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.

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.

Those I left behind/Los que dejé atrás

This post kind of fits in with the prologue, but it's also relevant to my life here. Today I'm writing about the life I put on hold to come to the Dominican Republic. I'm writing about the people and things I left behind.

I live in San Jose, California. It's the 10th largest city in the United States, larger than San Francisco. SF is a global city--a globalization term that means a city is integral to the world economy. SJ is not a global city. It's integral to American technology and sustainability industries, but nine times out of ten, when I tell someone that I live in San Jose, they've never heard of it. Everyone knows San Francisco. Sometimes a frame of reference is needed.

I left San Jose behind for 15 weeks in the tropics. I spent all the money I have in the world to come here: several thousand dollars to pay for my internship, tuition at UNIBE, and housing. I have a little bit socked away for groceries and incidentals, but that's it.

I left behind my work, my home, my friends, and my boyfriend as well. Fortunately, they all have allowed me to come back when I return in December.

If you've been following the posts before this, you know I work as a blogger and contributing writer for a few websites in the States. I also work at the Santa Clara Swim Club, a well-known and highly respected swim club in the Silicon Valley (the region containing San Jose and other cities, named for the tech firms and development housed in the region). I teach swim lessons for children of all ages (and some adults!) on the weekends, while I attend classes at SJSU during the week.

I love my teaching job. Swimming plus baseball means I get to work outside and wear basically whatever I want. I get to splash around with kiddos and be goofy and silly, yet I work my kids hard and I feel satisfaction from teaching them an important life-saving skill plus giving them something to work for, and something I hope gives them self-confidence.

We operate on a schedule of four sessions a year. I'm missing two whole sessions to be here. I told my boss about my plans to study abroad at the beginning of 2011 and she wants me to return to my teaching duties when I come home. I know how lucky I am to have any job in the crappy American economy, and I feel blessed that I can leave for a while, do my thing, and come back to a job I love.

I don't think my social life is especially rockin' when compared to my college contemporaries. I don't drink until I pass out and I attend marching band parties, which are pretty fun. They're just not keggers or ragers. We drink and play beer pong and just hang out. But I'm cut off from my friends here due to differences in how cell phones work and time zones.

I can't just pick up the phone and call someone. I can't text. Here, I rely on phone cards and putting money on my cell phone. In the States, I have an unlimited plan and I admit I text a hell of a lot. Text and call costs add up; those ten pesos here and there soon eat up the few hundred pesos I put on my phone every week. So I save my phone for calling my mom, my dad, and my brother, who don't have internet access. I call them and our conversations last for a few minutes, mostly me saying I'm safe and fine and no hurricanes have washed me out to sea.

I talk with my friends in the States when I can via the internet. I haven't tried Skype yet. Mostly it's via Facebook chat, as buggy as it is and as annoying as FB's changes have been. You probably have been hit with their asinine friends feed shift. I switched my FB language to Spanish, and the feed went back to normal. Suck it, Facebook.

Okay, so I should have been using the Spanish settings all along. Don't take away my righteous indignation.

It's hard to stay in contact with my friends, though. Most of them are on the West Coast, meaning I'm three hours ahead of them. I stay up until 3am most nights just trying to see if anyone's around to talk to me. I don't always get enough sleep, especially on school nights. So far I've been able to get by as one of the walking dead.

That feeds into natural feelings of loneliness. I live in a city of over three million people and I know like, ten people. I'm still trying to become confident with my Spanish. It's easy to feel alone here when I can't always understand others and I can't always articulate myself, and it's easy to feel alone here when I don't know that many people to communicate with in the first place.

My roommate Indhira has been great for encouraging me to get out of the apartment and socialize with her friends. I'm still reluctant to go out, but I'm feeling less and less awkward about it.

My go-to sources of comfort and safety in the States are my boyfriend and my home. Sam and I moved into our apartment in July, a two-bedroom dump we share with a good friend of ours, Phil. I love it because it's our dump and I feel comfortable and safe there. I need to have my nest.

Sam and I are very close. Aside from being my boyfriend, he's also my best friend. I don't trust anyone in my life as much as I trust him. I had severe issues with leaving him to come here and I'm still not happy about it.

