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.

Some things don't change/Algunas cosas no cambian

I visited CDN's studios in Santo Domingo this morning. CDN's motto is "the national leader in news." I don't have enough information to confirm or deny that, but I learned that CDN has exclusive rights to broadcast Major League Baseball and the Dominican Winter League games in the Dominican Republic.

I met Ambiorix Vidal, the sports producer of the network. He's very young (mid 20s, and I am very old) and a former ballplayer, and when he spoke to me of his station's mission for baseball broadcast he smiled from ear to ear. That's why I came here--to find others who understand why baseball is so beautiful.

The details of my interview with Sr. Vidal are coming up in a future article. He showed me around the CDN studios. Our tour took me back nearly 10 years, to my first year in college and my first professional aspirations in broadcast journalism.

I got to see CDN's main television sets. Studio A has setups for four desk sets, plus a green screen and a few panels for sports broadcasts. It's not the largest or most advanced set in Santo Domingo, but it has everything necessary to produce a news broadcast. They have HD cameras and their typical news broadcast uses a two-camera setup, different from the three-camera set up I was trained on back in the day.

There's also a studio for programs broadcast on CDN2, geared for women and children, and a separate studio for cooking shows. We got to watch a bit of a live cooking show broadcast in progress. We also saw the editing rooms, the control room, and the radio studios. CDN produces radio and El Caribe, a newspaper in Santo Domingo.

When I started college I was a broadcast major and I was hellbent on being the very best sports announcer there ever was. Deep down, I also wanted to be a news anchor. I met one of the anchors for CDN's news program and was reminded of why I never could have been an anchor. She was tall and gorgeous with flawless cheekbones. Now, I have some damn good bone structure too, but next to this Dominican beauty I felt like Frumpy McStumperson, all fat and squat and awkward. They don't put flops like that on the TV.

But then I remembered the real reasons why I got out of the broadcasting game. Things really haven't changed all that much in how news is produced. The major changes have to do with the switch to digital broadcasting and HD--soon to be 3D, which I'm sorry, is gimmicky as a mother and annoying for people who wear glasses to see. I HATE those tacky 3D glasses and using them every time I want to watch TV? The hell with that noise--and non-linear editing, i.e., editing via computer programs instead of physically manipulating the videotape. I started out right as the industry straddled the line between linear and non-linear editing and I was taught how to edit videotape as well as via computer programs, like Final Cut Pro.

All that means is that I could get back into the game after a few crash courses in shooting, editing, and producing video. The question is not if I could do it. The question is if I want to, and the answer is a big fat resounding NO.

Basically in broadcasting, a few people do all the work while everyone stands around watching you do it. In my production classes, I ran the board in the control room. I ran the sound board. I ran video tape. I was floor manager. I was on camera. I did everything while the other nosepickers stood around doing nothing. It was enough to throw my headset at them.

Plus half the classes were girls and you can guess their motivation for a BS in broadcast journalism: "I want to be on TV! Tee-hee!" After a while, the women who were serious about production defected. One really smart girl who had a lot on the ball and who produced solid news reports just up and left in the middle of the semester because she was tired of the bubbleheads who didn't actually do a damn thing but always were on camera because their only talent was to sit there and look pretty.

Those frustrations pushed me pretty close to the edge, but I eventually found that I enjoyed the writing side of things more than the production side. I gave script writing a try, both film and broadcast news, and I didn't care for it as much as I thought I would. By the time I was completely exhausted with broadcasting, I was offered some opportunities to write about sports on the internet--back when that was still a novel concept--and that took its own course.

I enjoy the interviewing process a lot. Sometimes I think having my own newsmagazine program a la Anderson Cooper, with interviews and stuff, would be great. I love learning new things about people, places, and events, and I love to hear the stories that come out of my questions. I get a deep sense of satisfaction from turning the interviews into articles which introduce previously untold stories. At the end of the day, I'm a much better writer than a speaker and I flourish when I write.

My visit to CDN was still a valuable and fun experience. I got to relive a time in my life that I rarely give any consideration to, and I got to see that I made the right choice after all. Those are the best moments.

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!

Revolution/Revolucion

I am sitting on my balcony tonight, long after the sun has gone down. The only lights here are the street lamps, that are far below my view. I found there's enough room out here for one chair and I was in a sentimental mood, ripe for a heavy duty reflection period on a pleasant evening. You would be too if you had consistent mid 80s weather the week before Halloween like I do.

