This post kind of fits in with the prologue, but it's also relevant to my life here. Today I'm writing about the life I put on hold to come to the Dominican Republic. I'm writing about the people and things I left behind.
I live in San Jose, California. It's the 10th largest city in the United States, larger than San Francisco. SF is a global city--a globalization term that means a city is integral to the world economy. SJ is not a global city. It's integral to American technology and sustainability industries, but nine times out of ten, when I tell someone that I live in San Jose, they've never heard of it. Everyone knows San Francisco. Sometimes a frame of reference is needed.
I left San Jose behind for 15 weeks in the tropics. I spent all the money I have in the world to come here: several thousand dollars to pay for my internship, tuition at UNIBE, and housing. I have a little bit socked away for groceries and incidentals, but that's it.
I left behind my work, my home, my friends, and my boyfriend as well. Fortunately, they all have allowed me to come back when I return in December.
If you've been following the posts before this, you know I work as a blogger and contributing writer for a few websites in the States. I also work at the Santa Clara Swim Club, a well-known and highly respected swim club in the Silicon Valley (the region containing San Jose and other cities, named for the tech firms and development housed in the region). I teach swim lessons for children of all ages (and some adults!) on the weekends, while I attend classes at SJSU during the week.
I love my teaching job. Swimming plus baseball means I get to work outside and wear basically whatever I want. I get to splash around with kiddos and be goofy and silly, yet I work my kids hard and I feel satisfaction from teaching them an important life-saving skill plus giving them something to work for, and something I hope gives them self-confidence.
We operate on a schedule of four sessions a year. I'm missing two whole sessions to be here. I told my boss about my plans to study abroad at the beginning of 2011 and she wants me to return to my teaching duties when I come home. I know how lucky I am to have any job in the crappy American economy, and I feel blessed that I can leave for a while, do my thing, and come back to a job I love.
I don't think my social life is especially rockin' when compared to my college contemporaries. I don't drink until I pass out and I attend marching band parties, which are pretty fun. They're just not keggers or ragers. We drink and play beer pong and just hang out. But I'm cut off from my friends here due to differences in how cell phones work and time zones.
I can't just pick up the phone and call someone. I can't text. Here, I rely on phone cards and putting money on my cell phone. In the States, I have an unlimited plan and I admit I text a hell of a lot. Text and call costs add up; those ten pesos here and there soon eat up the few hundred pesos I put on my phone every week. So I save my phone for calling my mom, my dad, and my brother, who don't have internet access. I call them and our conversations last for a few minutes, mostly me saying I'm safe and fine and no hurricanes have washed me out to sea.
I talk with my friends in the States when I can via the internet. I haven't tried Skype yet. Mostly it's via Facebook chat, as buggy as it is and as annoying as FB's changes have been. You probably have been hit with their asinine friends feed shift. I switched my FB language to Spanish, and the feed went back to normal. Suck it, Facebook.
Okay, so I should have been using the Spanish settings all along. Don't take away my righteous indignation.
It's hard to stay in contact with my friends, though. Most of them are on the West Coast, meaning I'm three hours ahead of them. I stay up until 3am most nights just trying to see if anyone's around to talk to me. I don't always get enough sleep, especially on school nights. So far I've been able to get by as one of the walking dead.
That feeds into natural feelings of loneliness. I live in a city of over three million people and I know like, ten people. I'm still trying to become confident with my Spanish. It's easy to feel alone here when I can't always understand others and I can't always articulate myself, and it's easy to feel alone here when I don't know that many people to communicate with in the first place.
My roommate Indhira has been great for encouraging me to get out of the apartment and socialize with her friends. I'm still reluctant to go out, but I'm feeling less and less awkward about it.
My go-to sources of comfort and safety in the States are my boyfriend and my home. Sam and I moved into our apartment in July, a two-bedroom dump we share with a good friend of ours, Phil. I love it because it's our dump and I feel comfortable and safe there. I need to have my nest.
