Memory/Memoria

This is my last entry from the Dominican Republic. All future transmissions will be from the United States.

I'm at Aeropuerto Las Americas, checked in, security cleared, and ready to board my flight to Philadelphia. I barely had time to marvel at the miracle of getting through immigration and security in 25 minutes, because I've never made it through airport bureaucracy so quickly. I suppose other countries roll differently with their air travel, because it took me damn near two hours to get through check-in, security, and other nonsense when I left SFO to come here.

Yesterday was my last full day in the Dominican Republic. I didn't do anything differently from a normal Saturday night. I didn't get sad and wax nostalgic for the country I'm leaving behind. I did start to remember home: the palm trees on the San Jose State campus, the weird green/blue carpet in my apartment, even the baseball stadium blankets I drape over my couch in my living room. I do think it's odd that I recollect images before people, at least right now.

When I came here in September I arrived in the dead of night. All I could see was the highway, street lamps, and darkness. It felt like it took a hundred years to get from the airport to my apartment in Distrito Nacional. This morning we drove along the coast and I watched the deep blue sea fly by. Thirty minutes later I was at the airport and I had to face that my adventure in the DR is over.

During the car ride I recalled my first days here. I remembered the first Saturday I was here, terrified and confused. My driver bought me breakfast and I told him my pastry was a pill. I remembered when I met Indhira, and when she took me around the city and out with her friends so I could see what it's really like to live here. I remembered all the people I met here and all the places I'd seen.

Before I got here, I thought of the Dominican Republic as a big black void in my mind. I had no idea what to expect and no way to form a mental picture. Now I can fill in the missing scenes with the memories I formed here. I can also answer the questions I had before I left: can I do this? How do I do it? What will I lose if I go? I answered to myself with a resounding yes, I can do this; just do it; and I lost the fear and uncertainty that held me back.

The adventure may be over, but the story is not. I have a few more journalism pieces to write and I want to write a prologue and a brief return to the US story.

I wasn't sentimental last week. Now I'm tearing up. Something about bearing my soul on the internet touches my heart.

Three months: values/Tres meces: valores

December flew by for me. That means I'm almost home. I'm in the library at UNIBE in between final exams right now, killing time by screwing around on the internet, which is my go-to activity domestically as well as internationally. I apologize for the gap between blog posts but rest assured that you didn't miss much between Thanksgiving and the last week of school for me.

The three month mark passed on December 2, a week ago. As with the previous milestone posts on my first and second month here, I chose an aspect of my journey to write about as I mark one of the final steps of my adventure in the Dominican Republic.

Since I've already beaten one literature concept into the ground, I'm going to steal another classic from one of my favorite narratives, the Wizard of Oz. The protagonists are all searching for heart, brains, courage, and a way to go home through the story, but each found they had their coveted qualities all along. You know all that. Here's the story of how I discovered each of those values in the Dominican Republic.

Dorothy met the scarecrow first and he said he wanted a brain. Once he got it, he spouted off equations and other boring nonsense. For me, the brains I wanted all along was the ability to speak Spanish fluidly. As everyone in the DR predicted, I am able to do that now...a week before I leave for the United States. It's true. Spanish has never been clearer or easier for me to understand. That doesn't mean I'm fluent. Not even close. But I have a grasp on the language enough to express what I want and to sort of follow what others want and I no longer break down in tears over misunderstands.

Then Dorothy met the Tin Woodsman, who is a lot like me in that we both have rusty old joints and shiny foreheads, but I do not dress is silver lamé. Give me about 40 years, and I might. My grandmother did. The Woodsman wanted a heart. This aspect was the hardest one for me to come by, because I'm famous for being closed off emotionally. Before I came here my career goals were to rule the world, one sports media outlet at a time. In my research I found all the good things baseball does in the DR, and I got a fantastic quote that I want to use for the non-fiction book I want to write: "mira que buena es la pelota," or, look how good baseball is. I gained compassion and concern for the young men who play baseball and can afford only one dream: to play ball in the United States. I want to work in development and management to give those young men the chance to dream about more: an education, a good life for their families, including a wife and children someday, and a life after baseball. If I deserve to dream of a future that includes those things, everyone does.

So that's how I found my heart. I had the capacity to love something so much it transcended my budding megalomania and turned into compassion. That picture I chose, with the little robot guy, represents me perfectly. His headphones are plugged into his heart and he's listening to what his heart says. I think all along I had the compassion and caring in my heart, but I just wasn't listening to it.

Courage is something I've never lacked. My former roommate, a great gal, once described me as a "freight train" when it came to getting the things I wanted. I decimate things that stand in my way. Courage in the domain one masters is easy. Having that same quality in a brand new place is a horse of a different color. (Come on, I had to go for the easy joke with the silly picture.) I had to double up on courage to come to the DR in the first place, and then follow through with the usual activities I mastered in my domain, this time in a different language, in a different culture, and with a totally different set of standards.

I knew that I had the courage to do these things all along. But there was another aspect to courage that I did not expect, nor did I define right away. No matter how brave a person is, that person can do very little without needing help from time to time. In the US, I'd rather disembowel myself than ask for a hand. Here, I am required to ask for help because I'm not the master of this domain. I found it wasn't a scary awful horrible thing to lean on another person from time to time. I found it was helpful to build bonds and relationships with people, thus boosting the heart factor, and it helps me to learn new skills, which is brain food. It helps a lot that most Dominicans here have been exceedingly kind and helpful to me and really made me feel at ease.

The Lion was the one who wanted courage and he was awarded it in the form of a medal. So far fellow posters on my usual sports blog haunts have been asking me "hey, how's the DR?" over the last few weeks and have been fascinated by my stories. Perhaps my medal of honor is the intrigue from my peers for traveling to foreign lands.

Dorothy herself just wanted to go home. Believe me, I'm there. I can't click my heels together, though. I have to wait until Sunday and crowd onto an overbooked flight (twice!) and bite my nails with worry over being detained at customs over the rum I'm bringing home. Unlike Dorothy, I am torn between two aspects of home. It's time for me to get back to my life in the US: work, school, friends, family, and Sam. But I've really come to love the Dominican Republic and I feel comfortable here. It's a place I would like to make my home someday and I get sad thinking of when I will see this beautiful country again. As I've mentioned a few times before here, I struggle a lot with a sense of place and belonging. I have trouble finding my place in the US, but I found my place quickly in the DR. The thought of leaving that domain behind, mastered or not, makes me sad and it makes me wonder what was so different about finding my place here versus questioning my place in the US. I think that will be the most challenging value for me to bring home.

The Wizard of Oz went on for several books. My life also has several volumes. This story is almost over but there are still a few chapters to write. We haven't yet reached the conclusion. Stayed tuned, my friends.

Feast/Banquete

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I just finished my over the top foodening at Il Cappuccino. Around this time, most of my beloved friends and family on the Best Coast are getting ready to sit down at their tables for their own foodenings. My dinner was so delicious I'm compelled to write about each course in detail, because I would do the same were I fixing and eating dinner in the US.

This is also the post where I try my hand at being a food writer. In case this sportswriting thing doesn't work out, I can turn to writing for Bon Appetit. It's awesome to get paid to write about sports if you're a huge fan like I am, so I gather it would be awesome to write about food for someone who loves to eat as much as I do.

Italian food is among my favorite cuisines of the world. Mexican, Japanese, and Caribbean foods are my other favorites. I rarely go out for a delicious Italian dinner, so I took advantage of the great Italian place down the road from me.

Vino: I have to start this portion by telling you that I'm not a wine connoisseur. I know red, white, rose, Pinot, Chardonnay...and that's about it. To tell you the truth I'm not even a big wine drinker, but I've come around on red wine here thanks to attending FUNGLODE to-dos where appetizers/wine are served. I make it a point to go to those to-dos, mostly for the free food and booze.

So I can't tell you exactly what was in my glass today, but it was a Pinot Noir and it was quite good.

