that people continued seeing and touching the glass case protecting the painting well into the Mass.  When we joined the line, we discovered that there were still plenty of pilgrims left in town: The line to see the painting stretched out of and wrapped a fourth of the way around the church.

The painting

Mmm...breakfast

After a very fancy Mass, complete with a bishop, two priests, six altar servers, additional prayers between every reading, a full choir, and more incense than I've ever seen used in one service, we checked out of our hotel room and started out for the bus station.  After stopping to get a late breakfast of rice, beans, chicken, and vegetables at a Dominican-style lunch counter, we were at last on our way to the beach!

Adventure Part One: Santo Domingo

Me and said backpack

Last Friday, Dominicans celebrated the Día de la Altagracia (the feast day of Mary of the Highest Grace).  Last Monday, they celebrated the Día de Duarte (Duarte was one of the leaders of the Dominican independence movement).  For us students this meant a four day weekend.  So I shoved some changes of clothes, a swimsuit, and my guidebook into my backpack and set out with six of the other girls from my study abroad group on what can only be described as an adventure.  Highlights included seeing 800-year-old cave drawings, watching an iguana fight, joining the very end of a pilgrimage, riding a motorcycle, and meeting an ex-spy.  It was incredible.

Our journey began very early on Friday morning.  Our first leg of the journey was from Santiago to Santo Domingo, and our bus was supposed to leave at 7:30.  Even though one only has to be about 10 minutes early to get tickets here, my host dad passes the bus station on the way to work and offered to drive me there when he left the house at 6:10.  So I woke up before sunrise, shoved the last few odds and ends into my backpack, drank some heavily sweetened coffee, and climbed into my family's pickup truck.

It was still dark outside when I got to the Metro bus station, although there were lights all along the front of the building and a big crowd of people was leaning against the wall with their luggage at their feet.  When one of the managers showed up to unlock the doors of the ticket building, I found out why.  Apparently, the person who had been answering phones the day before had had the wrong schedule.  He'd told all of them that there was a bus leaving at 6, so some of them had arrived as early as 5 to catch a bus that didn't leave until 7 (and they were notably disgruntled about it).  As it turns out, he had given us the wrong time, too - instead of leaving at 7:30 like he'd told us, our bus didn't leave until 8.  Since it wasn't even 7 then, I found a good seat in front of the tv and hunkered down to watch a 60 Minutes-style interview about educational reform in the DR.  I share this anecdote because it more or less set the tone for our transportation throughout the weekend.  You know how you hear about buses and trains in, say, Germany or Japan that are never even a minute late, are always sparkling clean, and get you across the country in record times?  That's kind of the opposite of the buses here.

(Photo borrowed from Miranda)

Eventually, though, we got on the bus and were surprised at how nice it was.  It was like a quality tour bus: high up off of the ground, with dark blue cloth seats, air conditioning, a good amount of leg room, and even a bathroom in the back.  And for $6, it was a good deal.  So we were happy, and spent most of the time oohing and ahhing over the mountains, fruit stands, rice fields, palm trees, and used tire stores flashing past our windows. 

The room wasn't too fancy.

We arrived in Santo Domingo without problems and caught a taxi to the Hotel Ripabella.  The assistant director of our program had recommended it to us as a cheap but safe hotel not too far from the center of town.  You could tell it wasn't the classiest joint.  Except for a very large painting hanging over the front desk of a woman with an old-fashioned maroon dress and a mountain of curly brown hair (who, we supposed, was Ripabella), there were very few decorations.  There were stretches of hallways with nothing but grayish white walls and one odd, dim, completely empty room that I think was designed to be a sitting room but which no one had bothered to put so much as a lamp in.  It looked clean, though, and the man who checked us in was friendly.  He took us to our rooms, which were supposed to have three double beds between them.  When we got there, though, we found out both rooms were rather tiny and had only one bed each.  The manager said he'd bring in another bed in a minute, so we set down our bags, checked the room for bed bugs, and waited.

First, the manager and another man brought in a bed frame that seemed to be made of cheap wood with many holes in it, (most of) which were patched up with plywood....

What a sturdy frame

Then they brought in the bare mattress...

It's getting there!

Then, a maid came in, put on some sheets, and checked to be sure that the door closed.  With that second bed in there, it was a tight fit - there were two inches between this bed and the other, and the door came within one inch of it when swinging shut - but we had enough bed space at last.