Sam and I are very close. Aside from being my boyfriend, he's also my best friend. I don't trust anyone in my life as much as I trust him. I had severe issues with leaving him to come here and I'm still not happy about it.
I don't get to talk to him as much as I want to. He has classes and activities and things he has to do. His schedule doesn't match up with mine.
It sucks. I can't put it any other way.
I sat around today and got all weepy and stupid watching The Time Traveler's Wife because I miss Sam so damn much. I hate sleeping in a bed without him. I hate waking up and not seeing him next to me. I hate that I can't see any texts from him. He sent me texts about 20 times a day that just say "I love you."
Yes, vomit. Whatever. I'm a sappy idiot and I don't care.
I didn't leave these parts of my life behind per se. It's more like putting that part of my life on hold, but they keep going. I go on here while thinking about them going on there and wishing I could have parts of my life here.
I love it here in the D.R. I let myself daydream about living here with Sam and working at a good job and having friends and a happy life. But my life is in San Jose now. It's just hard to think of my life going on without me.
Showing posts with label prologue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label prologue. Show all posts
24 September 2011
21 September 2011
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.
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.
20 September 2011
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.
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.
31 August 2011
Getting ready/Me preparo
Preparations for my voyage to the D.R. have begun. I need to explain the preparations in two phases: the long term stuff like setting up my internship, securing funding, and the like; and the short term stuff, like packing and buying supplies and figuring out how to survive in a new country.
Right now I'm bringing up the short term stuff.
Let me make this abundantly clear: packing sucks.
It sucks more when you're going somewhere for three months. Lucky for me, I'll have access to laundry facilities at my apartment building in Santo Domingo, so I don't need to bring my entire closet. Just my A-list stuff. Still, there's a lot of thought that goes into packing for an extended trip like this, especially when I have to bring a variety of clothes. I need dressy stuff for classes and VIP events in the D.R. I need beach wear. I need stuff for hiking and traipsing around the city.
It's also a pain in the ass to remember and pack all the things I've become way too accustomed to: my computer, my Nintendo DS, my voice recorder, my iPod, and all associated power cords, headphones, and batteries. I live on my computer. I turn to Pokemon on my DS when I'm bored and/or the world sucks. My iPod will soon be filled with merengue, bachata, plena, salsa, and reggaeton, replacing my trip hop, thrash metal, house, and new wave tunes.
Then I had to consider ways to get around TSA's asinine rules on liquids. I don't even want to bother with their nonsense, so I'm putting everything even closely resembling liquid in my checked luggage. Shampoo, bug spray, hand sanitizer, you can have it. I'd rather not be accused of terrorism at 6am. It just doesn't fit into my career plans.
I swear to god I'll forget something. And unlike when I've been on vacay or business trips before, I don't know if I can just go to the corner store and get tweezers, Q-tips, or whatever I'll need that I've forgotten. Sure, Santo Domingo isn't an open pit of sewage and ignorance, but I also have no idea what it's actually like there. Saving money by bringing everything I have on hand now is also a strategic move.
I'll bring you more background on the long term preparations for my semester in the D.R., along with the promised stories on why I chose the D.R., what I'll do there, and who I am. There's three whole months ahead to write this story.
Right now I'm bringing up the short term stuff.
Let me make this abundantly clear: packing sucks.
It sucks more when you're going somewhere for three months. Lucky for me, I'll have access to laundry facilities at my apartment building in Santo Domingo, so I don't need to bring my entire closet. Just my A-list stuff. Still, there's a lot of thought that goes into packing for an extended trip like this, especially when I have to bring a variety of clothes. I need dressy stuff for classes and VIP events in the D.R. I need beach wear. I need stuff for hiking and traipsing around the city.
It's also a pain in the ass to remember and pack all the things I've become way too accustomed to: my computer, my Nintendo DS, my voice recorder, my iPod, and all associated power cords, headphones, and batteries. I live on my computer. I turn to Pokemon on my DS when I'm bored and/or the world sucks. My iPod will soon be filled with merengue, bachata, plena, salsa, and reggaeton, replacing my trip hop, thrash metal, house, and new wave tunes.