Entrada: Carpaccio del atun (Tuna steak carpaccio)

I love tuna steaks and I love sushi so this is a natural win for my taste buds. It was served with a slight sprinkling of cracked black pepper. I appreciated the simple presentation because it allowed the flavor of the tuna to shine. I also love tuna for its very meaty and hearty texture. It's among the top of the fish varieties out there for its close qualities to cuts of poultry and beef.

Entree: Cannelloni con espinaca y queso ricotta (cannelloni with spinach and ricotta)

I went into this foodening really wanting a big-ass steak. Because really, what's better than a big-ass medium-rare steak? But then I saw the specials and one of them was the cannelloni. Pasta rules on its own and the only way to improve it is to stuff crap in it. I cook pasta at home often but I rarely go with stuffed/filled pastas because I can't make them from scratch and the frozen varieties are hit or miss.

The cannelloni came out smothered in cream sauce with a drizzle of tomato sauce over each tube. The filling was delightful and the sauce was especially delicious when sopped up with the two kinds of bread from the breadbasket--good crusty French bread, and focaccia baked with tomato on top.

I ate the whole damn breadbasket and I'd do it all over again if you put the bread in front of me.

Postre: Tiramisu y cafe con leche

Tiramisu is another one of those slam dunk dishes for me. It and creme brulee trump all other dessert options. Even chocolate. The tiramisu was absolutely lovely and delicious at Il Cappuccino. It was presented more like a layered cake: a thin layer of the coffee soaked ladyfingers, a thicker layer of the egg yolks/marscapone, and a liberal dusting of cocoa and cinnamon on top. The ladyfinger layer was more uniform that just stacking the cakes under the other stuff, like a real bottom layer of a cake. The middle layer of marscapone was creamy and refreshing, a necessity between the rich coffee soaked cake and the cinnamon/cocoa dust on top. I also detected rum in the cake, which tied the whole thing together.

The cafe con leche was the perfect balance to the variety of flavors in the tiramisu. If you ever find yourself in Latin America, do yourself a favor and drink as much coffee as you can. I love a good cup of unsweetened coffee with a rich dessert and following my tiramisu with a stiff cup of Dominican joe was perfection.

The service was lovely today. I got a waiter who was very interested in me and where I was from. He asked me how to say things in English--like what the English equivalent of "bon appetit" would be. Here they say "buen provecho" when serving your meal. I don't know what I would say to my dinner guests upon serving them other than "bon appetit" other than "enjoy your meal" which is what I told the waiter.

I did not pig out. Each dish I enjoyed wasn't enormous and it allowed me to finish each one and to savor them. I usually pig out on Thanksgiving. The turkey and the carbs (mashed potatoes and stuffing)  are the best part of the meal. By the end I'm too full for pumpkin pie. Come Christmas, I'll do the very same, complain about my searing stomachache, mainline Tums, and then eat my pie at midnight while watching Golden Girls episodes On Demand.

I very much enjoyed my non-traditional Thanksgiving and I hope all of you are enjoying yours, traditional and non-traditional alike.

Giving thanks/Dar agradecimiento

Most (if not all) of my readers are gearing up for Thanksgiving tomorrow. Let it be known that Thanksgiving is one of my favorite cold-weather holidays and one of the few things that gets me through the fall/winter months. I hate being cold and I hate being without baseball, but cooking a humongous meal  for my family and friends and chowing down with them takes a little of the pain away.

Here I am in a beautiful tropical country where it's warm and sunny and there's baseball the day before Turkey Day. That fact depressed me for weeks prior to the event. It sucks enough to be apart from your family and friends and to be all alone on any given day, but when it's one of the biggest deals of your home culture, it sucks even more.

That's right. Indhira went home to New York. Her time here was up about a week ago so here I am fending for myself for the next three weeks.

As I saw it, I had two options: one, continue to be depressed about being alone (not just for Thanksgiving, but for the duration of my time here), or two, make the best of my time here.

I chose the latter option.

My Thanksgiving plans involve me going to Plaza Lama, a supertienda (kinda like a big box store a la Target or Wal-Mart) and finish the rest of my holiday shopping. Tomorrow evening I'm going to Il Cappuccino, this delightful Italian place down the street from my apartment, where I will treat myself to a full Italian dinner: pasta, steak, bread, wine, and the most decadent dessert in the house.

The last time I went out for Thanksgiving dinner was right before my grandmother died. It was just the two of us and we went to Mimi's Cafe for their holiday turkey dinner. We ate, drank wine, and toasted to a year that sucked overall but it was okay because we had each other. It was one of the last good memories I have of my grandmother.

I can give thanks while I am here. Here are the things I appreciate about being in the Dominican Republic, and other things in my life:

The weather. I wake up with the sun streaming through the blinds onto my face every morning. The oppressive heat from September has cooled to a mellow, pleasant tropical warmth. Even the rain is charming. Sometimes it's soft and sometimes it pours like crazy and I love watching every minute of it from my balcony. After the rain everything smells fresh.

I value my time alone here. I need time to myself in any setting, to recharge my batteries and do my own thing, but I'm also happy to be alone here because it's forcing me to get out there and do things, which requires me to ask for help. I'm going out to eat more often and I'm going shopping tomorrow alone, things which would have terrified me when I first got here.

The people are lovely, in every sense of the word. From my English-speaking cab driver to my grocery boy to the InteRDom people to the security guards at my building, most of the people I've encountered here are helpful and kind. Whenever I felt alone or like an outsider in this culture, those people have endeavored to include me.

I love the culture here. Aside from the obvious things like music, dance, and fried food, I value that tomorrow and Friday aren't big ass deals like they are in the US. I get annoyed when everything is closed in the US for a holiday and I loathe the hype around Black Friday and Christmas shopping in general. I've seen far too many obnoxious ads for Black Friday and for jewelry stores on the American TV channels here and each one of them makes me want to throw up. I get to sidestep all of that here for the next few weeks. I can go shopping tomorrow, even!

I'm thankful for baseball. Everywhere. Everyone who plays it. Everyone who works in it.

I'm very thankful for my MacBook Pro. It's been my window to the world I left behind these three months here. I've been able to keep up with my friends, complete the work for my online class, and it's become my best friend here. It's just so very handy. I did a complete project for my online class, using solely my laptop: I shot and edited video, put together a PowerPoint presentation, edited photos for said PP, and slapped all three together using programs and software already included on the machine when I bought it--save for MS Office, which I got from my boyfriend. I love this thing.

I am thankful to have strong people behind me in the United States, people who loved me enough to encourage me to go on this adventure and people who love me enough to welcome me home from my adventure. I would not be here if it weren't for Sam, my roommate Phil, my best friend and surrogate sister Jenna, my advisors at San Jose State, my various bosses and coworkers and colleagues in sportswriting and at Santa Clara Swim Club, and I know I'm forgetting some people.

I am thankful for all the lessons I've learned here, about myself, about my two cultures, about Spanish, and about how I look at the world. I will never be the same person I was when I left the US and I really like the person I'm becoming.

I'm thankful that I can return home in 17 days, but I'm thankful for the time I have here. I'm thankful for the views of the sea from my balcony and the banana and coconut palms growing in my neighborhood. When I go home I know I'll see oak trees, gray skies, and concrete jungles. I'm enjoying the beauty of this country for as long as I can.

I am thankful for the culinary tricks I picked up here. I'm going to wow them back home with my slick Dominican cooking skills. Even though the only thing I can replicate to Dominican standards is tostones (fried plantains), I still make other Dominican dishes that are at least edible.

I am thankful for the credits I've earned here that will get me another semester closer to graduation at San Jose State and I am thankful for the future opportunities that will come thanks to what I've done here. One already has come--I was accepted into SJSU's Provost's Honors Seminar this spring, a class for the top 25 students at the school. It's by invite only and it will look great on my resume. Hopefully it will make my applications for grad school a slam dunk.

I wish all of you the best Thanksgiving with your family and friends, and don't get trampled if you do venture out on Black Friday.