Success!

With that in order, we set off to explore the sites of Santo Domingo.  Even though most of the museums we'd wanted to visit were closed and a lot of things were empty (Dominicans who  travel during national holidays prefer to visit family or head to the coast than hang out in the capital), we found a lot to do along the main roads: haggling over souvenirs, marveling about how weird it was to see other Americans, people watching, taking pictures of pretty parks.  Here are a few highlights...

The above-ground cemetery two blocks away from our hotel.  It was kind of pretty, with lots of white stones and graceful statutes of angels.  But it was also kind of creepy, as some of the tops of the graves had been broken over time and looked a little too much like places zombies would crawl out at night...


When it got too hot, we stopped at a restaurant/bar to get drinks.  Here I am, channeling the State Fair with some fried cheese and beer.  (Don't worry, Mom and Dad, it was one of only two drinks over the entire weekend!)

A very creative statue-person.  He was dressed up like a raggedy cross between a robot and an alien, but had a video game control attached to his stomach.  When this little girl picked it up and started moving the joystick around, he made a mechanical buzzing noise while moving around - turning from one side to the other, raising his arms stiffly, waving, blowing a kiss - and when she stopped, he paused.  He could have held his own among the finest statue-people of Rome.

A motorcycle used to deliver KFC!

A surprisingly delicious dinner.  Not wanting to wander around an unfamiliar city at night, we asked the hotel manager if there were any restaurants close to our hotel for dinner.  He told us to walk a block down the street and turn right, so we did so, and stopped at the first place we saw, a restaurant confusingly called "Pasta y Algo Más" ("Pasta and More") in the sign hanging from the outside and "Pasta y Basta" ("Simply Pasta") on the menu.  As soon as we stepped inside, we were worried - while it looked clean and even a little fancy, with pretty crimson table clothes and white candles on the tables, there was not a single other customer and the menu was full of typos like "wather with gas."  We crossed our fingers, hoped the food at the very least wouldn't get us sick, and ordered.  To my surprise, I ended up with one of the most delicious pasta arrabiatas I've ever had.  It was, quite honestly, better than most of the pasta I had in Italy - very flavorful and even a little spicy.  Who would have thought?

A hearty breakfast.  Here is the cook making "disordered eggs" (how the menu translated scrambled eggs).  He cracked eggs into an old mayonnaise jar, shook them up, and poured them into the same pan he used to cook all of our meals.  The resulting eggs tasted a little too much like every other meal cooked in the restaurant over the past five years, but they filled us up and came with free toast and heavily sweetened coffee.

This was moments before we left the hotel, knowing that the staff was only too happy to see us go (and, honestly, being only too happy to go).  After we'd returned from dinner the night before, we'd discovered that the bathroom in one of our rooms had started leaking and the floor was flooded.  I'd gone downstairs to help the girls who had been staying in that room complain to the night manager in Spanish and request a new room.  After almost twenty minutes of complaining and negotiating (and getting the keys to another room with another broken bathroom), we learned a valuable cultural lesson:  If something goes wrong in a hotel room in the DR, it's not the hotel's fault and, while it may be reasonable to request a new room, requesting something like the hotel washing and drying the clothes that had been soaked is being pushy (although, to my friend's relief, they did eventually agree to do that).

And, finally, our taxi to the next bus station, which for some reason was outfitted with a tiny tv.  The tv seemed to be mostly broken, but did get reception on one channel, so we were treated to the staticy sounds of a denture commercial as our taxi driver weaved in and out of early morning traffic and stopped in the middle of the road to opened his door and shout at a passing fellow driver to get directions to the bus station.




Hopefully, I'll get the chance to post the second part of this saga tomorrow, as that's when the real adventures started to happen.  Stay tuned!

Food, Part I

This is the first of what I assume will be many posts about the food here.  I've been taking a lot of pictures of various meals/produce and will do my best to describe them.  Here we go...

Mangú

This is one of the quintessential Dominican dishes.  It's green plantains that are boiled and then mashed up with oil from onions that have been fried.  It can be served with a lot of different things in it and on it: salami, eggs (scrambled or fried), avocado pieces...Here, it's topped with onions and slices of cheddar cheese.  Even though it's pretty simple, it's really delicious.  The closest non-Dominican thing I can think of to compare it to it is baked potatoes, although mangú's texture is a little lighter and the taste is more, well, plantain-like.

