La Capital

It’s been like three weeks, right? I don’t know why I’ve been so busy, but combined with the issues uploading pictures and the access to internet, I haven’t posted on schedule.

Side note: DON’T use Picasa to store pictures because if you have more than 200 pictures or 1 GB, they want you to pay. I switched back to Facebook because people wanted to be tagged in pictures anyway. I am very unhappy about it, but it’s time to move on.

What has three eyes, a long list of firsts, the voice of an angel, and pours out all it has? If you answered Santo Domingo, how smart you are. It is also home to the capital building, museums, and an aquarium.

Santo Domingo is a great place for anyone who loves history…. Which doesn’t happen to be me, but that’s beside the point. I like experiencing history and that’s what matters. Everything is “The First of the New World.” Santo Domingo is NOT the first place that Columbus (or Colón in Spanish) landed, but it was the first place he colonized (get it COLONized, funny how this things are realized).  Below are the map of the exploration route, and the map of my own route.

As I said, that Friday involved a lot of history, a lot of touring, and a lot of heat. We also did some shopping, but the prices were much higher than Santiago unless you bartered down. I didn’t really get the chance to do that much, but I will get what I want here for much less.

Santo Domingo was my third (that I can remember) Aquarium experience. I don’t think we have Aquariums in Michigan, but if they do I need to get to one when I get home to make it four months in a row.  It was pretty cool, better than the Boston aquarium (which I have yet to blog about), and interestingly open air.

After that I had a brand new experience when we toured the Tres Ojos caves. That was awesome, impressive, and beautiful. The downside was that I was fairly disappointed with my cameras performance. The lighting was just not on my side, but that’s alright.

While touring with ISA was all good and fun, the stories that will stick with me happened during the rest of the weekend. Ten of us stayed in Santo Domingo for the weekend to go to a concert. It was a bit more stressful and a lot more wet than I anticipated. Checking into the hostel was a mess and a half because of confusion over rooms. Taylor and I had booked separately, but after seeing the room we were supposed to stay in with a small fan and an outdoor bathroom, we weren’t that into it. I spent an hour trying to work out pricing and rooming with the manager. Luckily he spoke English and was very nice, but it still took him awhile for him to understand me. I think we still would be there debating it if I had to explain to him in Spanish. The owner did give me a thirty pesos discount after all the trouble instead of giving me change.

The hostel was not what you would typically expect. Four of us shared a room with a full size bed, a bunk bed, the smallest bathroom in the world, a TV, and air conditioning for $10 per night each. It was more like a motel than any hostel that I have heard of, but an amazing price. Granted, in addition to the check-in issue, we had to have our doorknob taken off because the key got stuck, none of our keys to the hostel entrance worked, and our water stopped working in the middle of our last night. The water part is ironic, because it rained buckets that night.

I have never stood out in rain that bad in my life. We arrived at the stadium three hours before the concert was scheduled to start on recommendation of my family. Taylor and I had different tickets than the rest of the group, so we were in the back half of the standing section on the field. The crowd was huge and had a ton of energy with their thunder sticks. It would have been a real great concert without the rain.

It rained a couple times before the concert started, but as soon as the opener went on, it began to pour. I could barely see the stage when Juan Luis Guerra went on. I was wringing my shirt out every two minutes to try to protect my phone (which hates it here and barely functions for anything) and my camera (which I forgot to put batteries in and was completely useless either way). The only way I could have taken pictures is if I had brought my camera (with batteries) in my waterproof bag. We decided to stick it out until the song “Como Yo” played and left the stadium right after.

It took an hour to get a cab between the large crowd leaving, taxis asking for 700 pesos (US $17.50), and no one wanting to drive gringas mojadas. It probably would have made just as much sense to stay, and had I know that JUANES(!!!!) was making a guest appearance, I would have just resolved to buy a new phone. I will probably be kicking myself until I see Juanes in concert.

Even though the taxi driver was not happy with us for making his seats wet, we reached the hostel successfully. After changing out of my sopping wet clothes, I joined Kara, Leandra, and some other people staying at the hostel for a long game of “Nunca en mi vida.” It was probably my favorite part of the weekend, because of the simplicity of it. Sitting on a covered patio, getting to know people, listening to the rain, and hunting down the mangos that rolled off the tin roof from the tree above…

The next morning I had the best mango for breakfast before checking out and heading back to Santiago.

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!