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.

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!

A tree grows in Santo Domingo/Un árbol crece en Santo Domingo

I've been here for six weeks and just recently I started to feel homesick.

The struggles and fear I had when I first got here were related to not fitting in and feeling like an outsider. I didn't want to go home but I felt like I couldn't cut it here.

Now I just plain miss California. I miss the rhythm of my old life. I miss working at the pool. I miss Mexican food. Sometimes I think I miss cooler weather--at least, cuddling up in a blanket and a hoodie and drinking hot chocolate with Kahlua.

This week I went to the mall to buy new shoes and a new dress. The mall was huge and not much different from malls I've been to in America. There was even a Payless Shoe Source store. Here, the name is a misnomer. They charge 2250 pesos for a pair of basic black Mary Janes--that's around US$50. In the States, I patronize Payless because, well, I pay less for shoes there.

I found a good pair of black leather flats that are super comfy at a Dominican shoe store next to Payless. It was a throwback to shoe stores I don't see in the States, where they have dedicated shoe salespeople helping you find what you want, suggesting styles and sizes, and bringing the shoes to you. I spent 700 pesos (roughly US$20) and I couldn't be happier.

Clothes shopping was more standard. I gravitated to sales racks at the stores with cute ladies' clothes and found a nice black dress for 700 pesos.

The most impressive thing about the mall was the huge grocery store attached to it. Appropriately named Jumbo, it's a two-story grocery like a Super Target and it has extensive areas for the bakery, butcher/meat,   fresh produce, liquor, and deli.

I wish we had a mall with a grocery store in the States. I'd be all over that.

In my current events class, my prof talked about our individual cultural identities. She said you can be a mango tree growing in the Dominican Republic and you could be transplanted to different soil anywhere in the world. You could thrive in the new soil, but you're still a mango tree.

It goes along with the point I made before. I still have an American brain. I want the knowledge to see things from different perspectives and I've taken the steps to begin that education. But I'm still the tree that grew up in California, so I'll always come back to what I know as that tree. I want the freedom to thrive in other places. I'm not finished growing yet.

The language/El idioma

Today I'm writing about language.

I'm not going to rehash my complaining about my poor Spanish skills here. I'm writing about observations I've picked up about Spanish, and my struggle with a curveball thrown at me in history class today.

I asked a few trusted sources about my preparedness for immersion once I completed the first year of my Spanish classes: my Spanish professor and my global studies advisor. They both assured me that I would be fine coming to the Dominican Republic after successful completion of Spanish 1B, the second semester of the first year of Spanish classes at San Jose State.

That makes sense, if you know the curriculum. Spanish 1A/1B teaches the grammar and fundamentals of Spanish. I got A's in both classes. On paper, I was ready to be shipped off to a world where they speak my new language.

I'm very strong with Spanish grammar. I know the contexts in which to use certain verb tenses. I remember which nouns are masculine and feminine with little problems. I even remember nuances such as Greek loan words taking masculine gender articles despite ending with -a, a classic designation of feminine nouns of Spanish origin. The only thing I had trouble with grammar-wise was the two main past tenses of verbs: preterite and imperfect. After drilling exercises repeatedly and listening/reading more Spanish, I'm getting the hang of those now too.

I didn't pay much attention to vocabulary in either 1A or 1B. Now I realize how damaging that was for me. No wonder I can't understand what anyone's saying here. Being strong on grammar in any language but not knowing vocab is like trying to run after someone sliced your Achilles tendon in half.

Fluency in Spanish is something that's important to me. It's become one of my biggest goals for the future.  But even as I can become fluent by graduation, once I've completed the third year of my Spanish classes, I don't know that I'll always be 100% comfortable in the language, and I know that I won't always be understood.

Take my history teacher here, for example. He speaks English fluently and I have no trouble understanding him. He doesn't always use English syntax correctly and sometimes his verb conjugations are off, but I understand what he's saying. Sometimes he doesn't understand what I say in English because of lexical differences, but after trying to explain it a different way, he understands.