I passed the halfway mark of my time here this weekend. It doesn't quite balance out to 15 weeks here, but October 23 was basically the division point for me. I've faced significant strife in my personal life outside of my struggles with assimilating and learning Spanish and I allowed the negativity from that to poison the first seven weeks of my time here. I also gave into fear and spent my time inside my apartment instead of going out and trying to live.

I'm sitting on my balcony tonight to take in the beauty of a city that I fell in love with before I even truly knew the city. I have about seven weeks left here. I will not repeat the same mistakes of the first half of my time here. I spent that time wishing for the day when I could go home and wanting the days to go by faster.

I can see and feel the changes in my life, outlook, and attitude that resulted from coming here. For years I felt like my life in the States was tedious and boring. I yearned for a change. I wanted a wild adventure or a sweeping revolution to take over my life. I was ready for it. I just didn't know or expect it, nor did I know or expect how to handle the revolution.

I dragged the chair out here after weeks of thinking about doing it because I realized that I don't have much time left here. I'm not going to waste time thinking of how I wasted my previous days here. I'm not going to allow regret to take hold of me, either. The best way to do that is to take every day as it is given to me: gifts from a country and a culture that loves me as much as I love it. I came here begging the Dominican Republic to teach me its secrets and stories and the country and the people have responded by putting me at ease with Spanish and by giving me the best it has to offer.

I am living the revolution I prayed for. I can't return to the United States as the person I was when I left. I have exactly what I asked for, even if it feels completely different and not at all what I expected. It's terrifying to contemplate that but it's the good kind of fear, the kind that motivates and inspires.

I still want to return to my life in the States. I miss the people and things I left behind there. But I want to make each day here worthy of the revolution.

I made a promise to myself to go out and try something I haven't done or haven't tried by myself this week. Simple things like going to the colmado for a cold drink or going for a walk on a street I haven't been to. Talking to people in Spanish and not relying on English. Stuff like that.

Like everything else in life, I started with the best intentions. A sore foot from my beach trip (which will be featured in a future post) and a crapload of work due for school, my internship, and some other projects (again, forthcoming in a future post) derailed those plans for Monday and Tuesday.

The inspiration behind the week of new things was simple. I went to pay my phone bill on Saturday after my current events midterm, all by myself for the first time. I usually have my roommate Indhira with me to translate or help. I didn't get every word correct, but I spoke well enough to make myself understood and I made small talk. Very small talk. The girl at the phone counter said "¿tienes calor?" (is it hot?) to me and I responded "tan calor." (it's so hot) Then she told me "tengo frio" (it's cold) because of the air conditioner in the building.

I felt so good after that success that I went to McDonald's (shut up, it's good and cheap, two things I value here) and ordered lunch by myself, again successfully. While I ate my food, I saw an older lady who could have been my grandmother. She wore a smart bright blue pantsuit and every accessory coordinated perfectly: blue bag, blue shoes, blue jewelry. She even wore her hair in the same beehive style as my grandmother's signature look. I almost started crying in the McDonald's because I felt like she was there with me even for a minute. She would be so damn proud of me here doing this insane life-changing shit and I miss having the chance to tell her about what I'm doing here. I felt like I had that connection to her, however brief it was.

Then her hot grandson joined her at the table and I was snapped out of that reverie. The point of that vignette is that I would have missed that small but significant sign from the universe that made me believe what I am doing here is right and good, if I hadn't had the balls to go out and fail at Spanish and learn and try. It took balls just to come here. The revolution has begun. I have the balls to see it through and win the ultimate victory: a new, awesome version of myself.

I did a good job of making this balcony evening and my outpouring of emotions sound gorgeous, romantic, and empowering. Then a giant moth attacked me on the balcony. I suppose the insects are staging their own revolution.

Dream job/Mi trabajo de mis sueños

Today I visited Major League Baseball's offices in Santo Domingo. The official title of the operation is the office of the commissioner in Latin America. I went in thinking it was a massive compound with mega signage telling everyone where it is and how important it is. Especially with a formal title like that.

It's a tiny house converted into an office structure in a cul de sac off Avenida 27th de febrero (a main highway in Santo Domingo). There are pictures of baseball stadiums, legendary players, and team logos on the walls. It's small and meager and I love it for that very reason.

