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.

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.

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?