This leaves me to question what fluency really is. Is it speaking, reading, and writing perfectly in a language? Or is it grasping the language well enough to make your point understood? Does fluency demand a speaker at least understand lexical differences and dialects within the chosen language? For example, I'm going to return to the States speaking Dominican Spanish. In a world of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, I can't see "que lo que" ("what's up?") and "'ta bien" ("that's fine") being understood. But that's how I speak here, because it's how we speak here.

I met a visiting professor from Georgetown University in Washington, DC at a lecture at FUNGLODE last week. Right off the bat I could tell he wasn't Dominican. When he spoke, there were subtle differences in his accent and the way he pronounced words. I learned he's Venezuelan.

I also remember my Spanish teacher telling us that some Spanish speakers pronounce the Z sound as a "th." It's a very European thing.

I'm fascinated by the differences in lexicon and dialects in any language, but especially in how Spanish evolved in different parts of the world. For my PhD, I'd really like to study the sociological reasons for why Dominicans speak the way they do, versus Venezuelans, Mexicans, South Americans, Filipinos, etc., and how phrases like "que lo que" (or KLK in netspeak) and "'ta bien" came to be here.

That should get me a hefty research grant, right? Maybe I can finally get that education visa to go to Cuba, too.

In class today we read aloud from a translation of an article written by a high ranking Catholic priest here. Naturally, I had to read the parts with Latin words. You'd think that I'd be okay with Latin after studying four years of French in high school, learning Spanish now, and generally being an etymology whore. I could not pronounce the Latin words, even if you put a gun to my head and told me my life depended on reading those words.

And it's true. I'm obsessed with word origins. All this chatter about studying dialects and etymology. Maybe I should have been a linguistics major.

The experience was good for perspective. It showed me that I suck at Latin, but I'm pretty good at Spanish. The only reason I suck at Latin is because I haven't studied it. Even when I took Japanese--which is a bitch for someone with only a background in Latin-based languages, let me tell you--I grasped it quickly. I've lost most of it because I don't practice reading, writing, and speaking.

That's not going to happen with Spanish. It's part of my life now. I can't rely simply on my ability to pick up foreign languages quickly. It means I have to keep working toward my goal of fluency and I have to make mistakes and look stupid and mess up along the way, because that's how we learn.

And if it means I never get to learn Dutch or Korean (two more goals of mine), then oh well. I fell in love with Spanish and the Caribbean, and this is where I--in my academic and linguistic adventures--belong.

How to get an education/Cómo acceder una educación

In my last entry, I said a lot of bad things about San Jose State. My home university is an incredible pain in the ass, as are all California State University and University of California schools are. Long story short: the state cut $1.5 billion in funding to the public college budget (including community colleges), so everyone's feeling it.

And like I said, I don't blame SJSU's incompetence on the lack of funding. But, if that's what has really plunged the university into a state of idiocy, I am scared for what could happen to universities in the Dominican Republic.

There are about 20 universities in Santo Domingo, and around five in Santiago de los Caballeros, the two largest cities in the D.R. Those two cities make up about 4.5 million of the 10 million-ish national population. Naturally, the most populous areas hold the most colleges and universities.

I'm focusing on Santo Domingo for this blog post because it's where I'm living and it's the city I know most about. However, the university situation is the same for students across the country. Wealthy students get to attend. There's little to no middle class here. Rural students are often S.O.L. because of the fact that there no schools out in the country, plus rural students are most likely poor.

There is one public university in Santo Domingo, La Universidad Autonoma de Santo Domingo. It has over 170,000 students. The rest of the schools in the city are private and have much smaller enrollment, often in the low thousands. My school, UNIBE, has 4,500 students. It's hard for students to attend the public university here because of the economic stuff I mentioned before.

Last week a story broke in the news about UASD considering privatization to solve its budget problems. I don't know all of the details of that, but I can't see how that would help things at all.