I met the community affairs director, who's another Hispanic-American from California. She explained to me what the office does. Everything you can think of for MLB to do in Latin America, they do it. It's not just Dominican Republic. It's Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Curaçao, anywhere where they play baseball in the region. We talked a lot about the educational opportunities for prospects in the Dominican Republic and she introduced me to the rest of the staff. I met quite a few other American ex-pats there, including a guy from Cupertino (aka the Silicon Valley, where I live in the States).

Obviously I can't go into detail about my visit as MLB plays their cards very close to the chest. Especially here. My contact at the offices here got into some trouble when a writer from ESPN Deportes blabbed a bunch of sensitive information and this confirmed what I suspected going in. I have to play by different rules here as a journalist. I know to stay in the game, you have to play the game, and you have to know the rules wherever you go.

What I can tell you is that I'm helping put together a newsletter for the offices. I jumped on it the moment my contact mentioned the project. I'd do anything to be involved in working here. I'm a good writer and I have the background for producing news content, so why not?

A few years ago someone on a Giants blog I frequent jokingly suggested I become the Giants general manager. I laughed and said something like "yeah, that'll be the day." But then I thought, why not me? That started a long journey of contemplating my future in sports. Is writing enough? Where is journalism going as an industry and trade? How can I stay with baseball for the rest of my life and make enough to support myself and my family?

I did the research. I interviewed a few general managers and other sports executives in minor league baseball. I learned that in the minors especially, being an executive is almost all about business. Apologies to the business people out there, but that bores me to tears. I want to be involved in the day to day operations of baseball. So maybe being a GM isn't for me.

However, working for the MLB offices here could be for me. Everything I saw and learned about today excites me. Literally anything I can think of concerning baseball development in the DR happens in that office on a daily basis.

This is my dream job.

I struggled to find the idea of what I really wanted to do. For a while it was limited to becoming someone's protegee. First, I was supposed to be the next Jon Miller, Hall of Fame television and radio broadcaster, before my broadcasting dreams died. Then it was the next Rob Neyer, a high profile baseball columnist, writer, and author (who tabbed me to work on the now dead Baseballin' on a Budget, and who called me a "fine writer." I'm still proud of that). Then my destiny was to be the next Keith Law, who started out in the Toronto Blue Jays front office and jumped to writing about prospects and scouting for Baseball America and ESPN.com.

These guys are great at what they do, but I need to find what I want to do. I'm not here to be the next version of anyone else. I'm here to be Chris Martinez, and I think I found the title I want to attach to my name. At least, I found the place where they can award me that title.

It doesn't bother me that the dream is still ambiguous. I've learned as I grow in my journalism career and as I get older that success isn't necessarily doing the same thing forever. If you asked me, even in 2008 where I'd be in 2011 in my career, I couldn't tell you. Now I'm doing things that are completely different from what I did three years ago. And I don't know what I can or will be in 2016. I just know that I want to be here, working in the office of the commissioner of Major League Baseball in Latin American affairs.

The dream also confirms what I have to do next: graduate, get my MA in sports management, and become fluent in Spanish. Those plans are already on track. My visit confirmed that I've done everything right on my path to get here.

First things first. I have to rock the shit out of the newsletter.

Out of practice/Me falta práctica

How many of you thought that things would be totally different once I got here?

I also thought things would be completely different. I put my journalism work on hold to focus on what I had to do here and I put my daily Spanish lessons aside in the belief that I'd learn enough just by immersion.

As I mentioned in the last post, I pitched the idea for winter leagues coverage while I'm here to my collaborators at Bay City Ball, and they loved it. Starting next week, I'm writing a weekly feature on Giants prospects in the assorted fall/winter leagues. 

The Arizona Fall League starts today and the Dominican League starts October 14. The Mexican League starts October 11. The Australian League starts November 3. The Venezuelan and Puerto Rican leagues don't have start dates published on MLB's website, but traditionally the Venezuelan league starts in mid-October and the Puerto Rican league starts in November. I'm keeping tabs on the Nicaraguan and Colombian winter leagues in case any Giants players show up there.

The AFL is a showcase for the top minor league talent in baseball. Each MLB team sends about six or seven of their best (in theory) prospects to Arizona for six weeks in October and November. I covered the AFL for ten days a few years ago and it was a really great experience.

The other leagues are just regular old winter leagues, with locals from the countries and some MLB players. Although I caught myself, in my American brain, thinking that the DWL was the "winter league." Absolutely not. It's THE league here.

This is writing I would be doing if I was in the States. The more things change, as they say, the more they stay the same.