More Plantains

This was another dinner that starred the (very common) plantain.  Here, we have ripe plantains that have been sliced in half and boiled, then mixed with fried onions.  We also have a side of fried salami (that round thing on my plate and in the bowl behind it).

And there's some avocado - also a very popular part of Dominican food.  (I eat it as a side to at least one meal a day here.)  Not only are avocados very common, they are very easy to buy.  Around lunch time, at least two or three people stroll through the buildings of my apartment complex yelling "¡Aaaaaaguacateeee!  ¡Aaaaaguacateee!" to let people know they're selling them.  If you want one, you stick your head out the door, shout back to them, and get a fresh avocado handed to you.  (My host mom usually gets hers from the supermarket or the country, but I did hear my host brother do it this way once.)

Spaghetti

This one is less traditional.  In fact, even my host mom seemed to think it was a little weird.  But one night for dinner my host dad requested rice and spaghetti, so we had both white rice and spaghetti with red sauce.  Of course, we accompanied it with the only natural sides: avocado slices and fried eggs.  I don't think I'd ever had any two of those items at the same time before now but...I guess study abroad is all about new experiences?

As a side note, the juice we had that night was amazing.  It was homemade strawberry juice, made by blending frozen strawberries together with water and a little sugar.  It was absolutely delicious - cool and refreshing and healthy(ish), and I can't imagine how I've gone so long without it in my life.  This summer, I'm thinking I'll drink only that.

Things It's Been Weird to Find Weird

He eats mosquitoes, though, so I like him.

Overall, being in the DR is still very new.  While I'm getting better at understanding Spanish and slightly more fluent at speaking it, I still have to ask "¿Cómo?" (Come again?) or "¿Qué significa ____?" (What does ______ mean?) every 3.2 minutes on average.  I still have to ask for detailed directions if I go anywhere besides the university or the main street downtown.  I'm still surprised every time I see a little gecko streaking across a floor or wall (especially when, instead of being outside where it belongs, it is inside a classroom or behind the mirror in my living room, such as this guy).

However, I have had a few bizarre experiences in the past week.  In each of them, I saw/felt/heard something that seemed...well, weird.  And then, a split second later, I realized it was something I would have found completely and utterly normal two weeks ago.  Here they are:

Bachata class during orientation

1. Lady Gaga.  (Her music, I mean.  I don't think I would ever be surprised to find the woman herself weird.)  There is a strong US influence on some aspects of Dominican pop culture.  I believe, for example, that all but one movie currently playing in Santiago's movie theaters is a dubbed/subtitled Hollywood blockbuster (and it might just be that I don't recognize the translated title of that last movie).  The musical impact, however, is less dramatic, and it's pretty rare to hear songs in English when out and about in Santiago.  People my age know a lot of bands from the US, and muzak in stores often mixes some English soft rock hits with some Spanish ones, but almost all of the music I encounter on a daily basis blaring from bars, car radios, cd players, and the tv is in Spanish.  A decent portion of that music, moreover, is pretty traditional-sounding, uniquely Dominican stuff - music you can merengue to.  Even in clubs, about half of the music is like the music in clubs in the States (as in, you can only really grind or rhythmically bop around to it), but about half of it is merengue and bachata with a little bit of salsa thrown in (so people can actually dance).  As a result, it seemed really odd when, a few days ago, I walked past a series of conchos with bachata music drifting out of their open windows and found myself next to a foodstand that was playing "Poker Face."

[Although, as I'm typing this, my host dad is playing the radio in the next room and a Spanish version of "Twist and Shout" just came on.  Go figure.]

Other people were doing this, too!

2. Other Americans.  Santiago is not a very touristy city at all.  My guidebook, for example, describes it as a city in which it might be "worthwhile to spend a few days, certainly no more," and very few tourists spend even that much time here.  In fact, the only other North Americans I have met here have been students on the other study abroad program at my university, an ex-pat who now lives here and runs a non-profit organization, and a Canadian who saw a group of us in a restaurant once and came over to introduce himself.  This means that, unless I am with another person from my program, I am almost without fail the only non-Dominican/Haitian within sight.  Personally, I think this makes for a better study abroad experience (no getting stuck in a touristy bubble), but it was a bit startling when, in Santo Domingo, my group passed a cluster of white people in shorts and Hawaiian t-shirts.  It was even more surreal when, later on, I walked into a restaurant and overheard people at multiple tables speaking English.  That's just never happened in Santiago.