The fact that the one public university in the nation is in dire financial trouble AND considering privatization is extremely alarming to me. I'm a firm believer in education and what it can do for a nation and for society. It gives us power. It gives us purpose. It's necessary for democracy and for progress. I think of the students who won't get a chance to attend university here, due to their own lack of funding and due to UASD's problems, and my heart breaks for them and for this nation.

In the States, there are many more options for those who want to go to college. If it's a matter of funding, or bad grades, community colleges are an affordable option to get your general education done--equivalent to about half of your bachelor's degree requirements. I went to community college first and managed to pay for my general education requirements out of pocket. I attended a top school which transfers large numbers of students to UC and CSU. My CC had transfer agreements with UC and CSU schools to ensure admission.

The only requirement for enrolling at my CC for general education transfer was to be 18 and have a high school diploma or  GED. But I know the schools offer classes and programs for students under 18 and can help students get their GED and diplomas.

I'm glad I picked CC first. It was the best idea I've ever had.

Back to university admissions in the States. Public universities can be selective, and some state schools have impacted and competitive majors which require high grades and lots of achievements. But if the student really wants to go to college, there's a school for that student somewhere. And funding is out there, in grants, loans, and scholarships. I have god awful credit and I still got federal funding to cover my housing and tuition, and I've won a few scholarships.

I haven't seen anything that indicates that's the case in the D.R., in terms of open university slots and funding.

Of course, I only have real world experience with my university here. UNIBE is one of the most prestigious schools in the D.R. It has a renowned med school and has programs in engineering, business, architecture; you know, fast-growing and in-demand careers. Lots of international students go here. Nobody here screws around, either. In every one of my classes at SJSU, I've seen students mailing it in. Texting in class. Not bothering to do the work. Not even showing up but for the midterms and paper due dates.

I think education is a gift and that gift should not be wasted. I see a much different attitude here in the D.R. for people who want to attend school, which looks to be almost 100% of the students. I've seen too many students at SJSU and my CC who can't be bothered and that's just wrong.

It's as wrong as the possibility of taking away public education for university students in the D.R.

Sadly, my trip to las Hermanas Mirabal museum today was postponed because a massive storm rolled in this afternoon. Instead I watched the lighting flash over the city skyline and wrote an article for my internship.

Tomorrow I have history class, followed by a whole weekend of freedom! Saturday class was cancelled due a national holiday. What do I do with myself with two whole days off?

The beginning, part III: The process/El comienzo, parte tres: el proceso

Originally I envisioned these backstory posts as a fixed number of entries. Like, it would only take four or five of them to wrap up the backstory and we could move on to other things.

Then I realized that my existence here is less of a story than the things that brought me here. That said, I have no idea how many prologue pieces there will be in the future. I'm not limiting myself with a number, whether it be four or four hundred. I'll just tell the stories that need to be told.

Today's story is one that's shorter than the other prologue stories in chronology but longer in content. It's the story of how I had to fight tooth and nail just to come here, and of how I won.

I must warn you. I'm about to be pretty angry and I might drop an F bomb in the upcoming text.

As you've read before, I'm a global studies major at San Jose State. You all know that doing a study abroad semester is required for me to graduate. Apparently, San Jose State's administration does not understand this.

Here's a little backstory belonging to SJSU and their study abroad office. When I did my campus tour and orientation, I asked both times about doing a study abroad, mostly costs. They assured me that I'd get academic credit for going (!) and funding would be covered by my financial aid (!) and costs were about the same as attending university here (!) and everything was ever so great!

I had several phone interviews with the InteRDom admissions coordinators, starting in February. As I got closer to actually going to the D.R., I was asked to pay the program fees or provide financial aid documentation, because they were willing to wait until I got my financial aid disbursement. I went to SJSU's financial aid office to ask if I could get my financial aid early because this was a special case.

I was referred to a specialist and given an appointment for another day. In the meantime, they told me to speak to the study abroad office to see if they could help me.

Here's something that you must understand about SJSU. Everyone who works for the university administration is a mind-numbing combination of rude, unhelpful, or stupid. I get that there's no money in the budget and thus services aren't always available, but I wasn't aware that it required money to prevent people from acting like unkempt dolts.

