Hasta Luego

The next Sunday I’m in this house, I’ll be packing up all of my belongings and memories from the DR. Tomorrow’s the last day I’ll see anyone from our exchange program, with the exception of Megan, who’s gonna be my resort neighbor in Puerto Plata! 

Now that class is over, I have unbelievable amounts of free time, and have been using it to search for Omaha jobs, spend time with my US and DR families and the girls from ISA (our exchange program). I got to visit “the clinic” with Megan; she had an internship this semester observing a doctor and taking down stats. That was a sweet experience; it was a lot like a job shadow, or maybe even take-your-kid-to-work day. We were welcomed by an adorable old lady who told me that the clinic is my home and she’s everyone’s grandma… A common attitude I’ll really miss once I’m back in the states. We sat off to the side in a small room with a desk and one of those chairs where the patient sits to be examined. Do those have a name? The clinic is public; so all sorts of people come in with all sorts of problems. Four female doctors work there. I think doctors here depend a lot more on their own knowledge to make diagnoses because it’s too expensive to take samples and run lab tests for every little problem.

Megan, Stacy and I spent Friday and Saturday in Dajabon, town right on the Dominican-Haitian border. Almost everything was closed because it was Good Friday, including the Haitian market that’s open every Monday and Friday. On the bus ride there, we met a young man who led us to the (closed) market. We stopped and chatted with some middle-aged Dominicans who gave us free Presidente in exchange for good conversation. Our new friend led us to the border where we stood in awe watching half-naked little kids play in the river for quite a while. After passing some chocolate cake through the border-patrol gate, we headed back into town, bidding our companero adieu. 

River between DR & Haiti

Border

We mostly just walked around the town all day, stopping to chat with a few women at a colmado, pick peppers with Ricardo and his father, finishing the night off with some really strange conversations with two guys a little older than we. 

Pepper farmer dude

We stayed at “Hotel Massacre” who’s slogan is “your second home!) where we were awoken to a huge variety of sounds, ranging from dogs barking, men opening the screechy gate below, a noisy fan, the AC randomly kicking off and on, and a car blasting 70s ballads in the middle of the night. Don’t be freaked out, the between Haiti and the DR is also called Massacre Bridge because it’s where Trujillo ordered the 1937 Massacre in which thousands of Haitians living along the border were violently murdered.

Today’s been a very typical Sunday, complete with lots of R&R and writing this entry. This is the last update in Santiago! After breakfast tomorrow with Stacy, Megan, Charlene, and Hannah, I’m off to the beach to spend a few days with my (actual) parents and then heading to Monte Cristi to volunteer Saturday till Saturday the 7^th. See you in two weeks :) 

Que Vayas Bien...

Bye PUCMM! The Library, where I spent most of Wednesday morning

About 7 pages of essay writing to go and I'm finished with class in the DR! The time flew, my goodness. Last night we had our ISA goodbye dinner. My parents got in Thursday night and seem to be a big hit. I wouldn't say they're readily adopting the culture but my friends and family here have definitely been super warm and welcoming. Fifi made a giant Sancocho soup for them the night they got in, and neighbors and family were here to welcome them to Santiago. I have two days left with my American friends and I just really can't believe it. Something kinda similar to the feeling I had before leaving the US is quickly coming back to me. There is so much to think about; I feel like I don't even have time to sleep because I'm anxious about a million different things!
Definitely looking forward the beach with my family; Lina and Freddy are actually coming with (aka taking us there) tomorrow and staying till Monday too. We're probably going to a Fort where Columbus sailed (or something) in Puerto Plata on Monday. What else what else? NOT looking forward to saying goodbye to my friends and host family here. I've really grown close to them and I know I'll always have a home here. And the people of Santiago definitely have a place in my heart as well. On a more positive note, I'M PUMPED to come home and see all of you! Just thinking about the look on Jose/Timaree/my roomies/ the boys/kimcandaceclare's faces makes me feel like I'm gonna explode with joy.
What's left on my list? Learn to say "See you soon" in creole. Finish papers. Stock up on coffee and suckers to bring home. Take advantage of speaking tons of Spanish while I still can! Volunteer in Monte Cristi in two weeks.
I may update a time or two before I come home, but who really knows! Thanks for reading, I hope you've learned something and enjoyed following my adventures! See you all in three weeks :)

last day of class with haitian friends

hanging out at the ISA office

Lista?