Then I had to consider ways to get around TSA's asinine rules on liquids. I don't even want to bother with their nonsense, so I'm putting everything even closely resembling liquid in my checked luggage. Shampoo, bug spray, hand sanitizer, you can have it. I'd rather not be accused of terrorism at 6am. It just doesn't fit into my career plans.
I swear to god I'll forget something. And unlike when I've been on vacay or business trips before, I don't know if I can just go to the corner store and get tweezers, Q-tips, or whatever I'll need that I've forgotten. Sure, Santo Domingo isn't an open pit of sewage and ignorance, but I also have no idea what it's actually like there. Saving money by bringing everything I have on hand now is also a strategic move.
I'll bring you more background on the long term preparations for my semester in the D.R., along with the promised stories on why I chose the D.R., what I'll do there, and who I am. There's three whole months ahead to write this story.
29 August 2011
Mi otoño en la República Dominicana/My autumn in the Dominican Republic
This is the first in a series of posts on the greatest adventure I've ever attempted in my life. Next week I travel to the Dominican Republic for a three month study abroad program.
I started this blog to keep a record of my travels, and to keep my friends and loved ones up on what I'm doing. If I find some other readers along the way, cool.
Some quick basics on me and this study abroad thing I'm doing.
I'm Chris, an American student living in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. I'm 29 and I attend San Jose State University, where I am majoring in global studies with a double minor in journalism and Spanish.
Global studies majors at SJSU are required to do a study abroad program to graduate. We must pick a global region that corresponds to our area of focus and second language (or in some cases, third or fourth or fifth...) to travel to. I chose the Dominican Republic, a destination that not many people understand or even know exists. I'll get into the details of why I chose the D.R., what I'm studying, and how I'm getting there in future posts.
This fall I am studying at La Universidad Iberoamericana (UNIBE) in Santo Domingo, the D.R.'s capital city. I am also doing a research internship on baseball in the country. Baseball is more than a sport in the D.R.; it's life. Baseball is also my life, which I will also discuss in detail later on.
I leave for Santo Domingo September 2. Until then, I'll be getting ready to go. Packing. Gathering all my necessities: bug spray, sunscreen, and Immodium--for traveler's diarrhea. It's fun. Working on assignments for an online class I'm taking at SJSU this fall. And teaching my final lessons at my day job as a swim coach. (I promise you we'll get to all that).
Every good story needs a prologue and my Dominican story has yet to be written. This coming week will be the prologue.
Thanks for reading and I hope I keep you all interested in my autumn in the Dominican Republic.
I started this blog to keep a record of my travels, and to keep my friends and loved ones up on what I'm doing. If I find some other readers along the way, cool.
Some quick basics on me and this study abroad thing I'm doing.
I'm Chris, an American student living in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. I'm 29 and I attend San Jose State University, where I am majoring in global studies with a double minor in journalism and Spanish.
Global studies majors at SJSU are required to do a study abroad program to graduate. We must pick a global region that corresponds to our area of focus and second language (or in some cases, third or fourth or fifth...) to travel to. I chose the Dominican Republic, a destination that not many people understand or even know exists. I'll get into the details of why I chose the D.R., what I'm studying, and how I'm getting there in future posts.
This fall I am studying at La Universidad Iberoamericana (UNIBE) in Santo Domingo, the D.R.'s capital city. I am also doing a research internship on baseball in the country. Baseball is more than a sport in the D.R.; it's life. Baseball is also my life, which I will also discuss in detail later on.
I leave for Santo Domingo September 2. Until then, I'll be getting ready to go. Packing. Gathering all my necessities: bug spray, sunscreen, and Immodium--for traveler's diarrhea. It's fun. Working on assignments for an online class I'm taking at SJSU this fall. And teaching my final lessons at my day job as a swim coach. (I promise you we'll get to all that).
Every good story needs a prologue and my Dominican story has yet to be written. This coming week will be the prologue.
Thanks for reading and I hope I keep you all interested in my autumn in the Dominican Republic.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)