As you probably surmised, I got no help at the study abroad office. They never heard of InteRDom. They asked me why I wasn't going through the CSU-affiliated, pre-packaged study abroad programs. Well, duh, because InteRDom is amazing and I found it and I want to, so there.

This was my downfall.

I went to my appointment with the specialist at the financial aid office. She was the queen of the dolts: rude, unhelpful, AND stupid. I laid it out for her: my advisor had explained to me how the study abroad financing works. You register for a special 11-unit course to do the study abroad to get your aid, and 99% of the time, you'll have at least one more class to take while you're abroad. In our case, it's Global Studies 189, the global experience requirement. Thus you're over 12 units, full time status, and you're good to go for the financial aid.

She had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. I told her I was signed up for two classes totaling six units at UNIBE, that were already approved for transfer to SJSU, and I was going to have GLST 189 as well. She refused to accept that those classes in the DR would count for anything, then told me that I wouldn't get financial aid because I wasn't a full time student.

Hold up. Taking nine units plus doing an extensive research project isn't being a full time student?

I said exactly that to her. God help me, I tried my best to keep my innate bitchery in check, even as this woman pissed me off something fierce. But she tried her best to ruin my life. Here's how she did that.

She accused me of wanting to exploit federal financial aid funding and alluded to me stealing that money by not having units at SJSU while I was abroad.

In the name of OH HELL NO, flipping tables, and all that is holy...

I got mad. I didn't yell. I didn't scream. I did tell her, firmly, that this was required of me for graduation and I worked my ass off to make InteRDom pick me. I applied for (and won) scholarships that would only pay for part of it. And that other little thing. What was it?

IT WAS REQUIRED OF ME FOR GRADUATION

She held her snooty ass attitude and her position, so I finally left. Yes, I stormed out. I just could not continue talking to that rancid woman as long as she was trying to accuse me of dishonesty and thievery.

I'm still furious about it now. My hands are shaking thinking about how much I hate her.

I spent about a day and a half mired in despair. I felt like that was it. I had nothing left to try. I wasn't going to the Dominican Republic after all. It takes an awful lot to make me consider admitting defeat. SJSU managed to do this to me several times over the summer. Just wait, there's more of these stories to come.

That night, I couldn't sleep because I was too exhausted from crying and swallowing my urge to take a baseball bat into the financial aid office and swing for the fences. So I went looking around for classes I could take while abroad to make up 12 units.

I went to my advisor the next day, armed with a plan: I would take GLST 189, an online class (technology and civilization, the class I have right now), and two individual studies courses. He got on the horn immediately with the chairs of the history department and the journalism department to explain what was up: the university was trying their damndest to ruin my life, and we needed to come up with an extra six units of credit for me to get my financial aid while I was abroad.

Thank Jesus, Buddah, Allah, and Oprah that they both agreed. My Dominican history class here counts for History 180 and my journalism work plus my current events class counts as Mass Comm 180.

I need to make this abundantly clear. I have 12 units at SJSU, plus six units here, plus this research project. So that's 18 units of credit and 10-20 hours a week of work.

And somehow that doesn't make me a full time student.

I registered for those classes. I got my financial aid. And now I'm here. But that's not enough to show that I had won. That was just slaying the dragon by stabbing it in the neck and then checking your hair in the reflection of the dull eye of the repugnant beast you just killed.

InteRDom also required me to have a doctor's note saying I was healthy to travel abroad. The health center at school offers these services...but if you're going to some place that has bad things like tetanus, you need to have your vaccines up to date before going.

I don't have health insurance and I had to pay out of pocket for every vaccine I needed. And I needed five: TB, Tdap, tetanus, flu, and something else I forgot. It was over $300 for all the vax and I'm terminally poor. I had very little money over the summer because I only work part time.

Panic button all over again.