3. Hot Water.  So, Santiago's infrastructure isn't terrible.  It's certainly much different than the US's, but overall, it's decent enough.  They're not the most spacious rides, but conchos get people where they need to go reliably and quickly; the roads are a bit bumpy but they're passable; you can't drink the tap water but it's filtered enough to prevent diseases from spreading (and you can generally even rinse out your toothbrush in it).  And there is, in fact, hot water in the Dominican Republic - sometimes.  Utilities are really expensive in the DR, and electricity costs are higher here than in any other country in Latin America, so most houses are designed to heat only small amounts of hot water at a time, when you need it.  So, in my apartment, when you want to take a shower, you head into the kitchen, flip what looks like a big, industrial light switch on a big, industrial metal box hanging from the wall.  Then, when you go into the bathroom, you flip another switch and have lukewarm water with which to bathe.  Most of the time, however, you don't leave the switch on, so you use cold water (and antibacterial soap) to wash your face, hands, dishes, and clothes.  This is pretty much how it is throughout the city.

There is a gorgeous pool behind us.

One day during orientation, however, one of the estudiantes de apoyo invited us all over to his house to watch a movie.  It was a really nice house - huge and beautiful and tastefully decorated, with a spacious patio and pool in the back (it would have looked right at home on the shores of Lake Minnetonka).  Perhaps the most luxurious thing about it, however, was that when I turned on the faucet to wash my hands, really hot water gushed out.  Not lukewarm in the shower after flipping a series of switches, but really hot water, instantly.  I believe my first reaction was something along the lines of "Oh my gosh!  This family is living it up!  Hot water all the time???"  Then I realized I was being wowed by hot water coming out of a tap, something it is weird not to have in the US, no matter how poor of an area you are in. 

Palm trees and sun glasses!  Sorry!

4. Snow.  I know this will make everyone in Minnesota hate me, so I apologize in advance.  But the background of my email account is still set to show the weather in St. Paul.  Once or twice, I have come home feeling sweaty and greasy from walking back from the university in 85-degree-and-humid weather, turned on my fan, checked my email, and seen snow flakes.  And my first thought was, "What is that?  Snow?"  Weird, weird experience.  Honestly, it's hard to even imagine how cold it is in Minnesota given how hot it is here!  (If I was in front of any of you right now, I would smile in an embarrassed yet gleeful manner and then sprint off in the opposite direction so you couldn't smack me.)

But you will have the last laugh.  The weather here is just below "unbearably hot" for me right now...in January...when Dominicans keep remarking how chilly it is...  Come March, I will be melting and complaining constantly, and you will be laughing at me, and I will be super jealous of you.  I guarantee it.

One Quick Note

I am sorry for such a long post before (I will keep things shorter in the future!), but I did want to give instructions on how to comment on my blog, since I can't figure out how to make it all in English and it's rather confusing.  I will also add some more pictures that I couldn't fit in gracefully to my Santo Domingo post.

To comment, first you need a Google account (which you can do in English).  It's free and easy - go to www.gmail.com, click on the "Create an Account" button in the pale blue box to the bottom and right of the screen.  Fill in the information (feel free to use initials or nicknames).  Take note of your "login name" - it's [whatever you choose]@gmail.com.   Once you've filled everything in, click "I accept.  Create my account."

Then, next time you're on my blog and read something so fascinating you have to comment on it (which will happen often, I'm sure), look at the bottom of the post.  There will be a link that says "2 comentarios" (or whatever number of comments there are) - click on that. 

Type what you want to say into the white box that appears.  Beneath that box, text says "Comentar como:" (Comment as) and there is a drop-down menu that says "Seleccionar perfil..." (Choose profile).  Click on that drop-down menu, and then click on the option "Cuenta de Google" (Google account). 

You'll be taken to another screen.  In the blue box on the right, type in your login name and password, then the oval button to sign in.  (If you leave the box right above the oval button checked, you'll stay logged in on that computer.) 

Next, you'll be taken to a screen that has a preview of your comment and a word beneath it.  Type the letters of that word into the box below it (it's to make sure you're an actual human being instead of a spammer).  Then click the oval "Publicar un comentario" (Publish comment) button again.  It should be published!

Sunday in Santo Domingo

¡Hola!  Briefly, things are still going wonderfully in the DR.  The food is still delicious, I'm meeting lots of nice people, my Spanish is getting better, and everything is new and exciting.

