Capitaleña

Movin' Out

2009-03-27T14:58:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,
I got sick and tired of the way Blogger makes it difficult to format your blog. I'm moving the operations to what I hope will be a much better place: WordPress. Capitalena is now at http://desireeindr.wordpress.com. Blogger has a friendlier-looking Dashboard, but I hated how things started to look cluttered on my blog. Damn the people who wrote the horrible directions for making expandable posts on Blogger Help. At WordPress, things will be different. Yeah.

Check things out and tell me what you think. Thanks to the 9 1/2 people who take the time to read about my adventures.

Love,
Desiree

Batey Lecheria

2009-03-26T11:28:00.000-07:00

My class, Social and Ethnocultural Identity in the Contemporary Caribbean (there's a mouthful for you), takes field trips every so often. Yesterday, our teacher took us to a batey, which is basically a dumping ground for illegal Haitian immigrants to the Dominican Republic. During the height of the DR's reign as king of the sugar industry, tons of Haitians crossed the border to work on the sugar plantations cutting cane (a craptastic job). The price of sugar dropped and big sugar importers (i.e. the U.S.) took their business elsewhere and started using high fructose corn syrup to sweeten Coca-Cola and other tasty delights. The business left but the bateys stayed. Haitians and their children, who may or may not be of Dominican descent too, live in limbo; they have no papers, making them neither Dominican or Haitian, technically. No papers means no money.

Batey Lecheria is on the outskirts of Santo Domingo at the foot of beautiful mountains. During the sugar boom, other farmers jumped on the Haitian bandwagon and soon there were bateys on all types of farms and later in the cities. When we got there, we could see the smoke from a trash fire in the foothills. Bateys are the poorest areas you'll probably find in the Dominican Republic. Our van dropped us off on a 'street' looks like in those informercials you see late at night when that old guy holds up a starving/HIV-positive/worm-infested orphan, beginning you to send just a few dollars each month to give him food and medicine. From the window, we could see this old woman beating the living crap of a girl that couldn't have been more than 11 or 12 years old. There are little shacks made of tin in lots of different colors. There were chickens pecking in the dirt, trash piles burning in the streets and a strong stink.

We toured a Montessori school set up by an order of American nuns with the help of the Clinton Foundation. The school was the nicest place in the batey, which isn't very big. One of the teachers, named Luz, explained that while the school teaches the usual reading, writing and arithmetic, they also have to teach the children have to use a toilet and wash their hands, since they've never really had to do it before. The school works with children of all ages, but the older kids don't come until a bit later. We met the smaller children, who I think were only about 5 years old. They were so precious, and so excited when the blonder, whiter students from my program stooped down to say hello. The school also works to improve the health of the people living in the bateys. On the second floor, they have a doctor's office.

This girl from a small town in Connecticut signed up two years ago to work with this program. She was short and pale to the point of looking sickly and had a weird, high voice. Something was off about her. Her Spanish was crap, even though she said she majored in Spanish in college. She gave us a tour of the batey. She showed us these wood and tin buildings where families lived in single rooms. We passed a cheerful fat woman sitting in a rocking chair on the porch of a wooden shack. The girl knew a lot about the batey and it was nice to be able to ask her questions. She told us about how at night people from outside the batey come to sell drugs, how women in the batey sell drugs themselves, how the men do construction in an illegal sandmine and the women work in rich houses for a living, how sometimes mothers accept money from neighbors in exchange for sleeping with their daughters, how there's a lot of prostitution and teenage pregnancy and yet the clinic at the school only gives out condoms if you have a prescription--they're Catholics, after all--and how the people in the community are her friends.

On the ride back, we talked about how horrible all of this is and why the hell would the government pump hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars into building a metro line with maybe 6 stops while people are living in unbelievably bad conditions. It was weird, too, though to walk through as a group and peeking into houses. I felt like such an intruder. I can't believe our teacher asked us to bring cameras.