Prior to all of this mess, I had won the College of Social Sciences Dean's scholarship for studying abroad. They refused to tell me when they'd disburse that money. So I had to call in another favor to get the department to give me at least part of it to cover my medical costs.

That one was approved with much less drama and murderous intent. That was like walking away with the prize after I kicked the disgusting dragon in the head on the way out.

Sometimes I can look back at the things in my life that got me all riled up and think "oh how silly that was of me." I'm still legitimately angry over that whole circus that lasted over a semester. And my only crime was aiming for my dream internship. Now that I think about it, I need the scars to remind me of how I got here, and how to fight in the future.

About a month before I left, I played Lupe Fiasco's "The Show Goes On" practically on repeat. I felt like he wrote that song just for me and what I was going through. It's a song about struggling to succeed, never giving up despite all the shit you have to slog through, and above all, never letting the sons of bitches keep you down. There's a particular lyric where he talks about giving up everything, even starting a world war for the ghetto kids he's rapping for.

I really took that to heart. I'm far from the only one who's getting screwed by San Jose State. I needed to win and go to the Dominican Republic to show those who get left behind by the school that this is not their ultimate fate. It was what got me through the darkest of the dark times; thinking that I couldn't give up because it was all for them. I could no longer believe in myself, so instead I believed in them.

I would sit on the seventh floor of the library and look out at the panoramic view of downtown San Jose listening to that song over and over with tears pouring down my face. In the days before I left, and I'm talking literally days before, I still couldn't believe that I did it and I was going after all.

I have to go back to SJSU in December. I have four more semesters until graduation--that is, if the school remains at its usual state of crappy affairs. If it gets any worse, I might have to push back my grad date. Having to work a little harder and wait a little longer to graduate doesn't upset me as much as thinking of suffering at the hands of the uncaring and incompetent university administration any longer than I have to.

I hate San Jose State and if I had any options to transfer elsewhere or take classes at another school, I would do it right away. My major isn't offered at most colleges, plus my life is in San Jose now. I live there. I work there. I love the city, and I love my teachers. The university can go directly to hell, however.

So I need an effective coping strategy for that, when I return. I'm open to suggestions.

The beginning, part II: The objective/El comienzo, parte dos: El objetivo

When I started the series of background posts, I said I would write them on days where nothing new happened. Today, I defined the focus of my investigative reporting and my eventual final paper: the sociological aspects of baseball in the Dominican Republic, focusing on six areas (economics, business, race and gender, law, media, and education).


That's an enormous step forward for me. Plus, it dovetails perfectly into this blog post. Part II of the backstory involves why I'm studying baseball and why I'm doing it in the Dominican Republic.


I'm from the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California. I was born and raised a baseball fan and I embraced the San Francisco Giants right away. Later on, I came to appreciate the Oakland Athletics. It's all Bay Area love as far as I'm concerned. I don't subscribe to the non-rivalry between the two teams. I see no need for inferiority complexes or stadium debates between fans, either.


My dream job growing up was to be a sportswriter. I made that happen. Until recently, I worked for San Francisco Dugout, an online magazine that covered the Giants minor league system from top to bottom. I was there for nearly seven years and that's where I learned everything I know. 


We enjoyed a strong relationship with most of the media personnel among the Giants' minor league affiliates, including the Advanced-A San Jose Giants. If you'll allow me an extended metaphor, I had a sort of sportswriting residency in San Jose. I did the majority of my work in San Jose over my seven years with SF Dugout.


SF Dugout job helped me get a gig writing the California League notebooks for minorleaguebaseball.com, which was my first real paying job in the business. I've been doing that since 2009 and it's allowed me to open up to a new style of writing. I write stories about up-and-coming prospects, players with interesting stories, and whatever else is worth reading about in the Cal League.


Last year I joined the A's blog on ESPN.com's Sweet Spot network, Baseballin' on a Budget. You can read that blog here: http://baseballinonabudget.com/ I don't write often, but I cover the A's minor league system all by myself. It was the best way for me to learn about a new organization and I have enjoyed my time there quite a bit.


