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.

Upper class twit/La gila de clase alta

I stole the title of this blog post from a longtime friend on LiveJournal, where I used to blog years ago. That blog was pretty much the same as this one, except more profane and whinier. If that makes this blog boring, I apologize. I had to draw the line somewhere to make my personal life fit for human consumption.

I have changed since I arrived in the Dominican Republic. I haven't undergone any profound personal growth. My Spanish is improving at a snail's pace. I've managed to keep my articles around 500 words--I'm sorry, I just can't handcuff myself to the exact word limit. You'll get 515 words and that's the best I can do. Damn this concise writing nonsense.

Instead, I have received a new identity. Here I am an upper class white person.

Those are odd labels for me, as I don't identify with either quality. A friend once described me as "bootstrappy"--you know, pulling oneself up by the bootstraps. Coming from nothing and working hard to get somewhere. Plus I never identified with being white, other than laughing at the blog Stuff White People Like: http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/. I always considered myself a Mexican wandering through a multi-racial American landscape where my last name was the key to acceptance. I attend a state university, financed completely by loans and grants as I can't afford to pay for my education out of pocket, and I work two jobs to make ends meet. I live in a hole of an apartment and I had to sell my car before I came here because I couldn't afford the repairs to keep it going.

Here, I live in a gorgeous spacious apartment in a nice neighborhood with a stunning view of the Caribbean Sea. I have a doorman and security guards who greet me as I come and go. I have cable with 400+ channels and HBO still has the same six movies on every week. Step your game up, HBO.

It's Monday, which means it's cleaning day. Two women come to clean my apartment every Monday morning. They even change the sheets for me. This is not something I'm used to, and I'm still not comfortable with it. Part of me is resistant because I've always cleaned up after myself and done my own chores, and the other part of me is a relentless control freak who gets nauseated by the idea of strangers touching my stuff and doing chores for me because I'm sure they'll do it all wrong. It keeps me up at night.

I don't have school today so I'm sitting around typing this and watching the women clean my apartment. I can't say I'll ever get used to the idea of someone cleaning up after me.

I attend a prestigious university. As I mentioned before, UNIBE is one of the best schools in the nation. I feel a sense of satisfaction that I can go here after Stanford turned me down. Who cares if nobody knows what UNIBE is? The point is that I was good enough for a top school somewhere. It's good enough for me.

In my brief time at UNIBE, I get the impression that it's a school for rich kids. I'm not knocking the university or the student body, but my friend at school will corroborate my story. Yes, I made a friend. Hooray for me. She's smart and cool and for some reason likes spending time with me.

On the walk home from school last week, I looked down at my arms under my parasol and saw white skin. My tan from the pool is fading now that I'm no longer in the sun 24/7. I walk with a parasol when I go out too, so I don't get sunburned.

All right, so it's a stupid blue umbrella I got from the bus stop ages ago. It was free. I'm trying to stay within the lines of this whole upper class thing. Parasol it is.

My golden brown tan is almost gone. Now the only clue to my Latina identity is my last name. I'm white now. I'm definitely white among the darker skinned people here. Anyone can see it and assume I'm at best a snobby European descendant, or at worst a dumb ass-backwards American. Woe.

My upper class status will fade once I return to the States, where once again I will be broke and Mexican. Here, having a little money and the privilege to attend university bumps me up the ladder. It's made me change my perspective of social labels. One small change has led to an enormous shift for me. I can be upper class for a few months, but deep down, I'll always be a twit.

I thought the only things I'd learn about here were Spanish and baseball. The passive lessons are just as valuable.

Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad/A veces es bueno, a veces es malo

I've arrived in Santo Domingo. I actually got in late Friday night, but due to spotty internet, a lot of frustration, a room mix-up, and a long Sunday, I haven't had a chance to update here.

I suppose we should just get used to the idea that these updates will not be chronological. I wanted to do more background stuff on my internship and studies here before I got into the actual day-to-day stuff, but a lot has happened in the last two and a half days here.

The flights were uneventful. I slept most of the way from San Francisco to Philadelphia. I slept at the gate waiting for my connecting flight to Santo Domingo. I slept all the way to Santo Domingo, until it was time to fill out customs and immigration forms.

Going through customs was quick and easy. I bought the tourist card (US$10, cash only, paid immediately upon arrival), did my customs thing, and loaded my bags onto a cart. A free cart! Better than the US already.

Famous last words.

A gent offered to push the cart for me and I tried to tell him no thank you, I could do it myself. He insisted. Mind you, this and all future conversations unless specified occur in Spanish. So I said okay whatever, and let him schlep my stuff.