Grocery boys/Los muchachos de comestibles

One of the best things about living in my apartment and my neighborhood is that I have a big kitchen and a grocery store within walking distance. I was really concerned about having a space where I could cook and a place where I could get food to cook. I love going out for meals, but after a while that takes a toll on your wallet and your figure. Plus, cooking centers me and I love making food, plus I get the fun of experimenting with Dominican recipes in my kitchen here, with the food resources to make it happen.

Is a trip to the grocery store all that different here as opposed to the United States? It depends on what your criteria is. In terms of what I shop for, what I buy, how much I buy, and where I buy it, there's not much difference. The grocery store I frequent is laid out exactly like every other grocery store I've been to in my life. I buy staples like beans, rice, meats, bread, fresh produce, herbs, spices, and oil. I buy yummy things I don't need like ice cream, sweets, and crackers. Fortunately staples are very reasonably priced here (for me, anyway) and I get a great exchange rate with the US dollar. I shop once a week and I buy enough stuff to cook meals for a week, plus stuff for breakfast, and I replenish any staples that are running low, plus things like cleaning supplies and toiletries as needed.

As for the variety of things I buy, I've found some cool options here. I found these amazing six grain rolls that are delicious with Nutella. That plus a glass of Tropicana OJ (lots of pulp) is my usual breakfast. Yogurt flavors here come in dulce de leche, guava, and chinola (passionfruit). Beans galore. GALORE! Black, red, pink, white, pigeon peas. I love beans so this is outstanding. Naturally the selection of fresh produce differs here, and most of it is dirt cheap. I love fruits and vegetables so I love this. The avocados here are three times the size of the Haas avocados in the US and they cost about 17 pesos a piece. We're talking 50 cents for an avocado that can feed three people. That's the dream, right there.

Also, items tend to be referred to as their brand or product names. Diapers aren't called such here. They're "pamper." Want matches? Ask for "fosforo." The brand of matches.

So I buy my groceries once a week, usually on Saturdays after school, or Sunday mornings if I'm feeling extremely lazy. I shop with the idea of what I want to cook in mind--no different from my plan of attack in the US. I've taken to buying split bone-in chicken breasts because it saves me at least 150 pesos and I'm a pro at deboning meat. I buy a lot of sweet peppers and onions and tomatoes and I make a lot of stewed dishes.

It's easy to take care of your business at the grocery store, too. My grocery store has a Viva payment kiosk. Viva is my cell phone provider here and I can add minutes to my phone there. It also has a photo center and you can buy cigars there, too.

Shopping and buying the groceries is only half the battle. You have to get your groceries home, too.

I live in downtown San Jose and I'm within walking distance of everything. I walk a few city blocks to the grocery store. But as you know, it's hard to get a lot of groceries home without a car. I usually recruit my boyfriend to help on grocery runs and we use this rolling cube cart thing he has. It's not very big, but we've managed to cram a lot of stuff in there using creative methods.

Here however, I have no cube and no car. The first time I went to the grocery store without a ride I wasn't sure how to get my stuff home. Indhira told me the guys who bag the groceries will push the cart to your home--for a tip, and provided that your destination is within a reasonable distance to the grocery store.

Enter the grocery boys. Most of them are young (18-20) and very attractive. It's quite satisfactory to have a cute boy schlep your stuff around.

Relax. I only look. I don't touch. I'm too old for these children, anyway.

These grocery boys have a dangerous job when they carry my groceries home. The grocery store is on one of the busiest streets in Distrito Nacional and the sidewalk has been torn up since I got here due to construction projects. The grocery boys have to walk in the street, with traffic, because the sidewalks are either blocked off or so rocky/uneven that the cart wheels won't go over them.

More than a few times, grocery boys have recklessly pushed the cart into traffic. One of them ran with the cart then rode it. I would have felt awfully guilty if he died a horrible splattery death because he was carrying my groceries home.

Last week I ended up with a grocery boy who speaks English! He goes to La Universidad Autonoma de Santo Domingo (the public university) and works two jobs, at the grocery store and at a hotel. He's learning English at UASD and he speaks very well. Now he insists on carrying my groceries home every time I shop there. We practice our languages together. He told me (in English) that he's studying engineering at UASD and he wants to go to school because he lives in a bad neighborhood and he wants something better for himself. As a working student myself, I sympathize.

Plus he's the cutest of all the grocery boys. Shut it. I'm allowed to enjoy the company of men. A little bit.

It's definitely different shopping here. In the US, once you pay for your shit, you're pushed out the door. Here, the typical Dominican quality of accommodating and helping people extends to the poor confused American who shows up once a week to drop a few thousand pesos on groceries.

Travelogue/Sobre viajes

I took some trips over the last several weeks and I realized I did a great disservice to my blog by not posting pictures or writing about my adventures.

I'll condense them for you by posting links to my photo albums and providing brief descriptions of my travels.

In early October I went to the beach at Boca Chica with my roommate and her friends. Boca Chica is east of Santo Domingo. There aren't any suitable beaches in Santo Domingo, so you have to go east for the best ones.

I took the pictures from this set at different intervals of the day, from afternoon to sunset. I was told that this beach was "ghetto" compared to the resort beaches in the DR. I was still in love with the sky, the sea, and the sand. Seriously this water was WARM and clear and gorgeous.

The rest of the photos are here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150314886931373.337181.731621372&type=1&l=eb2c2fdb6d

The next trip I went on was an excursion with my history class to the ruins of a colonial sugar plantation and the Columbus Lighthouse.

The ruins of Engombe was a fun trip to a natural protected area not too far from Santo Domingo. The ruins included the sugar mill, the main house, the slave quarters, and the chapel.

The rest of this first set is here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150331387681373.340547.731621372&type=1&l=cdb6ad361a


Then we went to the Columbus Lighthouse, a massive museum near the Colonial Zone that celebrates Christopher Columbus' voyage to the Americas and the history, culture, and contributions of each country in the Americas. There's a ton of stuff to see there, so I'll let you read the captions on each photo.

The rest of the photos from that set are here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150331471121373.340556.731621372&type=1&l=cabf035ae8

Towards the end of October I went on a boat trip to Rio Chavon and Isla Saona. Saona is an island off the southeastern coast of the DR and is a frequent stop for tourists. It is the pristine and gorgeous tropical paradise that comes to mind when thinking of the Caribbean. We also voyaged on the river and saw cool and wild stuff. It was the best parts of the DR, the untamed and natural beauty of the country.

Lots of photos are in this set: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150334868421373.341244.731621372&type=1&l=d958263b95

The next trip was a voyage to the north, to the second largest city in the country: Santiago. First we visited the Hermanas Mirabal Museum. I mentioned the sisters before here.

I met Dede Mirabal! She's the only surviving sister and she still lives in the house where the sisters lived. She's the coolest woman ever. I'm on the far left, in case you care.

We also went to Centro Leon, which unfortunately didn't allow cameras, and we went to my internship coordinator's family home in Santiago.

I met my internship coordinator's dad, who is the coolest dad ever. He grabbed a machete and led us to his plot of platano trees, where he cut off a branch of platanos for us and pulled up a yuca plant like it was nothing.

The rest of the pictures are here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150340230816373.342310.731621372&type=1&l=a2e6edaa80

Last week we went to the east again, this time to La Romana and San Pedro de Macoris. Unfortunately the trip was kind of a flop. The cave we visited with cool Taino paintings didn't allow cameras. And we didn't get into Altos de Chavon because the security guard or whatever wouldn't let our car through the gate.

So our tour guide took us to San Pedro de Macoris and we saw some of the city's oldest sights. Like the first firehouse in the country.

And the symbols of the town in the middle of the city: the railroad, the sugar plantation workers, baseball players, and crabs.

And a quick trip to Baseball City, where several MLB teams have their Dominican academies.

