Trabajo y diviertemento

Work

Since my highly educational visit to the sugar mill, most of my time has been spent less productively. Classes have started, yes, but the students in my program have access to four different institutions, all of which start at different times. That means I only had one class last week called Methods of Social Communication (Medios de Comunicación Social) at Bonó, a school that mostly trains Dominican, Haitian, Cuban, and Puerto Rican students to be priests. I knew that going in and I walked in all dainty in my white skirt and cardigan and immediately felt super self-conscious that I was the only girl in the class. I was also the only American. Needless to say, the other students were definitely curious about me, so within five minutes of sitting down, I had three guys around me asking me questions about where I was from and what I was doing here and if I could help them with their English.

Half way through the actual class, the professor informed us that instead of looking “social communication” in general, we would be focusing on film, spending half the semester learning film history and theory and the second half actually making a movie. And being the only girl in the class, I was informed that I would need to step up as actress, most likely in a romantic role. Oh, dear. This will definitely be an interesting class.

Play

Thanks to my open schedule, I was able to have fun last week. I normally would have been in vacation, so this worked out really well. I hung out with kids from the program and learned to play Spades and dominos. I’ve actually gotten quite good at Spades. Thursday I went to a beach outside of the capital called Boca Chica. It was a beautiful beach with white sand and palm trees and small waves, though the water wasn’t that warm. Tons and tons of people kept trying to sell us stuff (lady, why would I pay you to give me a manicure on the beach?) That night was ladies’ night at a bar called Bamboo House. Wasn’t much of a ladies’ night, as we, meaning 5 girls from my program, were the only ladies there. They were playing The Police and other horrendous 80s bands, but it got better and we ended up having a good time in our small group. I’m learning to dance a little bit; bachata I more or less have down but merengue, not so much.

Saturday it was back to the beach, but this time I went to Juan Dolio. Juan Dolio’s a great beach as well, but that day was kind of windy so I had a face full of sand. There’s a town around there as well, and it’s so sad because most of the people that live th ere have fairly dark skin and they live in these tiny, cramped houses all on top of each other. For lunch, we sat a colmado and talked to the woman working there who was really friendly. We got to talking and she said she didn’t like the current administration nor does she like movies with a lot of white Americans, only black Americans like Will Smith. Both she and the guy who was sitting at the counter said that the other black girls and I looked Dominican. This guy, named Luis, became our friend for the day. He came back to the beach with us, bought us rum, and showed us how to get back. We’re thinking about going back to Juan Dolio this weekend.

I already have a favorite bar that I found during the first week, and that bar had Brazilian Night on Saturday. I ran into one of the bartenders at Baskin Robbins and he told me about it. A local capoeira group performed, the DJ played lots of really cool Brazilian music, and they served caiprinhas in assorted flavors. Passion fruit was the best.

On Sunday, the program took us to see a play called “Nuestra Señora de los Nubes”. I couldn’t really tell you what it was about, but from talking to students who weren’t as confused as I was, it’s about the immigrant experience? I’m not sure that that’s completely right, though. The play is framed in a “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” sort of way, where the characters are sort of floating outside of time and space but have a relationship to actual events. Or, I guess you could compare it to “Waiting for Godot”. Either way, inside this framework there were a lot of vignettes that I couldn’t really string together, but it was clear that they all have some greater meaning that have something to do with the human condition. Heady stuff.

Then we bought beer and sat on the Malecon (the seawall) near a strip club called Baby Dolls.