This August the guys at Bay City Ball, the Giants blog on Sweet Spot, brought me on board to handle their minor league stuff. Here we are: http://www.baycityball.com/


So this journalism thing isn't new to me. Or so I thought.


I came here through InteRDom, an internship program sponsored by the Dominican government that brings students to the D.R. to develop brilliant minds in a global society. We're here to show the world that the D.R. has more to offer than tourism. So what the hell am I doing here, telling stories about one of the few things that everyone knows about this place?


I still feel like my dream job hasn't arrived. I want to write about baseball and get paid well enough to support myself and my family, which right now is just me and my boyfriend Sam. While I've worked hard enough to earn such a job in the business, it's not my time yet.


So, rather than wait around for my time, I decided to enrich myself, challenge myself, and learn something new. I'm here in the D.R. to learn about how baseball works here. I know how it works in the States. I want to know more than just what I can read in a box score. I want to know the stories of the people in it and the stories of the people who love it just as much as I do.


I also followed a lifelong dream of studying abroad and writing in another language. I've always been fascinated by cultures and languages and societies other than my own. For a while I had a boner for Japanese culture. A few years of Japanese language classes and too much money spent on English translations of manga volumes, I let that go. I retained an appreciation for geisha culture, but that's about it.


I knew that to hang onto the allure of cultural studies, I needed to get serious about it. I made a career objective to become fluent in Spanish and to understand the Latin American perspective as best as I could. After all, Latin Americans are the largest non-American group in MLB and those numbers are even higher in the minors, which is my forte. Dominicans by far make up the largest section of the Latin American baseball population, and the LA population makes up more than half of the total in the minors.


I also know I'm not a finished product as a writer and a journalist. I came here to learn a different style of writing. All my professors say my academic writing is strong, but I've been dinged more than a few times for writing too tersely or too matter-of-factly, "like a journalist," in the words of my favorite polisci professor. I'd give the guy more crap for saying that, but he knows me pretty well and he knows I'm a journalist.


My articles here will be no more than 500 words. I'm the kind of writer who hates word counts. Not because I can't fill a page. It's because I can't shut up. 500 words to write about Epy Guerrero's contributions and impact on MLB? I'm tearing my hair out just thinking about how to condense that to 500 words. I could easily go 1500-2000 words on such a subject.


Part of learning to be a good writer is to write concisely, I suppose. I've just never been asked to do it.


When it came time to decide where to go for my study abroad semester, I had some difficulties. I could have gone to Puerto Rico and studied at UPR as an exchange student, focusing on voting rights and congressional representation for the US territory. I could have gone to Nicaragua to study in Managua and write a book about Dennis Martinez (you know, the first and only pitcher born outside of the US to throw a perfect game). I could have gone to Mexico and gotten capped or sold into slavery and forced to work as a coke mule. I kid. Not really. 


I didn't know the D.R. was an option.


That was until my advisor looked me in the eye and said, "why aren't you going to the Dominican Republic?" He asked me like I'd just told him the sky was green. The answer was so obvious to him. It wasn't to me. Before we found InteRDom through one of his contacts, I was getting ready to spend a year of my life in Puerto Rico.


And no offense to PR, or Nicaragua, or even to Mexico. Everything I'm doing here in Santo Domingo just makes sense. I'm so glad I never settled for one of the other options, even though it was a bitch and a half to get here.

But that, mis amigos, is another story for another day.


Thursday I'm visiting the Mirabal sisters museum, a memorial to a group of sisters who stood up to Rafael Trujillo in the 1950s and 1960s. Trujillo is the D.R.'s greatest monster and he definitely ranks up there among the biggest bastards in history. More pictures will come from that trip. 

The beginning, Part I: The woman/El comienzo, parte uno: la mujer

Nothing eventful happened today. I had history class again. We got a new student, a Dominican-American from New York (quel surprise). There was a rainstorm. Standard procedure in the DR.