Halfway to the exit he asks for "un regalo." Literally, a gift, but in this context, a tip. I gave him US$5. It was all I had. I haven't yet exchanged my dollars for pesos. That will come up again.

I met Juan, my driver from FUNGLODE (the org that's running my internship and putting me up in the apartment building), and he loaded the van up with my stuff. Juan is super kind but speaks no English, so I felt really bad that I couldn't communicate with him.

On the way, we rode with two profs who will be teaching seminars in the FUNGLODE program. One was from Argentina, and we talked about the differences between South America and the Caribbean (in English). He liked my plans for study in the DR and he seemed impressed with FUNGLODE and InteRDom (the internship program itself).

While Juan drove me to my apartment building, I tried to talk to him about music. Here's why I try my horribly mangled Spanish.

Me: Conozco bomba, plena, merengue, reggaeton, y bachata.
Juan: Estas consada?
Me: Sí.
Juan: Por qué? Bailas?
Me: No, hay una fiesta para mi viaje a mi apartamento y no dormí.

That took about 20 minutes to figure out, because I couldn't understand him and I couldn't find the words right away.

We got to the apartment building about 1130pm. I was shown to my room on the third floor with Juan and a gentleman in a suit, whose name I cannot recall. The gentleman was nice enough to let me use his phone to call Sam (boyfriend) and tell him I made it okay.

Next morning there's a banging on my door. It's Juan again, and another man in a suit. He was rude and he asked me if I was homeless (in English). Turns out I was in the wrong room. I had no idea about any of it. I was supposed to be on the fifth floor.

Meanwhile I'm trying to tell them that I have no idea what's going on, I'm fumbling my Spanish, and I start to cry. I was just so damn frustrated and scared. I think Juan took pity on me because he took me to a coffee shop for breakfast. When I told him I didn't have pesos, he said "no es importante."

There, I tried to describe my pastry to him. It was delicious. It had some marmalade stuff in the middle. In my description, I said, "es como una pastilla." He didn't get it.

Later on I realized I had called the pastry a pill. Pastel is the word for cake. Oh lord.

Juan drove me around part of the city while he was doing errands for FUNGLODE. He bought me a pastellita, a deep fried thing with cheese and scallions. So good. I also saw him buy some weird purple fruit things. I asked him what they were, and he told me "aguacate." Avocados! No way, I said. Then I tried to describe how avocados are in the States. Poorly. I got as far as saying, "en mi país, son pequenos y verdes." I also said they were my favorite.

When we got back to the FUNGLODE building, I overheard Juan and the rude guy from earlier in the day arguing loudly about keys. Later Juan told me that the mixup was his fault. I think. He said "no es tu culpa."

I got the keys for my correct room and Juan told me to look in the fridge. Two cartons of orange juice, a loaf of bread, a pound of cheese, and some drinking water were in there. I got upset again, trying to tell Juan I didn't have pesos for the stuff, and he said it was all taken care of. So I started to cry. Again.

I was chillin' in my apartment, doing some reading all afternoon, and there's another knock on the door. This time, it's a delivery man with a bag of ice, asking for money. I did not order ice, nor did I ask for it from anyone. I tried to tell him I didn't want it ("no quiero") but he wouldn't take it back. I got upset all over again and insisted he leave. Finally I just gave him US$2 and he left.

Yes, I was hustled with ice.

The rest of my experiences with people around my building have been similarly embarrassing on my part. I'm so stressed out here trying to remember my Spanish and not look like a clod that I can't remember words. I get upset so easily and then I just break down. I'm such a damn noob here and it sucks.

Sunday was my saving grace. I know an American ex-pat journalist living here and he invited me to his daughter's birthday party. It turned out to be a great time. I met his family and his daughter's friends, all around three years old. I chatted with a few native Spanish speakers who say my Spanish is "muy claro" and they really tried talking with me.

Another guy I met, who's probably the most awesome person ever because he's hooking me up with a good contact for my research, is a Guatemalan native who's working and living here with his wife (who's American). I described my problems with Spanish so far and he says I'll get it. Like everyone else I've spoken to, they seem to think I'll get it.

I talked with people in Spanish and English all day, ate great food, and spent time outside my apartment. I really needed to get out. So far, all I've seen of the city is the Caribbean coast when Juan took me for a ride, and the park near my friend's place. I stood by the window and watched some teenagers playing baseball in the park. It was so cool.

This is already hella TL;DR, so I'll wrap it up. I'll describe my massive swank apartment another day, plus I have my first official FUNGLODE function tomorrow at 930am! Lots of stories ahead.