Babes in Gringoland

2009-03-24T08:05:00.001-07:00

Nick, The Boy, came to visit me with three of his/our friends from school and we all went to Bávaro and Punta Cana. That area, in the east of the country, has some of the most beautiful beaches in the Caribbean; Beyonce liked it so much, she bought a house somewhere out there. My time in Paradise was tainted a little bit by one of Bávaro's main tourist attractions. Saturday night was our first night there, and we rode around a bit until we found an outdoor bar called Steve's. It was the only interesting thing to do on a Saturday night in the Spring Break capital of the Dominican Republic, oddly enough. Steve's was an outdoor bar on a corner near one of the big all-inclusives. I got my Red Bull from the bar and looked at the clientele. White, late twenties to early thirties, sunburned. There was a cluster of 4 Dominican women behind me and it wasn't long before I realized they were all prostitutes. I took another look around and realized I was the only girl there with any hint of melanin that wasn't a prostitute and it made me so sad and so angry. There were all these Chad from Accounting types, guys pushing thirty that probably belonged to frats in college and were just starting to get the beer bellies to match, wearing flip flops and goofy t-shirts. I looked at the one to my left, drunkenly "dancing" with the fat prostitute in the yellow dress and white fishnets and thought, he's going to go home with her, and she'll probably be the first black woman he's ever slept with. I poked Nick and pointed out all the prostitutes. I don't know why I was surprised, though. We were in Gringolandia, a big tourist area, and prostitutes know that's where the money is. I don't think I'll ever get used to how common prostitution is and I can't help but notice how the women are generally my complexion and darker. It's insane to me, too, that people just fly all over the world looking for prostitutes. It's not as though we don't have them in the States; it's also not that hard to find someone to sleep with for free, though I guess getting her to do exactly what you want is the harder part.

Before finding Steve's, we'd passed what looked like a strip club with a lot of half-naked woman standing outside. My friend Luis dropped Nick and me off back home and Luis and the other two guys, Chris and Larry, circled back to where the strippers were. All the strippers were actually prostitutes. When they got back that night, Larry told us he'd wanted a lap dance, but not being able to speak Spanish, he pulled out some money. The stripper came up, grabbed 60USD and ran off. Poor Lar-bear. At least he has a story to tell.

La otra Dominicana

2009-03-11T08:12:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, my host sister Ligia, worked at the Primera Feria del Libro Usado (The First Used Book Fair) at Cinema Cafe. She was volunteering, selling books, and working with children. The Book Fair had music from local rock acts at night, too. On Sunday, I dragged a friend from the program to the Feria. A bunch of chi-chi boutiques set up booths outside the Cinema Cafe and a DJ played really cool house music. My friend and I found at that the books were gone by the time we'd gotten there but that we could go to the rock concert for the small fee of 200 pesos. I heard a remix of All This Love by Patti LaBelle, so I figured I'd stay. I met with some other friends and we said we'd shell out the money if we promised to make cool, alternative friends because that's who was there; rich kids with tattoos, piercings,and patterned Chuck Taylors. Girls with expensive purses hung on their boyfriends' tatted-up arms. Most of the crowd was fairly white-looking and a lot knew the lyrics to the songs from these supposedly small, local rock groups. The place is beautiful; it's like a shed built into a little patch of palm trees. It has couches with red cushions, candles, surfboards as decorations...my friend said if she saw a picture of this place, she'd swear she was back home in California.

I'm really lucky to find a kind of counterculture to Dominican culture. It's not all merengue and mangoes. I love my rasta bartender friends, the ska-playing guys from Cabarete. I love that I got into a carro public last week and the driver was playing Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Green Day, and that a couple days later a different driver played Lovin' You by Minnie Riperton and You're Gonna Miss My Loving by Lou Rawls. My Dominican experience has the staples, the Brugal, the Presidente, Aventura, etc. but it's been more diverse than I thought. It's when I have days like these, like at the Feria, that I love being here and can't see myself being ready to leave in May.

Grrr....

2009-03-09T16:51:00.000-07:00

Have homework, computer is crashing, real post coming by the end of this week.

El mes de la patria: Carnaval vegano

2009-02-28T12:11:00.000-08:00

<<<diablo cojüelo. that yellow thing he's holding? he whacks you with it and it hurts.

February is 'el mes de la patria'. The whole month is dedicated to celebrating the Dominican Republic's proud history and, if you happen to own a grocery store, getting people to buy more food for discounted prices. Because Independence Day is February 27th and Lent also begins in February, the Church found it convenient to steer the meaning of Carnaval away from its traditional association with Lent--days and days of debauchery before we start denying ourselves in the name of our Lord--to celebrating Independence. Heaven forbid revelry have anything to do with the Church.