7 days of class left. Very ready to go home, yet very NOT READY to leave. What an internal conflict we have here. Realizing I've been thinking in terms of countdowns lately, which builds exciting anticipation but also fosters negative anticipation. So I hope I'm done with that nonsense for a while.

Our final project for my Dominican-Haitian Relations class has essentially no stipulations. It can be a sculpture, a powerpoint, a collage, 1 page paper, 5 page paper, whatever we want as long as it relates to the class. I'm thinking something that includes interviews from a dominican, haitian, and american... One of our possible test questions is to interview a dominican and/or haitian about their perception of future dominican-haitian relations and tell Professor Santos about it... so I figured why not do my whole final project on the subject? I'm excited. This is going to be lots more fun than practicing chemical mechanisms before finals week.

Our last excursion to Samana (this past weekend) was gorgeous and absolutely boomb sauce. We visited Los Haitises which are a bunch of mini islands near the northern peninsula of the DR and ate some Johnny Cake and Ginger Beer made by an old Cocolo descendent woman (US freed slaves that set up the colony of Samana in the 1800s).

Ginger Beer and Johnny Cake

Drivin the boat back to Samana

please note Mr. Speedo in the background

Que Rapido

The time has flown here. I have 12 days of class left, +1 to present a couple final projects. I love piano lessons and am amazed that I can actually play [little kid beginner] songs with BOTH HANDS! How cool, riiight? I'm excited. It's really difficult, repetitive and frustrating but I love it; I can't wait to practice at Timaree's house this summer.

This past week was really calm. Thinking back to January, I'm definitely tons more confident with my Spanish, even though I know every time I speak I'm gonna make plenty of mistakes. Who cares? We're learning! I don't want to leave the people I've met here! I love my family more each day; they're seriously awesome and it's really fun to have "siblings" close to my age. Here's the play-by-play.

Thursday night we played skipbo at the colmado. 

Friday, our ISA program ventured to the house of the Mirabal Sisters. There were four of them; Dede is the only one still living because the other three were killed by the DR government during Trujillo's rule, upon their return after visiting their husbands in jail. Who's Trujillo? Think Hitler, only instead of killing Jewish people and putting them in concentration camps, Trujillo ordered a genocide of thousands of Haitians (with knifes and machetes so it seemed more local, less like war) to "whiten" the Dominican race. This was in the 1930s. If you're curious, just ask; I've learned tons about his regime. Minverva, one of the Mirabal sisters, studied law in Santo Domingo in [i think] the 50s, however, after years of studying, Trujillo withheld her degree because she was a woman. If you're curious, here's the history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirabal_sisters

After the Mirabal Museum, we hiked around a cocoa farm/ rain forest.

ISA w/ Dona Dede, surviving Mirabal sister

cacao bean

The same night some ISA girls (+Lina) came over to bake delicious banana nutella cookies and watch Black Swan, which if you haven't seen it, you must. It's super intense, insane, and scary but also mindbogglingly awesome. Mindbogglingly is a word but mindblowingly isn't? Our language is crazy.

soo the ovens cook differently and we had to improvise a few ingredients..

...but they were delicious!

Yesterday Megan, Stacy, Rose and I went to Centro Leon for a Folklore Dance exhibit thing... We talked about weird freaky diseases and research. Haha I love learning from people; did you know? Later we hung out at Leo's. We watched "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", listened to Leo play guitar, and exchanged depressing yet funny stories. Really my favorite moments here are the ones in which we don't do much. Simply being with people and enjoying their company is the best.

Folklore Dancers

Church this morning with Denis, then Haitian lunch (don't worry roomies, I got the sauce recipe), salsa dancing, and chilling at his house till a little bit ago. 

Almuerzo!

That's all for now! We've got about a month left in the program then I'm off to Monte Christi for a week, then home sweet home! Miss you and love you all. God bless.

“I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but not everything is constructive. No one should seek their own good, but the good of others.

1 Corinthians 10:23-24

No possible way to describe how this country makes me feel. Thankful and calm, excited and ecstatic, downtrodden and exhausted all at the same time. That's a story much too vast and detailed for blogging. Just ask me when I get home for a better account.

This is my main thought for the day: We have the gift of love, why on earth don’t we take advantage of it? Why aren't we making the most of every opportunity to care about other people as much as we do ourselves? Just some food for thought. So simple, yet so overlooked.


