Puerto Plata

The days here are long, but I don’t know where they go half the time. I am always tired and always praying for una briza. Yes, the girl who hates wind and air conditioning has now become a fan. Speaking of fans, I don’t know how I would survive without the one above my bed. In all seriousness though, I am still loving it here. Today there was an international fair outside the student center. It was a little delayed by a short downpour, as all rain showers occur here, but picked right back up after. There was dancing, performances, booths of places I’d love to go, and an American booth giving out PB&J. I’m not quite an expert at dancing yet, but I’m trying. My host brother is trying to teach me because he is much better. Here’s a riddle for you—what do dancing, Jesus, and the ocean have in common? They comprise how I spent my first Saturday in the Dominican Republic.

Entonces, let’s go back in time to last Saturday. Puerto Plata, or the port of silver, was a great first excursion outside Santiago. It took about an hour and a half to get to a place called Mount Isabel del Torros. There they have the only cable car in the Dominican Republic to take you to outstanding views, the smaller version of the Jesus statue from Rio, beautiful nature, and Dominicans trying to sell you things at tourist prices. There are pictures, some here and others in an album (click here), but I promise they don’t do it justice. You’re just going to have to go see for yourself. In the waiting area, there was also an authentic Dominican band which was awesome, even if they were just playing for tips. I will find a CD of the music before I leave.

We went quickly to the fort in Puerto Plata. I need to do more research on it, because we were a little rushed. By the time this is published, I will have more information, but for now I’m going to guess it has something to do with Trujillo. Everything in this country’s history either revolves around Trujillo or Christopher Columbus. (I was very wrong, here's some information.) After, we ate lunch in the supermarket, La Sirena, which everyone keeps calling a “Dominican Walmart.” I probably have heard that term over ten times since I got here. And because the locals are so eager to call it that, some of the Americans have started saying, “Do you want to go to the Dominican Walmart?” Anyway, there are food courts, banks, cell phone stores, and many other things besides groceries in every La Sirena. Though I really wanted to sit down a restaurant that serves seafood, I did eat four slices of Dominos pizza.

Another hour in the bus and we were at Cabarete. This is one of the most popular beach towns in the DR, behind Sosua and La Romana. It is well known for the international wind surfing competitions held there. Our group had a pretty empty part of the beach until about fifteen Haitians and Dominicans came by to sell things to us. We were offered fruit, rental chairs, drinks, massages, jewelry… and hair braids that I was literally forced into. The woman was not very happy with me when I said that I only had twenty pesos, but decided that would be the fee for the braid she had just put in my hair. A man also tried to sell us cigars while we were twenty feet off shore, however we were expected to buy and smoke cigars while swimming. Once you convince the people to leave you alone for a bit, the beach is nice. One of the ISA employees took me to look for shells and gave me all the ones she found. I now have an excessive amount for only my first beach trip, but it was fun and we did find some good ones.

It was an exhausting day and it took two hours to get back home, but Taylor and I still wanted to go out as we had planned. In retrospect, we probably could have taken naps because our brother didn’t come home until 10 PM to get us, but showers, aloe, and other things took priority. I may or may not have forgotten to put sun screen on my back at the beach, so I was a mixture of red and green. It’s turned into a nice tan by now and I keep looking at my arms unable to believe how tan I am. I was glad it was dark on Saturday though, so I looked less like a traffic light. It didn’t stop anyone from checking out the gringas, but I felt better about it.

First, went to Victor’s friend’s graduation party from PUCMM. The journey there between a broken down jeep and a lost taxi was difficult, but I had a great time. It was fairly similar to a graduation party in the US, but a little more fancy than I am use to. Maybe it would be more closely compared to a wedding reception. I should have taken a picture because it would be easier to explain. Around one o’clock we headed to the discotheque and it was packed. It remained crowded until around 3:30 AM. The music was interesting for sure; a lot of American music was played with a techno beat along with Reggaetone and some salsa music. The strangest point of the night was when I found myself dancing fast to “Someone like You” by Adele. Sunday ending up to be a very lazy day, since we stayed out until 5 AM and I woke up four hours later. It was a lot of fun though and I hope to do it again soon.