All this and more, here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150354896646373.345487.731621372&type=1&l=9e7301c2d5

My most recent trip, yesterday in San Francisco de Macoris, was to a cacao plantation. We toured the cacao tree groves, followed the process from harvest to chocolate bar processing, watched them make chocolate in both the old fashioned way and the mechanized way, and ate chocolate.

Cacao pods! Not what you expected? Not what I expected either.

We went for lunch at a delightful place in town, where Christmas came early.

The rest of Sunday's pics are here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150359310251373.346103.731621372&type=1&l=d4778c4f90

That's the extent of my travels in the DR. No other trips have been scheduled. And now we are caught up. I hope you enjoy my pictures as much as I enjoyed taking them.

Some things don't change/Algunas cosas no cambian

I visited CDN's studios in Santo Domingo this morning. CDN's motto is "the national leader in news." I don't have enough information to confirm or deny that, but I learned that CDN has exclusive rights to broadcast Major League Baseball and the Dominican Winter League games in the Dominican Republic.

I met Ambiorix Vidal, the sports producer of the network. He's very young (mid 20s, and I am very old) and a former ballplayer, and when he spoke to me of his station's mission for baseball broadcast he smiled from ear to ear. That's why I came here--to find others who understand why baseball is so beautiful.

The details of my interview with Sr. Vidal are coming up in a future article. He showed me around the CDN studios. Our tour took me back nearly 10 years, to my first year in college and my first professional aspirations in broadcast journalism.

I got to see CDN's main television sets. Studio A has setups for four desk sets, plus a green screen and a few panels for sports broadcasts. It's not the largest or most advanced set in Santo Domingo, but it has everything necessary to produce a news broadcast. They have HD cameras and their typical news broadcast uses a two-camera setup, different from the three-camera set up I was trained on back in the day.

There's also a studio for programs broadcast on CDN2, geared for women and children, and a separate studio for cooking shows. We got to watch a bit of a live cooking show broadcast in progress. We also saw the editing rooms, the control room, and the radio studios. CDN produces radio and El Caribe, a newspaper in Santo Domingo.

When I started college I was a broadcast major and I was hellbent on being the very best sports announcer there ever was. Deep down, I also wanted to be a news anchor. I met one of the anchors for CDN's news program and was reminded of why I never could have been an anchor. She was tall and gorgeous with flawless cheekbones. Now, I have some damn good bone structure too, but next to this Dominican beauty I felt like Frumpy McStumperson, all fat and squat and awkward. They don't put flops like that on the TV.

But then I remembered the real reasons why I got out of the broadcasting game. Things really haven't changed all that much in how news is produced. The major changes have to do with the switch to digital broadcasting and HD--soon to be 3D, which I'm sorry, is gimmicky as a mother and annoying for people who wear glasses to see. I HATE those tacky 3D glasses and using them every time I want to watch TV? The hell with that noise--and non-linear editing, i.e., editing via computer programs instead of physically manipulating the videotape. I started out right as the industry straddled the line between linear and non-linear editing and I was taught how to edit videotape as well as via computer programs, like Final Cut Pro.

All that means is that I could get back into the game after a few crash courses in shooting, editing, and producing video. The question is not if I could do it. The question is if I want to, and the answer is a big fat resounding NO.

Basically in broadcasting, a few people do all the work while everyone stands around watching you do it. In my production classes, I ran the board in the control room. I ran the sound board. I ran video tape. I was floor manager. I was on camera. I did everything while the other nosepickers stood around doing nothing. It was enough to throw my headset at them.

Plus half the classes were girls and you can guess their motivation for a BS in broadcast journalism: "I want to be on TV! Tee-hee!" After a while, the women who were serious about production defected. One really smart girl who had a lot on the ball and who produced solid news reports just up and left in the middle of the semester because she was tired of the bubbleheads who didn't actually do a damn thing but always were on camera because their only talent was to sit there and look pretty.

Those frustrations pushed me pretty close to the edge, but I eventually found that I enjoyed the writing side of things more than the production side. I gave script writing a try, both film and broadcast news, and I didn't care for it as much as I thought I would. By the time I was completely exhausted with broadcasting, I was offered some opportunities to write about sports on the internet--back when that was still a novel concept--and that took its own course.

I enjoy the interviewing process a lot. Sometimes I think having my own newsmagazine program a la Anderson Cooper, with interviews and stuff, would be great. I love learning new things about people, places, and events, and I love to hear the stories that come out of my questions. I get a deep sense of satisfaction from turning the interviews into articles which introduce previously untold stories. At the end of the day, I'm a much better writer than a speaker and I flourish when I write.

My visit to CDN was still a valuable and fun experience. I got to relive a time in my life that I rarely give any consideration to, and I got to see that I made the right choice after all. Those are the best moments.

Swimming at Casa Blanca/Nadar a Casa Blanca

As much as I'd like to tell you that I took a quick trip to Morocco or I'm starring in a Broadway version of the classic 1942 film, Casa Blanca is simply a cabana club in eastern Santo Domingo. I went there with Indhira, her little sister, and our driver on Friday after class, and I had a great time.

Like baseball, swimming is one of the things in my life that is more work than recreation for me. Swimming is more work to me that baseball is, by the sheer amount of time I spend teaching in the water. Over the summer I worked nearly every day in the pool teaching lessons, from Memorial Day to the day before I left for the DR. I taught one of my regular private lessons on the Wednesday afternoon of the week I left, and Friday morning at 4am I arrived at San Francisco International Airport to catch my plane. Once I return to the States I'll be working a minimum of three days at the pool, and perhaps as many as five days if I can fit it into my schedule.

It's a good thing I enjoy aquatics and teaching so much, seeing as it's such a big part of my life. To be honest, I don't swim for recreation all that much anymore. I swam at a friend's pool party for the Fourth of July this summer. I think that's the only time I got into the pool for a recreational swim this year, before I got here. I don't swim in the ocean in California because the water is too cold and often really dirty, with seaweed and broken pieces of shells and just general ocean gunk washing up with every wave. I pass by the aquatics center at San Jose State every day when going to and from my apartment and I'm never compelled to go for a swim there, even as the facility is quite nice. I don't go to open or rec swim at the swim club where I work, either. 

I also have my own ideas of what a cabana club is like. I taught lessons this summer at a cabana club that's built for kids. It's seriously tiny town there, with showerheads in the bathrooms placed 4 feet off the ground, and a 1.5 foot wading pool with water kept at 90 degrees. Still, it was nice teaching there because they sold ice cream, cold drinks, and would play the local classic rock station over the cabana soundsystem. 

When we got to Casa Blanca, we drove on a side street off one of the main roads up to a white walled building. There wasn't even a sign of any indicator of what was inside. A huge pool of deep blue water in the middle of gorgeous architecture met us as we walked in. Two story balconies with white railings were all around the pool. There was a dance floor with a soundsystem that pumped out bachata, merengue, and salsa all day. Everywhere you go when you hang out in the DR has a bar. Even if it's just beer and rum, there's a bar. Casa Blanca follows that rule. The pool itself had a real rock formation with a tumbling waterfall.

The water was perfect--clear, cool, and not harsh at all. I've been to the beach twice here (details coming in my next post) and loved the warm water but hated the salt from the sea, burning my nose and eyes and wrecking my hair. In my pool in Santa Clara, the chlorine is cranked up so high the water tastes awful. One time I accidentally got some in my mouth and I nearly choked.

The water at the big pool at Casa Blanca was the best water I've encountered while swimming. 

As we've come into November, the weather here has become almost pleasant. I still sweat on my walks to school and to the grocery store, but it's no longer oppressively hot outside. Friday afternoon and evening was cool and refreshing, the kind of summer evening I've come to relish in San Jose. The water got colder as the sun went down and the wind picked up a bit, and I found myself on the chilly side. After two months of humidity at 90 degrees, I welcomed the chance to be cold.

I also welcome the chance to hang out in my bikini in November. Back in San Jose, it's been 40-60 degrees with rain. I could hang out in my bikini there, but I don't think I'd enjoy it much there.