These days where nothing new happens are the perfect days to write about the backstory of how I made it to the DR. Believe it or not, I choose the titles of my posts carefully for two reasons. One, because I have a Spanish translation for each one, and two, because I fancy myself a witty and sharp writer.

I chose not to lump these posts under the prologue tag. These stories are more than a set-up. They're their own chapters.

Part I of the beginning concerns who I  am, because my personality, experiences, and background have had the strongest influence on my decision to come to the DR.

I'm a first generation college student and I can claim half of a Mexican-American heritage. That's not so uncommon, but it's celebrated around my school. Apparently it's a big deal when Hispanics go to college.

I have put myself through school from day one. I mentioned that I'm 29 and I'm still in undergrad. I started   community college when I was 20 and I worked full time. I attended classes at night while working in an office doing clerical work. I also supported my grandmother from 2000-2009, when she passed away.

I didn't always take school seriously. I screwed around the first two years of CC and cut classes. I never really thought I would make it past the first few years, so I just gave up.

I went into college as a broadcast journalism major and I was hellbent on changing the world, one baseball broadcast at a time. I was going to be a play-by-play announcer. I was going to represent women in the business and crush all the men.

As you can see, none of these things happened. I fell out of love with broadcasting and I focused on writing. I got a few opportunities to write about sports on the internet, back before blogs and e-zines were a big deal like they are now. Por ejemplo, there was a cute boy I flirted with in my English class, about a year and a half before I transferred to San Jose State. One of our conversations went like this:

Cute Boy: You're a good writer.
Me: Thanks, I write for SFDugout.com.
Cute Boy: Wait a website?
Me: Yeah.
Cute Boy: That's nothing. Websites aren't real.
Me: :|

Cute boy was no longer cute after that.

Writing for those websites, "real" or not, made me realize that I had to do something. I had to stop screwing around and finish school if I wanted to be a writer. So I got my shit together, went to class, and transferred to San Jose State in the Fall of 2009, a few months after my grandmother passed away.

My grandmother's passing was a monumental shift in my life. I admit that I wasn't the model granddaughter/caretaker for her. I let the stresses of working 10 hours a day, attending classes a few nights a week, and building a journalism career boil over and I took it out on her often. Once she got really sick, our relationship basically fell apart.

Then she died and I suddenly had nowhere to go. We lost our house. I was a few months away from knowing if I was accepted to San Jose State. I lived with friends for about six months that summer and prepared myself for what was next.

I started San Jose State as a junior three years ago, where I am a global studies major and a journalism/Spanish minor. I like to joke that I picked GS at SJSU because it has no transfer requirements or prerequisite classes. What really drew me to the program was that it offered a wide open course of study and let me control what I wanted from my degree. I wanted to see more than what was in front of me. I wanted to learn about the world and be a part of something bigger.

There goes the idealist college student crap. I started this college exercise thinking I could change the world. Now that I'm in my third year of my studies at SJSU, with six years of CC behind me, eight years of taking care of someone else, and 29 years of struggling to make it, I'm focused on getting paid.

They tell me that international students have a career edge. I bought into it. That's part of the reason why I'm here in the DR. I really do enjoy living in a new culture and seeing the world but every day I'm here is a day I hope I can come back to the US, graduate, get into a good grad program, and make a good life with my intellect and hard work.

My grandmother was by biggest fan. She always supported me and was so proud of me when I got good grades, when I was first published on the web, and when I made strides in my journalism career. She's been gone for two years and I miss her all the time. There are times when I wish I could talk to her and share the last two years of my life with her, but I know I had to let her go to focus on my own life. Otherwise none of this would be happening.

It took me four years to get to the Dominican Republic, from the day I sent my application to San Jose State to today. Long stories take a long time to write.

Tomorrow is my first class meeting of Analysis of Current Dominican Issues. Potential for more school stories.

First day of school/Mi primer día de escuela

This week is full of orientation events at FUNGLODE. Today was my public transit tutorial and my first day of school.