The bus ride there.

On Sunday, I went on a day trip to Santo Domingo (the capital of the country) with the girls from my program and a few of the estudiantes de apoyo.  The estudiantes de apoyo are Dominican students who basically form a support group for international students at our university.  They're all super nice and have been joining us on a lot of our orientation activities.  I ended up sitting next to and talking to estudiantes de apoyo both on the way to and back from Santo Domingo, comparing favorite movies and books, gushing about how beautiful the mountains were, and exchanging cheesy Spanish and English jokes (They'd never heard "Why did the chicken cross the road?").

Here's a picture of the dog (for Katie).

When we got to Santo Domingo, the director of our program, an expert in Dominican history, gave us a tour of the old colonial town that was full of random, fascinating backstories.  She also brought her little dog, who was on a leash and walked the tour with us.  Here are some highlights of the city...

City Streets

A pretty white house.

Pretty colorful houses.

Most of the city of Santo Domingo is gorgeous - lots of old-style Spanish colonial architecture, houses painted bright purple or teal, and tropical flowers growing in little iron balconies.








Here and there were scattered the ruins of centuries-old monasteries - or, occasionally, the ruins of newer but abandoned houses that are now completely dilapidated.  For the most part, it was gorgeous. Here a few pictures of the streets, so you can get an idea of what the area looks like.



Basílica Catedral Santa María de la Encarnación

This facade has been taken apart & reassembled 4 times but still looks great.

During the early period of Spanish colonization, this was the basilica for all of the Americas.   Most of it remains in tact from the 1500s - apparently, the priests still use the same 500-year-old key to lock the doors.  In this picture, only the glass doors and statues of the apostles are (relatively) new.  When the Protestant English attacked Santo Domingo in the 1500 or 1600s, they sacked the church, burned everything that they could, and used it as a latrine.  Since it was stone, most of it survived (and got cleaned up), but the English general liked the statues of the apostles so much that he stole them and sent them back to England, where they remain to this day.

A very Rome-like construction story.

Over here is a picture of the bell tower, an example of the rather unorganized nature of the building process.  Columbus's son was originally in charge of building it, but after laying a foundation stone, he didn't arrange for anything else to be built, and the foundation just sat there.  A few years later, a bishop arrived from Spain, expecting to work at a grand cathedral, but he was greeted with...a huge empty space in the public square.

The construction of the bell tower was also problematic.  The person in charge of the project decided to build a gigantic, majestic structuring, thinking that it would be a good way to impress the Taíno Indians (who, having only had bells made of shells until the Europeans arrived, were fascinated by metal ones).  Halfway through the construction, though, a higher-up realized what he was doing, worried that a huge tower would make the city easier to find and attack, and put an end to the project.  It sat like that for centuries, with only the bottom level and no bells, until in the 1800s a rich family donated the money to add the tiny top that you see today.

There are great gargoyle faces on the fence.

The Alley of the Priests

This is a pretty pathway that leads into the courtyard that used to hold the priests' quarters and now is a quaint square full of palm trees, flowers, and fountains.  Here you can also see the rather shabby-looking but cheerful stray dog that accompanied us for most of the tour.





Casa Sacramento

This one has a strange story.  In the early colonial days, a young couple lived in this house.  On his way back from a trip to Africa, a merchant friend of the family gave them a baby orangutan, which they raised almost like a child.  It was very well-behaved - people would come from all over town to visit it and see it do tricks.  When, a year later, the couple had a baby boy, the orangutan treated it like it was its own little brother, cuddling it and playing with it gently.

Note the tower.

Until one day, being a wild animal, it had some strange wild animal instinct.  It grabbed the sleeping baby out of his crib and carried him to the top of this tower, dangling him by one foot over the edge.  People began calling out to the mother, and she ran to the street, where saw what was happening.  She fell to her knees and called out to Mary, saying that if she saved her son, their family would forever supply the church with bread and wine for communion.  Miraculously, the orangutan pulled the baby back up, cradled him in his arms, and put him back in his crib.  The mother kept true to her word - to this day, money from tours of the house goes to pay for the communion at the basilica. 

Now a popular spot to take wedding pictures.