Well, that was my weekend in 1000 words or less. Tomorrow I am headed to the capital for two days! Hasta luego! 

I Never Want to See My Luggage Again

‘Alo!

Now that I finally unpacked my room on Sunday, I feel more equipped to talk about packing and travelling. For travel to a tropical environment in the summer it is rarely necessary to wear warm clothing… ever. See, I knew this but I thought, “Hey, maybe it will get cold at night.” I was wrong. Going off of the recommendation of bringing clothes you can layer, I brought a sweater, a fleece, a very light jacket, and a long sleeve shirt. These things are now packed in a space bag ready to return to the States along with a pair of pajama pants and a pair of sweat pants that I can’t visualize wearing any time in the next five weeks. This brings me to my first set of packing tips.

1.Buy space bags

a.You will save a ton of space in your suitcase

b.More importantly, you can put almost half of your clothes in a backpack (if you get the right  

sizes in space bags) and use it as a carry on that will have no weight limit and allow for other things in your bag. Also, if your bags get lost, you will have clothes

2.Look at the most extreme possible weather you could experience and bring only one piece of clothing to suffice that need. Everything else should be fit to the average temperature. The worst thing that could happen is that you have to wear something more than once, but I would have honestly preferred that much more than having 10 pounds of extra useless weight in my bag.

3.Don’t bring things that are not tough enough to maintain their own shape. Seriously, I would be happy to never see this darn woven hat again while I am lugging around nearly 100 pounds.

Travelling has been crazy and I was so glad to hit the ground in Santiago and realize I wouldn’t have to do it again for six weeks after customs. Customs in the Dominican Republic are a piece of cake. I was expecting a torturous experience, and maybe American customs will be, but I have weeks before I have to worry about that. Of course, all of it is in the back of my mind with each purchase. Packing, luggage weight, customs allowance are all floating around… in addition to the fact that more packing will happen as soon as I get home to leave for Mount Pleasant. This is a new worry on my mind because I just got a job on Monday and need to start training July 16^th. Are my Dominican Republic belongings enough to start life in an apartment? No, probably not.

After a very long wait at the airport after spending the night before catching some sleep on the floor at JFK (Yes, I live a glamorous life), I reached my home stay at 4:30 PM. This was my first experience with “Dominican time” as I arrived at the airport at 11 AM and was supposed to be picked up at 1 PM by ISA. Here they tell people that they need to be there at American time if they want to have them there on time. Clearly whoever invented this term hasn’t met my family. The must have forgotten to put (TD) next to the pick-up time, but did give me time to get to know some of the people in my group. We gradually found each other by the ISA luggage tags and because we all looked American. I was very nervous to meet my host family, but they quickly offered me Coca-cola and hot duck (which I later realized was a hot DOG, not duck).

Here’s a couple parting packing tips and some pictures. If you are not planning on studying abroad and this post has completely bored you, hopefully you will enjoy the pictures. Next post will be about Puerto Plata, so stay tuned!

4.Wear/bring things that you won’t need to bring back. A lot of us brought clothes and other things that are on the verge of falling apart. We plan to leave those things here to make room in our suitcases for souvenirs and replacements. I hope not to bring back any of the toiletry items that I brought here if I am able to use most of it. My only warning is to be careful that your things will last as long as you want them because you might end up having to buy a replacement that you don’t want.

5.This is a small thing, but I would recommend bringing scissor and tape. These are two things that I don’t have, but have asked for several times. It would be nice to have my own.

Don’t exchange money at an exchange house or the airport. You will pay a fee, you will get ripped off. 

6.You can talk to local banks and find out if they have or can get the currency you want. I would suggest only exchanging enough for your first week then waiting to exchange the rest until you find a bank at your destination. Odds are very high that they will take US dollars.

Some of my new stuff

All of my clothes

Insect repellent that I should
 have gotten two of

On the bathroom wall in JFK

Am I Dreaming?