The public transit tutorial taught me about ways to get around in Santo Domingo. Guaguas are crappy buses crammed with people, with a guy (cobrador) hanging out the door telling people to get on the bus. They drive fast, don't obey traffic lights, and they don't have AC. And yet, they're one of the most popular forms of transit around here. I've seen loads of people gather to get on a guagua and I've seen tons of people get off of one on the main road near my apartment.


Then there are the public cars (carros públicos), again, shitty old beater cars in worse shape than my old Honda that finally died last month. These cars go around and pick people up and take routes with some stops on main roads. They often have brightly painted roofs and bear a sign on the driver side door telling you they're legit. But they're not necessarily safe. They typically drive with the driver, two passengers in the front, and four in the back. And these are not big cars. Again, fairly popular.


Another option is the metro, a subway/light rail system that goes only around the city. I'm used to BART in the Bay Area and light rail in Santa Clara County (where I'm from the States), and the metro seems like BART's retarded baby. We're doing another transit tutorial later in the week where we will experience the metro.


None of these options are too expensive in pesos. Not even taxis are that pricey here, if you're just going around the city.


I didn't take any public transit to school today. I walked to UNIBE with my roommate and my housing coordinator this morning. I walked home alone, confident that I could find my way. I did. What I found along the way was that walking here is like an interactive version of Frogger. Drivers don't stop. They don't obey signal lights. They'll go through the intersection. You basically have to wait until the traffic itself stops because no cars can move, then you start crossing. 


I made it home just fine. In the ten minutes I spent walking, about ten different guys whistled at me and/or said suggestive things. From what I understand, that's just the way it is here. Such a thing would outrage me in the States--both the act of sexism and the blase reaction to it--but here, it's kinda like the Dominican version of "LOL U MAD?" 


Oh right, school. I was supposed to be talking about school. I had my first class today, Dominican History. My professor is Sr. Nelson Sanchez, a Dominican who lived in the US attended Washington State University for his undergrad degree in engineering. He works here as an engineer and has worked on several construction projects. 


The class itself is tiny. There are three of us--a young woman from France, a Haitian-American from Miami, and me. The class is taught in English and Sr. Sanchez's English is excellent. We spent most of the time today talking about the tobacco trade, how that relates to Haiti and the Dominican Republic and their discord through history, and Spanish colonization. It was very informal and geared toward discussion. I love it. We will take field trips around the country to see important historical sites as well.


Before I went to class, I met with the international student life coordinator at UNIBE. She gave me a quick rundown of the school and told me to come to her with any problems or questions. It was like the first day at a new school, way back in elementary school. I had someone walk me, I had to meet the principal, and my baby-sitters said goodbye and good luck to me.


UNIBE is La Universidad Iberoamericana, one of the most prestigious universities in the country. Their medical school is among the best in the nation. For some reason, my classes at UNIBE are taught to the med students, so I get to attend classes on the 10th floor of the main building, a completely posh air conditioned paradise with an even more stunning view of the Caribbean Sea than what I have at my apartment. And my view is pretty damn spectacular. I will get to my digs here in another post, I promise.


The best part of the past few days is that I feel more confident, both in Spanish and in getting around here. My Spanish still isn't the best, but I feel more comfortable with it. I can understand a little bit more each day. Today in class it felt almost odd to speak all in English. I'm used to at least stumbling over Spanish while someone corrects me--I asked them to do that. Anyone who hears me speaking incorrectly has carte blanche to correct me. How else can I learn?


Remember how I said I'd skip around a lot? Yeah. I can't even pretend to promise a linear format here. I still have to describe the agenda for my 15 weeks here, my roommate (who's solid gold awesome), and my apartment.


Tomorrow I have more workshops at FUNGLODE that will prepare me for business etiquette in the D.R. and a workshop on race and gender in the country, presumably addressing the LOL U MAD attitude about the creepers on the corners. I have history class again on Friday and then my first class meeting for analysis of Dominican issues on Saturday. Monday we're taking a trip to La Zona Colonial, the oldest part of the city with cool shit like Fortaleza Ozama, which was built in 1502.


¡Escribiré más mañana!