I'm joining a beginning Spanish class at UNIBE, starting tomorrow. It's Spanish as a foreign language class and I'm not taking it for credit or for a grade. It's for practice. It was my internship coordinators' idea to get me more practice and help me be comfortable with speaking and listening. 

Tomorrow is my first day in the class so I have no idea how it will be. If it's anything like my other classes, I'll be with other international students. The class meets three days a week and there's no pressure on me to do assignments or take tests. I'm looking forward to working on my Spanish in a low-pressure setting.

If I were doing a regular semester at San Jose State, I'd be in Spanish 25A right now, the first class of the intermediate level. While I'd have a lot on the line there--a grade and a requirement for my minor, plus the added pressure of learning Spanish well--I'd still be learning. 

So I'm still writing about baseball and I'm still studying Spanish. I'm just doing it in the tropics. I was out of practice for a month and it found its way back to me.

I take that as a sign that I was meant to do this all along.

One month: Benchmarks/Un mes: niveles

We're a month into this crazy adventure I undertook. It feels like I've been here forever, and at the same time it feels like I just got here. I'm swimming around in paradoxes lately. Sometimes I feel like I haven't learned or done anything, and sometimes I feel like I've learned and achieved quite a bit. I see evidence in myself that I've changed, but at times I feel like nothing has changed at all.

I have a few benchmarks for my adventure here: my adaptation to life in the Dominican Republic (aka, how I handle culture shock), my Spanish skills, and my personal and professional growth.

Let's break each one down.

I have to admit that culture shock is tough. It's having its way with me still, tossing me down the stairs and then spitting on my inert body. I love the people, the environment, and the way of life here. Fitting in is working. But I'm still an American mind stuck in a body that took me far away from my previous reality and those two sides of me don't always get along.

Invariably culture shock and my Spanish skills go hand-in-hand. I hit the wall badly this past week with my Spanish. I'm still having trouble with understanding people and it built up before I cracked under the pressure and frustration. I was depressed and feeling useless all week because I feel my Spanish sucks.

Today I went out with my roommate to a pool party. I felt like absolute ass for the first few hours because of my crappy week. But I tried to speak Spanish. I started to think in Spanish--not translate what I wanted to say from English, but think of words and logic in Spanish. And I slowly understood what the people around me were talking about.

I was able to get the gist of what the people at the party asked me, things about my background, my studies, and how I like the D.R. I was able to articulate what I do, who I am, and what I like well. I didn't understand everything and I didn't speak perfect Spanish, but I spoke well enough to be understood and I understood enough to communicate in the first place.

This is a small yet huge step. I know I won't magically solve my communication problems after one good day with the language. Now I understand why I communicated well in that environment. I was comfortable. I knew I was allowed to make mistakes and I wasn't alone. Everyone there was willing and able to help me.

When I'm at school or at my internship meetings or in some other scenario where I'm on the spot, I freeze up. I can't remember how to speak or which words to say. I feel like an outsider and it shuts me down. Which is a damn shame because I know I can speak Spanish and I can do it well for what I know and what I've studied.

As for personal and professional growth, I'd say the personal growth lies in my ability to recognize the best environment for my Spanish practice and my own awareness of my skills. It's also important to note that while I flail around in despair when culture shock is ruining my life, I'm committed to getting through it.

My professional growth has taken a few turns since I came here. My schoolwork is going well and my internship is great. I guess I'm used to being busier than what the threshold of human endurance allows with my three-ring balancing act in the States, but I find myself with nothing to do on most days. I bang out my schoolwork and articles quickly and sit around watching garbage on television or reading gossip blogs all day. Oh No They Didn't is my BFF these days. Their GIF parties complete me.

I mentioned my sportswriting jobs before. You know that SF Dugout ceased operations this summer. Baseballin' on a Budget, the A's blog I write for, just called it quits. I'm down to one regular job, Bay City Ball. I said I would take a hiatus on my writing jobs while I was here, but the dust has settled and I have all this free time being bored and letting my brain rot. Why not fill it with something constructive?

While we work out the details on my return to BCB, I entertain thoughts of what my writing life will be with another project down the tubes. Do I wander around the internet with a hand-written sign that says, "will blog for food"? Do I start a refugee camp for internet journalists? Do I start cold calling (cold emailing?) sports news outlets on the web and selling myself as the missing link for their coverage, as one of the rare people out there who knows and loves minor league baseball?

Maybe the lessons I learn and gifts I receive on this adventure won't be the ones I expected. Perspective, fortitude, and freedom are not things I expected to find here. But those things found me.

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.