Hospital San Nicolás

This was the hospital in the early years of the island, back when all of the doctors were priests.  They used it for centuries, until the walls started crumbling and threatening to injure more people than they were saving!  The residents of Santo  decided the ruins have a certain romantic look, so they've left them like this and a group goes through once a year to clear away debris and fortify things that looks dangerous.

Convento de Santa Clarita

Note the huge door and tiny windows to keep (most) boys out.

This was a convent of the order of St. Clare.  Back in the colonial days, most of the elites would send their daughters there to recieve an education and be kept away from boys until a proper husband could be found.  There was, however, a scandal that a new priest, just arrived from Spain, discovered.  He was introduced to all of the rich and important people of the island, including one of two judges on the Supreme Court equivalent of all of Spanish Colonial America.  This judge, being a total sleaze, soon started talking about the convent and said something to the effect of "You wouldn't believe how many young virgins there I've gotten with *wink wink, nudge nudge.*"  The priest was horrified and tried to get someone to do something about it, but everyone on the island kept telling him that, because the judge was so powerful, they just let him get away with whatever he wanted.  The priest was outraged by their apathy, and his bishop soon decided that he was causing so much trouble that he sent him back to Spain.

This guy.

In Spain, he tried again to appeal to the authorities, but no one would do anything that might put them in the bad graces of the judge.  His bishop in Spain, however, wanted to help, and so gave the priest a year off to write about the scandal.  He had to change the details, but he hoped that if the book was popular enough, people would make the connection and it would generate a public outcry against the judge.  There isn't really any information on whether the second part of the plan worked, but the story was indeed popular: It was, in fact, Don Juan, of the phrase "don Juan" and countless remakes of the story over the centuries.

The Beach

It looks pretty from here...

...but there's a lot of trash.

The beach in Santo Domingo isn't that nice - it's polluted and no one swims there.  After lunch, though, we walked down there anyway and I did dip my toes in, making Santo Domingo the farthest south I've ever touched the ocean.
 
Helados Italianos

So happy to be out of the heat!

This wasn't exactly gelatto (what I had was a distinctly Dominican-style sherbet made with "grapes of the sea" - some kind of very tasty purple tropical fruit), but it was very delicious and very refreshing on a such hot and humid day.  Because Santo Domingo is on the coast, it's much hotter than Santiago and on Sunday, it must have been in the high 80s (in January!).  The owner of this shop kindly unlocked the doors and let us inside so we could sit in the shade, even though it was during siesta and he was actually closed.  Dominicans are so hospitable!

Ingenio Boca de Nigua 

Half of it has been restored, and half left as it was.

After lunch, we left Santo Domingo and drove for half an hour through tiny towns full of fruit stands, grazing horses, beauty salons, and tiny shops where you could pay by the minute to use a computer connected to the internet.  We eventually turned down an unmarked, slopping gravel road (a bit scary in bus!) to the ruins of the most important sugar plantation in the DR, although there were no signs marking the spot or telling visitors know about its history.  While our director gave us another tour, a Dominican mother and her two daughters stopped to listen to her, saying that even though they'd lived in the area their whole lives, they'd never know most of what she was saying.

The emancipation was announced in this courtyard.

But this was the site of the first slave rebellion in Colonial America, and, two centuries later, another rebellion of over 200 slaves that was very influential in bringing about emancipation.  Moreover in 1801, in this exact plantation, the Haitian leader who was in the process of invading the DR declared that all slaves in the country were free - and, even after the Haitians left, slavery never returned to the island.

Imagine the heat.

It was a very eerie place - it was very quiet and felt almost haunted.  Our director showed us where each of the stages of sugar production took place.  Most of it involved working 12 to 14 hour shifts standing over roaring fires (in an already miserably hot country), pouring and stirring and crushing huge amounts of sugar cane, and a lot of it took place next to dangerous machinery that frequently took people's arms and legs off, especially towards the ends of long shifts.

On the left, you can see where slaves would stand over gigantic copper pots filled with sugar cane juice, stirring it constantly until it started to crystallize, at which point they hoisted the pots up and poured the sugar into cones to dry.  Underneath, other slaves had to keep the fires going constantly, and they were often chained there because it was such a terrible job that a lot of them tried to run away.  It was apparently one of the worst kinds of slavery, and slaves picking cotton in the U.S. were often terrified of getting sold to the plantations in the Caribbean.

That was kind of a downer to end on, but since this has been such a long post, I'm sure you're ready to be done reading.  (I'll try to make it shorter next time!)  I miss you all!