Casa Blanca is truly lovely and if I had loads of money, I'd get married here and fly all my friends and family out here. The reception would be at Casa Blanca. Bring your own swimsuit.

We ended up at this gorgeous place only because our first destination was closed. We drove out to Agua Splash, a water park with water slides and other fun things, and found a sign that said the park was closed until March 2012 for renovations.

That really sucks because I was invited to go to Agua Splash last week but we couldn't go because of a scheduling problem and now I can't go at all. It looks like a really fun place, already made better by the standards of DR entertainment (aka the bar and loud music).

Because of this unexpected change of plans, we had to drive around quite a bit. Sometimes we sat in traffic for more than a few minutes. The main roads in Santo Domingo have people on foot weaving around the cars when traffic is stopped, selling…well, anything you can think of. Cell phone chargers, sunglasses, belts, snacks, cold drinks (those guys are geniuses if you ask me), flowers, phone cards. I saw more than a few of these vendors, including some women--a rare sight for me so far. I've seen men as the predominant ones selling fruit from their carts, pedaling their ice cream carts down the street, and selling drinks and snacks on the street corners on Avenida Maximo Gomez (the main street by my apartment).

Just as I got to enjoy myself at a baseball game, I got to enjoy a day at the swimming pool. Soon enough I'll go back to my job as a swim coach and I'll get back into it, loving what I do but not having time or desire to get in the pool for myself. That's okay.

I'll always have Casa Blanca.

Two months: lessons/Dos meces: lecciones

Two months have passed for me in the Dominican Republic. It's odd to think that next month I'll be home. It was like when the calendar turned to August and I was saying, "next month I will be in the Dominican Republic."

A month ago, when I wrote about my first 30 or so days here, I put down a series of goals and benchmarks I had for myself. I vowed to reach those benchmarks and to improve upon those goals going forward.

It's not to say that I haven't improved on handling culture shock, speaking Spanish, and polishing my professional skills. I certainly am better at all these things. But instead on focusing on the end result of improvement  I've found myself thinking more about how I got to this point. What are the lessons I have learned?

Culture shock is still a problem, but a small one. I know how to do some things here, and when I don't, I know who to ask. I see, now more than ever, that my Spanish skills and culture shock are intertwined. I can make small talk with the doorman in my building. That puts me at ease. When I am at ease I do better with the Spanish.

Last week I had an experience that showed me that culture shock will always be a factor, but that I am never truly lost here. I had to call a cab to get home from an interview meeting. I struggled with understanding the dispatcher on the phone and with telling him where I was and where I needed to go, despite rehearsing it before I left and having it written down. A woman in the elevator lobby asked me, in English, if I needed a cab. I handed her the phone and she talked to the dispatcher, and then gave me the number of the taxi unit and the color of the car--necessary details when taking a cab here. I thanked her a million times for that.

The taxi arrived shortly in front of the building and again I stumbled over my Spanish. The driver then asked, in English, if I spoke English. Somehow I got the only English speaking cab driver in the country. I don't know how that's possible. He told me about all the places he's been: Japan, Italy, New York. I'm not sure if he was telling me the truth, but he speaks English and understands me so he's my guy from now on. I have his card with his cell phone number.

The lesson I've learned from my attempts to assimilate is that I'm never going to perfectly fit in here, especially after only three months. I've also learned that it's okay. I've done well enough while I'm here with my work and seeing the sights and learning from my experiences. I can't expect a complete cultural transfusion when I'm so deeply embedded in my native culture.

I still get frustrated with Spanish but it's becoming less of an issue. When I hit the wall last month with Spanish I went back and studied my beginning Spanish textbook. I realized that wouldn't help me but with spot checks on grammar, conjugations, and vocab. That book wasn't going to tell me how to converse with the doorman or give directions to a pedestrian on the street corner. I have to do those things myself.

I do, sort of. I mess up words. Sometimes the people I talk to fill in words that I miss. I can't say that my Spanish is any better technically, but it's better functionally. Now I really don't care if I mess up. I just speak and let the rest fall into place. Somehow that works better than being flustered and worried all the time.

Remember that Spanish class I said I was going to attend? That plan fizzled because I suffered from bad insomnia through most of October, due to stress here and stress at home. I couldn't fall asleep until 5am most nights, and the night before my current events midterm I was up all night until 730am before I took a quick nap and got up for class at 11am. Thank god I got a B on the test. The Spanish class begins at 8am three days a week and by the time I'd fall asleep I either slept through my alarm or just couldn't get out of bed.

But again, I think those classes would be a glorified version of me with my Spanish textbook. It's stuff I already know. We can conjugate verbs to our hearts' content but that doesn't really help us in real world usage.

My professional skills have been touched in ways I didn't consider before. As a journalist in the United States, I enjoy the widest freedoms and the strictest responsibilities to tell the truth in every story I produce. Journalists in the DR adhere to those responsibilities too...at times. What is public knowledge in the newspaper about an education scandal or embezzlement or police corruption is met with a warning to shush it in conversation.

One of my stories was rejected because it was deemed too negative to run. I take pride in my work and I stick to telling the truth without bias. My work here is no different from my work in the US. The rejected story was written with great care, taking different perspectives from trusted sources, using public knowledge from newspaper stories.

It concerned a controversial topic, so it was rejected.

I also need to be fair in describing the capacity of my work here. I am writing for an organization rather than a news source. Organizations require more of a public relations style for writing. PR doesn't tell lies, but they don't tell what's wrong with a situation. It's writing to build publicity. My background is news/editorial writing. There was a culture clash in this situation.

But the situation taught me a few things. One, that journalism is a lot different over here. Two, because of that difference, I should respect and value my job in the US, and I should respect the way the trade functions over here.

The biggest lesson I learned from this is that working for organizations requires a different skill set from mine. If I'm going to be working for MLB (or another sports organization here or in the US), chances are I will need PR writing skills. I've decided to take some PR classes at San Jose State when I come home. It never hurts to know how to do lots of things. Maybe I'll stick in news/editorial writing. Maybe I won't. The point is I want to be ready for the next turn my life takes.

Here's the article that did run. I'm quite proud of it: http://interdominternships.blogspot.com/2011/11/education-in-dominican-republic-part.html

I plan on writing a post every day this week, including photos and descriptions of the trips and excursions I've been on and what it's like to go grocery shopping here. If you have questions or want me to write about something I haven't touched on here, let me know!

Don't drink the water/No beba el agua

Water is a big deal in the Dominican Republic. The country is still a developing nation, meaning that large portions of the population go without running water in their homes. It's not unusual to go to a home, even in Santo Domingo, and see a giant plastic barrel of water in the bathroom.

But this post is not about water resources in general in the DR. I'm going to write about drinking water: cultural attitudes, access, pricing, and other observations I have about a very necessary resource.

Let's get the big joke out of the way. You can't drink the tap water here. Just like in Mexico. At best you'll get the runs, and at worst you'll get cholera. Our neighbors to the west in Haiti are going through a horrific cholera epidemic and it's hit parts of the DR too. You can't cook with it and you can't even brush your teeth with it.

Drinking water is sold everywhere here, in 20 ounce bottles and in five gallon jugs, and all sizes in between. You can call the colmado and they'll deliver a jug to your door. We have an apparatus in the kitchen to hold the jug and make it easy to pour.

The five gallon jugs run between 50-60 pesos a pop, or about US$1.30. About what you pay at those crystal water vending machines I've seen around town in the US.

An article in a newspaper here (Hoy) published a story last week about a consumer right's group calling for drinking water distributors and bottlers to charge no more than 46 pesos per five gallon jug. The article stated that by selling the jugs for 46 pesos, supermarkets were still making 23% profit, but stores charge the 50-60 pesos I mentioned and make more. Blue Planet Water Management, a major water brand here, prints their price on each bottle: 46 pesos. And still stores and merchants jack up the cost to 50-60 pesos. The consumer group warned that sanctions would be applied to merchants who violate the plan to keep costs down.