When I was in Michigan home from school, I had been dreaming about my upcoming trip every night. Some wacky, crazy dreams that don't make any sense most of the time. I was taking bits and pieces of things that I know and embellishing upon them. Por ejemplo, I know that the city has McDonald's and other popular American fast food places. So, I had a dream that I went to McDonald's and the menu was in Chinese (only for the purpose of me not being able to understand it) and they served things like tacos and burgers with beans and rice. I had dreams where people I knew went with me because I didn’t know the names, faces, or personality of the other students at that time.

For the past few days, I have been pinching myself. Why? Because I am not dreaming anymore and I am finally here! I know that I may have indicated that I would talk about packing and flying in this post, but that involves a lot of pictures and the time and energy needed for that post is not currently aquì. Also, I do not have access to the internet at my home, so I have to type this post on Word and post it tomorrow. The post that covers packing will probably come Monday and if it makes anyone feel better, I’ll change the date so that it looks like I posted that first. I also hope to blog about my first excursion and other ISA (E-SAH) things, in addition to finishing my Boston and New York blogging. So much to do! All I want to do is spend time with my host family and explore the city, but hopefully I will get to it.

Speaking of family and exploring, those are the topics I want to cover. Despite not knowing the information of my family until two weeks ago, that doesn’t even matter anymore. Mi familia es perfecta- Victor Jose, Fifi, Lina, Victor Alfonzo, Laura, Taylor, and me! Taylor is from Texas and she goes to Oklahoma University. Lina makes comments about how Taylor has a cantarero and we are trying to spot the differences between the north and south. If anyone has any suggestions of different words or pronunciations, let me know! We have come up with pop vs coke, a lot of pop culture, glass vs cup, and apparently Texans say “scrubin’” when they wear sweats. Even communicating in English can be a challenge at times! I honestly don’t think that I could have picked a better family. I am the youngest, unless you count Bachi, the dog of Laura’s friend that she has been taking care of. Bachi es la princesa! She is spoiled, or nonada in Spanish.

 I apologize for the back and forth between languages, but that is my brain is functioning right now. We have not completely switched over to speaking Spanish because most of my family speaks English very well, but we try to cut it out a little bit each day. By next week, I hope to be communicating almost entirely in Spanish. This week is a lot of orientation and we start class Monday. Today we will find out what classes that we placed into after taking yesterday’s exam.  Victor Jose has been taking us to most activities and gives us a good education on everything there is to know. He only speaks Spanish, besides a couple words in English, and it has been helping my comprehension greatly. Last night, he gave Taylor and me a lesson on Haiti after dinner that spawned off of a statement about only telling host families new to the program good things about the experience. He knows so much, and it is really great. All of the family attended, or is attending in the case of Victor Alfonzo, PUCMM (Pu-ka-My-Ma), the university where we are taking our Spanish classes, and we have learned a lot about the school.

Everyone who was so worried about me can stop now. I haven’t seen a lot yet other than the campus and the streets surrounding ISA and the apartment, but it’s wonderful and decently safe if you know where not to go and use precaution at night. Everyone is so friendly and excited for our experiences. The apartment is nice and has a beautiful view of the city. My room and bed here are larger than in the States. I think I’ve had four bug bites so far, and coming from Michigan, that’s not a big deal. There is a group from GVSU here that have been in the city for two weeks, and they did mention lots of bug bites, so maybe it will be worse when I travel. I haven’t been outside besides the balcony at night yet and we live on the fourth floor. It is crazy to me to have open windows, no screens, and very few bites. The Grand Valley group is doing a different type of program through ISA, but it is nice to have some familiarity. There are five of us from Michigan in my group, three from Kalamazoo, which is an odd occurrence in a group of twenty-four, but cool. My “Beat Western” button is on my purse just for the two WMU girls!

I believe that is all for now. The food is good, the campus is very beautiful, my family is very accommodating, we are going to Puerto Plata on Friday, and we have many other exciting things on the way! I am going to try to buckle down and type a bit more instead of watching telanovelas and The Big Bang Theory. If you are reading this in the morning of the 6^th (hey, one month until my birthday), I will be online from 6-7 PM if you want to chat. Other than that, I will have very limited access for the next two weeks and slightly limited after that. I’m enjoying it though; I was not on my computer for more than ten minutes for three days.

Gracias por tu atención!