Definitely definitely had a blast with Michael last week; I'm so fortunate he got to come! I gave up speaking English during the week (with people here) and not gonna lie, it's a little tiring and definitely challenging but well worth it because that's kind of why I came here. So really it only makes sense.

baseball game! (10-year-old players)

Michael and I did lots of Santiago things like: chill at the ISA office, dominoes and beer at the colmado, taught Lina and Victor Jose how to play skipbo, ate lots of bolas de yuca, made friends with random people, explored downtown.. watched a pirated $50 peso (less than $2) DVD (The Social Network), played soccer, class, etc.
We had so much fun and like I said, I'm so blessed to have him as a friend and that he got to visit! 5 months is a super long time to not see someone you really care about, which I'm sure most of you already realize.
We also stayed at a resort for a night in Sosua and spent lots of time on the beach. 

dominoes and cerveza at the colmado

at the beach

27 charco

The latest ISA excursion was to 27 Charcos- 27 waterfalls that we climbed, hiked around, and jumped off last Friday. That was gorrggeeeoouss; we had a great time. 

Well it's easy to forget about homework when I often feel like I'm on vacation, but considering it's already 3:30pm, I think maybe I'll get to that now :) Thanks for reading, take care!

PS I've decided to volunteer in an orphanage in either Monte Cristi or Jaibon during my last week here- can't wait!

Diego de Ocampo

Ok friends, I'm sitting on campus before dance class after taking my first non-open note exam of the semester. 25/25, woohoo! I made up a really BS answer for the first question but somehow got credit for it. I overstudied, that's for sure, but when you're used to studying like I did last semester, a couple hours for one test is surely a relief.

I'm very excited to share my latest adventures with you. This will probably be a long one, so throw some cocoa in the micro and cozy up.

Thursday night we watched "Due Date" at Rose's, in english, with americans, oreos and peanut butter. Sometimes we just gotta escape.

Our group (ISA) spent Friday morning and afternoon at a preschool, moving trash, weeding, painting, and playing with niños. It was cool to experience life from yet another perspective; from the eyes of little kids from lower class families. We painted rocks, fences, bricks, trees, yes, trees... and had a great time!

 

 

The real adventure took place Saturday. I think 30% of the time I've spent laughing here happened in the campo on Saturday. So it all starts with four of us catching a concho (cheaper version of a taxi) ride to the baseball stadium, where Jonathon (our ISA director) told me we'd find a jeep that would take us to a point on a mountain where we could then hike up the mountain with a guide and return before 1pm. We get to the baseball field, ask our concho driver how we get to this said jeep-stop. I showed him our hand-drawn map and he told us to go inside the stadium and ask someone there. Soon after entering the stadium, we found ourselves following three 10-year-old baseball players leading us to a jeep which ended up being about a 10-15 minute walk through a run-down neighborhood, from the stadium. How Jonathon thought we would magically know where this stop was is beyond me. We get there and are told to call a man named Chele. So we call Chele, (in Dominican this means penny...) and he eventually hangs up because he can't understand Megan's accent. We call him back and have the ninos talk to him and explain that we have a piece of paper that says we want to climb a mountainside. We thank our new friends and promise to attend their baseball game the following weekend and are met by Chele who takes us (along with some 2 random guys we picked up on the way) up the hillside in his metal country truck. We peed in the woods, found our guide (eventually), and traipsed up the Diego de Ocampo. At the top we played some games with a giant random group of Dominicans on some sort of retreat and then headed down the hill at 12:20 so we could catch the last bus that leaves for the bottom of the mountain, at 1pm. We get there at 1:05, which SHOULD mean about 12:45 or 50 Dominican time, and two old ladies say that the bus JUST left. So... should we walk for the next five hours down a mountain side to catch a guagua into the city? Our guide walked us down a ways to a colmado where we could hopefully ask around for a ride, and on the way, a white police truck drives by, greets us, and keeps driving. They turn around and we're like, yep, ask them for a ride. They were more than willing. We hopped in the back of their truck and headed down the bumpy mountainside, laughing until our abs hurt. We stopped at a colmado, bought a presidente beer to share, took some pictures with the military policemen, and continued down the mountain. They proceeded to drive across a giant desert-style field of dirt with palm trees and african style huts along the side. (See facebook for video). We caught a guagua back into the city, then a familiar concho, and walked about 20 more minutes to arrive home. Our return took about 2.5 hours, but it's safe to say we enjoyed every uncertain second of it.

helpful ninos

back of the police truck

So after that novel, I'm heading to dance class. Diamond and coal? Diamond: Saturday adventure, also progressing in piano lessons, Coal: spending too much time on facebook instead of studying or talking with my host family.

So much love!

Izzie

New goal: have a dream in Spanish before I leave.