This may not seem like a big deal, but consider this: when the water you get out of the tap can kill you, the water distribution and bottlers and merchants have you by the short hairs. I fall short of saying that tap water here is free. Utilities are still hit-or-miss in the DR and consumers still have to pay the full amounts of their bill if a service is shut off or otherwise not working properly due to the utility provider's error or some other problem not caused by the consumer.

Providing clean drinking water is essential for public health. End of story. Dominicans are forced to pay for their water. The alternative for them is severe illness and/or death.

On the flip side, I choose not to drink the tap water in San Jose because it smells like metal and tastes worse. It's disgusting, but I won't get bowel-rending diarrhea from it. I don't pay for water utilities at my apartment in the states. The landlord covers that cost for me. I go with bottled water whenever I can, usually in the gallon jugs by Crystal Geyser because they have the handy handle. But at the end of the pay period when my money is so low I can barely afford Top Ramen and there's no bottled water, I will drink the tap water because it's the best I have. I would never use bottled water for cooking or brushing my teeth in the States, either. That seems like a waste to me.

I discovered that San Lorenzo, a tiny town a little bit north of San Jose where my boyfriend's family lives, has the cleanest, freshest, best tasting tap water in the world. Whenever we can, we go up to his parents' places and fill up a ton of jugs to bring home. Free water! Good water! You'd do it too.

Dominicans don't have a choice. While I am here, neither do I. I did some quick math. Indhira and I go through about a jug of water a week here. Sometimes we can convince the internship coordinator to send water delivery service to our apartment (meaning we don't pay for it) and sometimes we can't, so we have to call the colmado ourselves. I estimate we (Indhira, the internship coordinator, or I) pays 60 pesos per jug, once a week for 15 weeks. That works out to spending a total of 900 pesos on water since I got here, about US$24 for water.

There's a cultural component to bottled water that doesn't exist here. In the US, I know as many people who buy and drink bottled water as those who do not. Not because of taste reasons, because we have Brita pitchers and those filters you can hook up to your sink--some even have flavors attached to them. There is a great cultural divide over the plastic bottle that holds your water.

You probably remember this if you saw An Inconvenient Truth. Those plastic bottles don't biodegrade. Nobody recycles. Blah blah blah. Some opportune environmentalists have taken it upon themselves to scream at you for toting around a regular old Dasani bottle instead of a reusable water bottle or small jug. My boss at the pool vetoed buying the crates of 20 ounce water bottles to spare the planet from the proliferation of mindless plastic. We got these awkward metal canteen things that don't go in the dishwasher and I hate them. They make the water taste odd. What we do in the name of sustainability...

At any rate, I actually do reuse my plastic water bottles and jugs. Since I'm in the water a few days a week and screaming my head off at my students, I need to keep my pipes hydrated. I will buy a liter Dasani bottle or a Smartwater bottle at the grocery or drug store, but I will continue to refill it with water as I drink it up. I use that bottle for quite a while. Same with the Crystal Geyser jugs, as I mentioned before. But since I contribute to the proliferation of plastic by buying a bottle of water about once a week because I inevitably forget mine somewhere, I suppose I'm part of the problem.

I'd like to see one of them come over here and see the sheer volume of bottled water. Kinda makes the problem in the US seem not so bad, doesn't it?

Baseball: the insane tragedy and the majesty of being/Béisbol: la tragedia del loco y la majestad de ser

I like to think of my adventure here as a version of the hero's journey. I've brought that analogy up before here. Sunday night I achieved the step called "atonement with the father." In monomyth analysis, the atonement of the father is when the hero confronts and is initiated by the person or thing that holds the ultimate power in his/her life. It's the central point of the hero's journey. Everything has led up to it and everything thereafter will be directly influenced by it. Most often this step concerns the hero meeting a human male figure, but it can be any gender or even any entity, not just a person.

Naturally, my atonement step was meeting baseball here. I went to my house of worship for my religious experience: taking in a Dominican League baseball game at Estadio Quisqueya.

Here is the photo album from the day

And the prettiest picture of the day:

I went to see Licey and Escogido play. They are the two teams from Santo Domingo and they share the stadium. That made my game crazier than I could have imagined. There was a home team in name only. Escogido was the home team for the day, meaning they had last ups. I saw red for Escogido and blue for Licey in equal amounts around the stadium. Cheers were equally loud for both teams.

Dominican baseball is the same sport I know on the field. Off the field, I was treated to a different experience. The entire stadium was louder than most games I've been to in the States. Only the two major games I attended in 2010 were louder: the 2010 NL West clincher on October 3, and Game 2 of the World Series, both in San Francisco. The fans had horns and noisemakers, plus there was a small marching band with thundering drums and blaring brass playing tunes for Escogido. Every play had the fans waving their flags, red and blue, and blaring their horns.

I'm a veteran of minor league baseball, so I'm used to the gimmicky between innings entertainment featured in minor league games. They have that here too, in the form of a cheerleading/dance team, wacky mascot antics, and a parade by the marching band. The dancers are Venezuelan and Colombian models who fire T-shirt guns into the crowd, dance on the dugout roof, and ride around the warning track in a classic car with red Escogido flags. Every team has dancers and they all wear skimpy outfits.

The mascots had an epic war the entire game. Escogido's mascot, a lion, had several costume changes throughout the night. He wore a devil costume for Halloween and an umpire's getup to make fun of the umpires. When he challenged Licey's mascot, a tiger, to a dance-off and won, the tiger responded by bringing a stroller out of the dugout with a plush lion toy in it, and pushed the stroller around to make fun of the lion.

I can't go anywhere without talking about the food. The ballpark featured several national brands (Presidente beer, Pizzarelli pizza) and some international brands (Chili's margarita stand). Vendors walked around selling a variety of food: pizza, hot dogs, empanandas, Pringles, and the best vendor of them all would fetch a cold beer for you and bring it to your seat. All you had to do was ask. I was told they have vendors serving people in their seats to eliminate people walking around during the games. Brilliant, if you ask me. I got a beer for 80 pesos, a slice of pizza for 95 pesos, and a hat for 125 pesos. All in all, about US$8, and all of it was top notch. Compare a similar day at the yard in the US; $6-10 for a beer (Budweiser on the cheap end, good beer like Anchor Steam on the expensive end), pizza for $7-10 (quality widely ranging from crappy to mediocre), and a hat for $15-30 (fitted caps run more). On top of your ticket, that can be a pricey day.

I had a hard time choosing a hat to buy. There were several stands set up outside the ballpark with hats from all the teams around the league. I decided to wait until I got inside to check out the team stores. Licey and Escogido had one store each. I didn't find anything I liked for Escogido--their fitted caps were either 6 3/4 or 7 1/4, and my size is 6 7/8. I have a rare size I know. But it's possible to find it. I have several 6 7/8 fitted caps. None of the adjustable hats looked good to me. So I went to the Licey store and realized how limited my choices were there too. Licey is blue. Dodger blue. I can't have a hat in any shade of blue that isn't San Jose State, and I especially can't wear anything blue with my Giants gear. I wore my Juan Marichal shirt to the game. No way in hell would I wear a blue hat with that.

I found an all black Licey adjustable cap that fit me well and looks great, so I bought it. I think it's a kids size, because it's really small. But it fits great so I'm happy with my purchase.

We had an hour long rain delay after clouds quickly swept in. It rained hard for about 20 minutes and the rest of the time the grounds crew worked on the field to get it ready for baseball. This keeps up my streak of rain delays at every ballpark I visit outside of San Francisco. I went to Coors Field in Colorado in 2006 and it rained. Biblical downpour thunder and lightning rain. I went to Comerica Park in 2008 and it rained.

Once the rain left and the players could begin their warmups, I saw Brandon Belt come out of the Leones dugout. Belt plays first base (not outfield. Do you hear me, Giants? NOT outfield) in the Giants system and I've interviewed him a few times for my various reporting jobs in the US. I was excited to see him play. I find it hard to get excited about what I see on the field because I spend so much of my time working around baseball. I wouldn't call it boredom, just getting used to what's there. I don't get starstruck easily, I should say.