I don't get to talk to him as much as I want to. He has classes and activities and things he has to do. His schedule doesn't match up with mine.

It sucks. I can't put it any other way.

I sat around today and got all weepy and stupid watching The Time Traveler's Wife because I miss Sam so damn much. I hate sleeping in a bed without him. I hate waking up and not seeing him next to me. I hate that I can't see any texts from him. He sent me texts about 20 times a day that just say "I love you."

Yes, vomit. Whatever. I'm a sappy idiot and I don't care.

I didn't leave these parts of my life behind per se. It's more like putting that part of my life on hold, but they keep going. I go on here while thinking about them going on there and wishing I could have parts of my life here.

I love it here in the D.R. I let myself daydream about living here with Sam and working at a good job and having friends and a happy life. But my life is in San Jose now. It's just hard to think of my life going on without me.

With a little help from my friends/Con un poco ayuda de mis amigos

When I arrived in Santo Domingo, I felt really alone. I have my friend Ezra Fieser, the freelance journalist living here, but he was the only person I knew here. He was the first person I met other than FUNGLODE employees. I hadn't even met my housing coordinator, my internship coordinator, nada.

As you read here, I was confused, angry, upset, sad, and lost. I really toned down my despair over my first three days here in the blog posts. I've cried every day since I've arrived, and I've been told that won't go away for a while. It even happened today, and I've felt really good about stuff the last few days.

Monday morning I met my roommate, Indhira. She was born in the Dominican Republic and moved to the States when she was 13. She just finished up her undergrad degree at City College of New York in international relations and political science. She's doing an internship in government here before she heads back to NY to begin her graduate program. She's fluent in English and Spanish.

Indhira has saved my life. She immediately took care of me and has helped me so much. She walked me to the grocery store and helped me pick stuff out. Since Monday, she's given me tons of advice and pointers on how to live here. Just having her around has helped put me at ease.

Monday night we ordered ice cream from a colmado, which is a delivery service that will bring damn near anything you could want. They brought it right to our door. Just like that. And the ice cream, OMFG. So good. Today her uncle drove us to the bank, where I got pesos for the first time (!) and I asked her to show me where real Dominican food was. She took me to a criollo/Chinese place. Criollo is a word that describes Dominican food. I had chowfan--fried rice. But it tastes different (read: better) than regular bad Chinese food fried rice. Let's be clear. I love Panda Express. That's the kind of bad Chinese food I'm talking about. This Chinese/criollo stuff is ten times better than that. Everyone eats there, so it's Dominican. I was expecting rice and beans and stuff, but hey. When in Rome. Plus I got a big-ass plate of food for 180 pesos, which is like $2 US.

At first I was really wary of how kind she was to me, right off the bat. But I've learned over the last few days that Dominican people are kind and helpful by nature. If you show you give a shit about the people here, try to communicate, and show respect for the culture, they will be there for you. I'm suspicious of people showing me kindness to begin with, which is predicated by my low self-esteem and screwed up relationship with my family. Sometimes, especially right now, I can't fathom how anyone could want to be my friend, or care about me, or love me. So it blew my mind that this girl I met a few days ago is genuinely interested in helping me and expects nothing from me in return but friendship and kindness.

I made dinner for us Monday night. She's making dinner for us tonight. I like this arrangement.

I've met kind and helpful people at FUNGLODE and InteRDom as well. They've been super helpful with getting me used to life here. They say my Spanish is really good and encourage me to practice. I still feel stupid when I can't keep up with them, but everyone assures me that I'm doing okay.

I'm not quite as lonely anymore. I miss my boyfriend every day and I talk to my friends in the States when I can. It's just nice to know I have people here who really care about me and want to help me and want me to do well.

I am embarrassed because I feel like the retarded cousin here. I'm scared to ask for help because I think they'll reject me. I know they won't, because they've proven that they won't. But the fear exists. It's why I cry every day I'm here.

I didn't intend to end this entry on a sad note. I didn't intend this entry to be sad in the first place. Things are going well here but my emotions are running amok and it's a lot to handle.

Tomorrow I have another workshop on public transit. Friday and Saturday I have class. That's it for the week's activities, but more stories are to come in the next few days.