Last week in Santo Domingo

Update: I have finished all of my classes and will be coming home to America on Saturday!

Vietnam

Internship

April has been busyyy! As of now, I have finished 2 of my classes + finals. (One of these two didn’t have any work all year or a final exam so I don’t know if it counts, but I’m still looking at it as a good thing.) Right now I am just trying to enjoy my last two weeks in SDQ, working on 2 final papers, and also completing hours at my internship. I have been interning at Tu Mujer since March, which is a women’s development center in a poor neighborhood that is actually called Vietnam. (Let’s just say it’s a pretty rough area.) Tu Mujer is an incredible program that trains women in Vietnam to monitor the health, environmental, and economic conditions in town and report back to the office, hold training sessions, and create changes. For my internship I go with these promotoras as they take inventories of the conditions, and also am doing an independent research project on relationships between men and women in the town. The town next to Vietnam is called Puerto Rico. I will attach some photos of the area.

Semana Santa

Traveling! I have been doing a LOT of traveling lately ~ Dominicans have a lot of “Semana Santa” (the week before Easter) off, and that was my Spring Break. During this time, I heard that there was a blackout at the airport, and after about an hour of detaining all the incoming visitors from other countries, Dominican airport security decided to just let everyone go through anyway. Safe! I took off for Spring Break early, and went to Punta Cana, which was beautiful and touristy. From there, I took a car to Sabaná de la Mar, where I was told to wait for a ferry to take me to Samaná – a little Dominican island famous for its beaches. Some friendly Dominican men told me I could wait with them for the ferry, and were nice enough to share their Presidente with me. Turns out, these guys were the captain of the ferry and his “first mate”, who were having a great time getting drunk before setting off on the boat ride. It was a nice little visit, but I eventually grew impatient.

“When are we going to leave?” I asked them.

“Whenever we finish this,” the first mate replied – a typical Dominican answer.

The captain grunted in agreement as his eyes rolled gently to the back of his head and he nodded along lazily to the merengue music blasting behind him. I was so happy to be entrusting these men with my life.

Finally on board, I was invited up into the captain’s area and asked several times whether or not I had a boyfriend, to which I obviously replied that I was happily married, thank you, and headed to the back of the boat where two huge fish had just been caught. Rather than kill these fish right away, however, the crew preferred to watch them flop around the deck – spraying blood on my fellow passengers (fortunately, however, not me. I headed to the front of the boat and sat with a European couple who had so thoughtfully brought their 2-week old baby on board.)

Samaná was beautiful! I will attach pictures! I was meeting friends in Las Galeras though, and had (obviously) missed the last bus there. Fortunately I made another friend – a motorcyclist who offered to drive me the “30 minutes” to Las Galeras.

Over an hour later, I made it, as did the pound of dust caked on my face and hair.

Playa Rincón in Las Galeras was worth all the crazy travelling, though – I have never been to a more beautiful or remote beach in my life.

Tabasco

Today, I thought it would be a good idea to introduce you all to a friend of mine. His name is Tabasco and he lives right outside my bedroom window. Like many roosters in the developing world, Tabasco does not play by the rules. Rather than crowing at dawn, he crows at all hours of the day and night. My first night in my apartment, Tabasco woke me up with his beautiful crow, which I mistook for a woman's scream, and almost went outside to see what was going on before he crowed again, and someone threw a stone at him. Tabasco has over seven hen wives, a healthy sex life, and a special talent of ruining phone interviews for summer internships. As of last night, he is the proud new father of about a dozen baby chicks. Trust me, I heard all about it. I will leave you all with a picture of our friend.

PS - Tabasco's other companion is Coco, the Husky across the way who barks all night and day to protest his current location. I guess he doesn't like having a FUR COAT in a tiny apartment complex in the DR...I can't imagine why not.

La huelga

Well, a cold front hit soon after Carnaval - aka it was about 65 degrees here, and a nice break from the heat. It lasted a week, and while I was comfortable in shorts and a t-shirt, most Dominicans were really bundled up. I even sat next to one woman on the bus who was wearing a puffy north face-type coat! Crazyyy.

Art History Class Update: New teacher. Obviously. He seemed nice as he excitedly explained the syllabus -- no papers, no tests, no quizzes. He apparently gets called in by the university every so often to be yelled at for giving too many 100s as final grades, but maintains that if he thinks students deserve 100%, that's what he will give out. I do not entirely understand how he calculates these grades with no actual assignments to base them off of, but I'm not complaining! So we had our introductory class, and all was going well. We returned for class last Thursday, though, and were interrupted by strange sounds coming from outside. The Dominican students all looked extremely nervous, and started telling the professor that he needed to end class. I had no idea what was going on until someone told me that there was a "huelga" - a strike - going on to protest the costs of public transportation. The Dominican students told us not to leave the building because people were throwing rocks, shooting, and setting off homemade bombs! We stayed for a little while, until a Dominican student told us we could come with her and she'd show us how to leave safely. We booked it out of there, and lucky we did, because one of my friends who chose to stay was stuck in the building for three hours while homemade bombs were going off all around the area. We somehow ended up at McDonald's (obviously), where I ordered a Happy Meal. The strike continued into Friday as well - another friend of mine was riding a public bus as men were pelting it with rocks!

Anyway, after la huelga, the cold front ended. Now it's hotter than ever, and it's still "winter" here!

Día de Independencia y Carnaval en la Vega!

El Diablo!

Cross dresser?




defense mechanisms!

This past Saturday was Independence Day in the DR, and I went to the parade along the Malecon, which was a lot of fun. Their version of 4th of July!! Street vendors and entertainers were everywhere, so I spent more time waiting for the parade to start (obviously no one knew what time it would begin) than actually watching it. Thousands of military men and women lined the streets and it seemed as if the entire military was there...I was pretty sure no one was even defending the country. Oops.

The next day, I went to Carnaval in la Vega, the biggest Carnaval celebration in the DR that really celebrates Lent the right way. We had no idea what time the festivities would start, so we were the first ones to arrive around 12:30 and spent time running around meeting people and taking pictures with the bizarre characters who were walking around. I was a little nervous about coming to la Vega; I had been warned by multiple people multiple times to TEN CUIDADO because la Vega was supposed to be so dangerous. One Dominican friend of mine advised me to bring a mask so that I would "fit in" more with all the costumed people and attract less attention. People in the streets carry inflated cow bladders around with them on strings to use as whips to hit others with when they least expect it! I got hit a few times by people before making the wise decision to buy an inflated cow bladder of my own to defend myself! The parade finally started around 4:30 and it was so much fun. The costumes were beautiful and some were really scary! In addition to the parade, a lot of random little boys were nearly naked, walking through the streets covered completely in mud or tar and dancing for money. I also got a fake tattoo of the Dominican flag, and the guy gave it to me for free because I spoke Spanish to him! I took tons of photos, so I will post some of them here! Something funny was that while I was constantly asking characters if I could take pictures with them, a lot of Dominicans were asking to take pictures with ME, a gringa. Of course I said yes!