But I bounced in my seat to see Belt swing a bat in the on deck circle. I felt a link to what I do in the States to what I'm doing here. I was initiated. Dominican baseball was no longer this cloudy subject I had no real picture of. It became real for me at that moment.

I had a flash of a moment buried in my past last night, too. Years ago, I sat in the arcade section of AT&T Park with some friends and watched the Cardinals and Giants play on a foggy July evening. Next to me was a painfully cute Cardinals fan who tried flirting with me the whole night. He asked me questions about my scorecards, about the field, about the teams and I basically gave him the ice queen act. I didn't realize he was trying to get with me until my friend brought it up on the car ride home.

Sunday night, the cute Escogido fan next to me asked me why I was writing in my notebook. He asked my why I was rooting for Licey. He asked me a lot of things I didn't understand. I tried my best to engage him in conversation.

Naturally, when I was as single as they come and dying for a baseball fan boyfriend, I act like a buffoon. I'm with the love of my life now (baseball and Sam) and I become warm and loquacious. Que malo.

I value my first game outside the US for several reasons, but the biggest one for me is having the chance to go to a game as a fan. I don't get to attend many games just to watch them. Most of the time I'm working: taking notes, keeping score, scouting, watching radar guns, shooting the shit with scouts. When I went to the key games for the 2010 San Francisco Giants, I was on edge the whole time because those games meant something. While last night's game meant the world to me, it wasn't watching the team I gave my life to. It wasn't work. I was able to kick back with a beer and chat and take in the most rewarding experience of my life.

Joseph Campbell, who coined the term "monomyth" offered this explanation of atonement of the father:

The problem of the hero going to meet the father is to open his soul beyond terror to such a degree that he will be ripe to understand how the sickening and insane tragedies of this vast and ruthless cosmos are completely validated in the majesty of Being. The hero transcends life with its peculiar blind spot and for a moment rises to a glimpse of the source. He beholds the face of the father, understands—and the two are atoned.

I opened my soul by submitting to the Dominican Republic's definition of baseball in all its insane tragedies. And still it's as beautiful to me as it ever was. It is the majesty of being.

Baseball and I are atoned.

Revolution/Revolucion

I am sitting on my balcony tonight, long after the sun has gone down. The only lights here are the street lamps, that are far below my view. I found there's enough room out here for one chair and I was in a sentimental mood, ripe for a heavy duty reflection period on a pleasant evening. You would be too if you had consistent mid 80s weather the week before Halloween like I do.

I passed the halfway mark of my time here this weekend. It doesn't quite balance out to 15 weeks here, but October 23 was basically the division point for me. I've faced significant strife in my personal life outside of my struggles with assimilating and learning Spanish and I allowed the negativity from that to poison the first seven weeks of my time here. I also gave into fear and spent my time inside my apartment instead of going out and trying to live.

I'm sitting on my balcony tonight to take in the beauty of a city that I fell in love with before I even truly knew the city. I have about seven weeks left here. I will not repeat the same mistakes of the first half of my time here. I spent that time wishing for the day when I could go home and wanting the days to go by faster.

I can see and feel the changes in my life, outlook, and attitude that resulted from coming here. For years I felt like my life in the States was tedious and boring. I yearned for a change. I wanted a wild adventure or a sweeping revolution to take over my life. I was ready for it. I just didn't know or expect it, nor did I know or expect how to handle the revolution.

I dragged the chair out here after weeks of thinking about doing it because I realized that I don't have much time left here. I'm not going to waste time thinking of how I wasted my previous days here. I'm not going to allow regret to take hold of me, either. The best way to do that is to take every day as it is given to me: gifts from a country and a culture that loves me as much as I love it. I came here begging the Dominican Republic to teach me its secrets and stories and the country and the people have responded by putting me at ease with Spanish and by giving me the best it has to offer.

I am living the revolution I prayed for. I can't return to the United States as the person I was when I left. I have exactly what I asked for, even if it feels completely different and not at all what I expected. It's terrifying to contemplate that but it's the good kind of fear, the kind that motivates and inspires.

I still want to return to my life in the States. I miss the people and things I left behind there. But I want to make each day here worthy of the revolution.

I made a promise to myself to go out and try something I haven't done or haven't tried by myself this week. Simple things like going to the colmado for a cold drink or going for a walk on a street I haven't been to. Talking to people in Spanish and not relying on English. Stuff like that.

Like everything else in life, I started with the best intentions. A sore foot from my beach trip (which will be featured in a future post) and a crapload of work due for school, my internship, and some other projects (again, forthcoming in a future post) derailed those plans for Monday and Tuesday.

The inspiration behind the week of new things was simple. I went to pay my phone bill on Saturday after my current events midterm, all by myself for the first time. I usually have my roommate Indhira with me to translate or help. I didn't get every word correct, but I spoke well enough to make myself understood and I made small talk. Very small talk. The girl at the phone counter said "¿tienes calor?" (is it hot?) to me and I responded "tan calor." (it's so hot) Then she told me "tengo frio" (it's cold) because of the air conditioner in the building.

I felt so good after that success that I went to McDonald's (shut up, it's good and cheap, two things I value here) and ordered lunch by myself, again successfully. While I ate my food, I saw an older lady who could have been my grandmother. She wore a smart bright blue pantsuit and every accessory coordinated perfectly: blue bag, blue shoes, blue jewelry. She even wore her hair in the same beehive style as my grandmother's signature look. I almost started crying in the McDonald's because I felt like she was there with me even for a minute. She would be so damn proud of me here doing this insane life-changing shit and I miss having the chance to tell her about what I'm doing here. I felt like I had that connection to her, however brief it was.

Then her hot grandson joined her at the table and I was snapped out of that reverie. The point of that vignette is that I would have missed that small but significant sign from the universe that made me believe what I am doing here is right and good, if I hadn't had the balls to go out and fail at Spanish and learn and try. It took balls just to come here. The revolution has begun. I have the balls to see it through and win the ultimate victory: a new, awesome version of myself.

I did a good job of making this balcony evening and my outpouring of emotions sound gorgeous, romantic, and empowering. Then a giant moth attacked me on the balcony. I suppose the insects are staging their own revolution.

The current state of currency/El estado actual de moneda

This post is about money. Not about how I have very little money, or what I do with said money. I'm talking about the aesthetic qualities of Dominican currency.

One day last week I saw a 2000 peso note for the first time since I arrived. It had two dudes on the front, one named Emilio Prud'homme. I didn't think much of it other than "hm, he might be Haitian/French" as Hispaniola was once a French nation.

Today in history class, his name came up again and I learned he's one of the authors of the Dominican national anthem, Quisqueyanos valientes. I looked at the bills I have in my cash stash in my room to see if I could place the other Dominican national heroes on the bills, and I know who most of them are.

It got me thinking about American currency and which famous Americans are on our bank notes and coins. Unlike US currency, Dominican bills and coins have national heroes other than presidents. I don't know a lot about the famous Dominicans on peso notes and coins. I am learning about them.

It made me ask: how many Americans really know about the men (and women) on our currency?

I did a quick blurb on each piece of common US currency with facts I recall from history classes and stuff I found via Google. Before I get to that, I want to point out that many of our national heroes have streets named after them in the DR; Avenida Lincoln, Washington, etc. They're just as important as Simon Bolivar (liberator of Latin American nations from Spain) and Maximo Gomez (Dominican born in Bani but general in the Cuban army and helped Cuba gain independence).

Here's what I can tell you about the guys featured on American money, in a nutshell.

$1: George Washington. The father of our country, brilliant military strategist, destroyer of cherry trees. The reverse side has the Great Seal of the United States.

$2: Thomas Jefferson. Purveyor of black women, writer (author of the Declaration of Independence), philosopher, founder of the University of Virginia, imperialist president who acquired tons of land via the Louisiana Purchase and commissioning the Lewis and Clark expedition. The reverse is an artistic depiction of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The original painting us hanging in the US Capitol Rotunda.

$5: Abraham Lincoln. Shot in the head. Morbid. Before that he was the president during one of the most challenging times for the country. He emancipated slaves and modernized economics and finance in the country. A self-made man and main character of Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter a novel that came out last year with a movie set for a 2012 release. Beat that, George Washington! The reverse side of the bill has the Lincoln Memorial.

$10: Alex Hamilton. A founder of US, born and raised in West Indies--bet you didn't know that! He was born Nevis, when the current federation of St. Kitts and Nevis was part of the British West Indies. He was also the first US Secretary of the Treasury. The reverse side is the US Treasury building.

$20: Andrew Jackson. Father of the Democratic party, supporter of slavery and relocation of indigenous American people, managed to pay off the national debt in 1835--the only time that's ever happened in US history--but only two years later a depression came along and wrecked the economy anew. He was also against the electoral college (good man). The reverse side is the White House.

$50: Ulysses S. Grant. Commander of the Union army during the Civil War, crusader for civil rights for African Americans and Native Americans, passed the 15th Amendment (prohibiting the government from denying a citizen's right to vote based on the citizen's race, color, or previous condition of servitude), tried to annex Hispaniola in the 1870s but failed, survived quite a few political scandals during this presidency. The reverse side is the US Capitol.

$100: Ben Franklin. True renaissance man who liked beer, physics, satire, and turkey. A working-class man with musical talents, journalism experience, and a knack for foreign diplomacy. Probably one of my favorite American heroes. The reverse side of this bill has Independence Hall, a building in Philadelphia where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were debated and adopted.

American coins have several repeats from the bank notes (Jefferson on the nickel, Washington on the quarter, Lincoln on the penny). Basically the only widely used coin that doesn't feature a bank note figure is the dime, Franklin Delano Roosevelt coin. FDR was a badass. He gets the smallest coin in size. Meh.

The reverse side of the coins change so much that I won't even bother analyzing them. Plus we had the 50 State quarters thing for a while and that was a gimmick at best.

The rest of the US coins are rarely used and annoying. I used to work as a cashier and I would dread half dollars and gold dollars. There aren't spaces for those in the till drawers and I was always pushed to give them out in change to customers. The customers didn't want them and be rude to me because of it. I really don't care who's on those. Sorry, JFK, Susan B. Anthony, Sacagawea, and Statue of Liberty.

Now for the Dominican currency. With pictures! As you will see here, the reverse sides of the Dominican notes are much more interesting than those of the US bank notes.

20 pesos: Gregorio Luperón/National Pantheon

Luperón was a military and state leader in the Dominican Restoration War after Spanish annexation in 1863. He was 22 years old when he took up the fight against Spain and fled briefly to the US after he was arrested for his dissidence. His initial efforts against Spain were unsuccessful but he regrouped and led his forces again, which prevailed in 1865. Since then, the DR has been an independent country. The reverse side shows the National Pantheon, a mausoleum which holds the bodies of Dominican national heroes, including several of the men on the larger Dominican bills. Luperón is buried there. The pantheon was renovated in the 1950s by order of Rafael Trujillo, Dominican history's greatest monster.

50 pesos: Catedral de Santa María de la Encarnación de Santo Domingo/Basílica de Nuestra Señora de la Altagracia

El cathedral was the first cathedral built in the New World. I posted pictures of it from my Zona Colonial post back in September. The reverse side has a picture of La Basílica is a very important church in the eastern part of the country, also known as La Basílica de Higüey.

100 pesos: Francisco del Rosario Sánchez, Juan Pablo Duarte y Matías Ramón Mella/Puerta del Conde

Sánchez, Duarte, and Mella. Think Jefferson, Washington, and John Adams. These three dudes are the founding fathers of the Dominican Republic. All three were leaders of the 1844 Dominican War of Independence from Haiti, a 22 year war that eventually broke the DR free from Haitian invasion. The three are buried together at Altar de la Patria in Santo Domingo. They were known as Los Trinitarios. To write about each of their contributions to Dominican history and national identity would require a book, but know that Duarte has a mountain named after him--Pico Duarte, the highest point in the DR. On the reverse side of the bill is La Puerta del Conde (the count's gate), where the three are buried.

200 pesos: Hermanas Mirabal/Monumento a las Hermanas Mirabal

Las Hermanas Mirabal were four Dominican sisters who strongly opposed Trujillo's regime in the 1950s and 1960s. Three of the sisters were assassinated, and the killers are still unknown today. Two of the sisters were arrested and tortured and three of their husbands faced similar fates. The second youngest sister Minerva became a lawyer and was the de facto leader, taking extreme action after experiencing sexual harassment and general asshattery from Trujillo himself. The second oldest sister Dede is alive today and established the Museo Hermanas Mirabal in the sisters' hometown of Salcedo. The sisters' lives have been subjects of several books and films, including the most famous In the Time of Butterflies. The reverse side is of course the monument for the sisters in Salcedo. These women were badasses in a time when women weren't allowed to be badasses, but also during a time when it was absolutely necessary for them to do so. I like them.

500 pesos: Salomé Ureña y Pedro Henríquez Ureña/Banco Central de la República Dominicana

Salomé was a poet and crusader for the education of women in the DR in the mid 1800s--another woman who was a badass. In the 1880s she opened a school for higher education of women, which produced female teachers, a groundbreaking thing for the country. She had four children who all became respected writers and artists, one being Pedro. Pedro wrote a ton of important works in Dominican literature and was a strong proponent of Hispanic-American cultural values. The national library is named after him, and the street I have to cross every day to go to classes at UNIBE is also named after him. The reverse side of the bill has an image of the central bank of the country. Better respect where the money comes from.

1000 pesos: Palacio Nacional/Alcázar de Colón

Two buildings on the same bill. El Palacio  houses the offices of the executive branch (president and vice president) of the DR. Unlike the White House, the president and VP don't live there. It was built in 1944-the centennial of DR's independence from Haiti.  Alcázar de Colón is the oldest residence in the Americas and is part of the Colonial Zone World Heritage site. It is a museum that houses the Caribbean's most important works of late European Renaissance and medieval works of art. It was built in 1509 under Diego Colón (Christopher Columbus' son).

Fun fact: most of the ATMs here dispense money in 500 and 1000 notes.

2000 pesos: Emilio Prud'homme y José Rufino Reyes Siancas/Teatro Nacional

Like I said before, Prud'homme and Reyes composed the DR's national anthem. Prud'homme helped establish Dominican national identity following the country’s independence from Spain. He was a legislator in Congress and was an outspoken critic of the US. He was also an author who wrote fervently nationalist works and wrote the words to Quisqueyanos valientes. Reyes wrote the music. Reyes was a youth during the 1844 independence and was inspired to join the army. As a soldier he studied music and learned to play several instruments, cello being his best. Most of his compositions were unpublished. The anthem was written in 1883 but was not made official until 1934, again by Trujillo. The Teatro Nacional is part of La Plaza de Cultura and hosts a theatre, a library, and a center for the recovery, preservation and dissemination of Dominican Music.

Believe it or not, I wrote about half of all of that from memory. The rest is Google and Wikipedia (en español at times, what).

The coins are more complex than the coins in the US. There's a lot going on with these. Most of them have an important figure (Duarte, Sánchez, Mella, and Luperón) on the front and the DR coat of arms on the back. The 25 peso piece for example features Luperón. 

Reading about the heroes on DR currency tells me a little bit more about the country. There's no way to know everything about how the country was shaped just by looking at the money. But this entire exercise started by me seeing a French name like Prud'homme and wondering what that was all about. I fell down the rabbit hole. I liked what I found.

Also I apologize for some of the wonky HTML. Holy hell was it a pain in the ass to get it right. Blogger should have an easier interface.