La Vega, about an hour and a half outside of Santo Domingo, is where the most famous Carnaval celebrations happen each year, on every Sunday in February. La Vega's best known for its diablos cojüelos. Groups of people picked by committee dress in flashy, terrifying devil costumes beat the crap out of people. Last Sunday, I went on a tour with a friend's friends. For the small fee of 1,100 pesos (about USD35), we got a bus ride in a comfy coach, open bar on the bus, a quick dip in an ice cold river, lunch at a cute restaurant, a few hours in La Vega at Carnval, and a ride back. Even though we left the capital at about 8:30, they were playing loud reggaeton, and dancing and talking (shouting) in the aisle. Dominicans are nonstop. I was tipsy by 11 and mildly hungover by 2.

Carnval itself was fun but a little bit scary. The night before, one of the bartenders at our favorite spot said the diablos are more likely to hit you if you have a big butt. Actually, they target women, especially any woman who's scantily clad. Being as narrow as I am, I mostly escaped the wrath of the diablos, but one of my friends got hit really hard because she has thick hips. Never thought I'd be grateful for my small butt. Aside from the diablos, there were tons and tons of people, most of whom are drunk and dancing to the competing sound systems from the company tents.

We had to fight our way back through the crowd to get to the bus. I was absolutely exhausted and managed to sleep some of the way back, even though the kid sitting next to me was singing along to cheesy ballads. The people on the tour were all really cool though, and we've started hanging out with them.

'Ella no habla español muy bien.' (Coño, pt. 2)

2009-02-20T14:50:00.001-08:00

February is 'mes de la patria' in the Dominican Republic. The entire month is dedicated to celebrating the history of the country. Unbeknownst to me, yesterday was Dia de la bandera, or Flag Day. I'd had a meeting with the head of the organization I'm volunteering with, and 5 minutes from where I was supposed to be, traffic ground to a halt. I was sitting in a carro publico that was stuck behind a bus for about 15 minutes before the driver said, 'The Park is closed'. Parque Independencia is more or less where the Zona Colonial, the part of Santo Domingo that dates back to the 16th century, begins. Parque Independencia was beautiful in its prime, but now it's a pick-up place for prostitutes once it gets dark.

After going through the tiny side streets in the Zona, my driver dropped me off in the middle of El Conde, the main street and shopping district of the Zona Colonial. I arrived at the Parque after a few blocks, only to be stopped by a gathering of about a hundred people, middle school and high school students. A few vendors handed out flags and in the distance, I heard some sort of marching band. I stepped carefully down the ruined sidewalks to the otherside of the parade--in 4 inch heels, mind you--and then realized I wasn't quite sure where I needed to go. I asked a man in some sort of uniform that led me to believe he would know what the hell he was talking about. As soon as he realized I wasn't Dominican, he stopped listening. I said, very clearly, I thought, that I was looking for the street 16 de Agosto. He didn't seem to understand me, so I just handed him the address. He asked a fruit vendor next to him, and the woman began explaining to me where the street was and the officer jumped right in and said, 'Ella no habla español muy bien'. That is infuriating. No, I don't speak the best Spanish, but I sure as hell know enough to know that you're being rude in front of my face. I'm American but I'm not stupid. Just have some patience! This wasn't the first time that a Dominican decided to just write me off just because I speak Spanish with an accent (wow, it's weird to think of myself as having an accent). If I take a half a second to respond, it's not that I'm stupid, it's only that it takes me a bit to process what you've said. Also, Dominican men mumble like no one's business, so half the time I just haven't heard you.

Between the two officers and the fruit lady, it's decided that it would be best for the officer to lead the poor stupid girl to where she needs to go. The man took me in the very same direction I came from (back through the parade) until he stopped at another vendor to ask him where the address was. The vendor turned to me to explain at which point the officer again said, 'Ella no habla español muy bien'. I was so ready to tell him where to go but I decided it was best to keep my mouth shut. Imagine how I felt when he pointed me down the street, only to for me to find out that I was going in the right direction by myself and was originally only a block or so from where I needed to be. I was absolutely furious when I finally (finally!) arrived to the office, pouring sweat and out of breath. Once things got moving, I calmed down, but I still get mad when I think about it. I'm having one of those weeks where I'm sick of being a foreigner.

Links
Dia de la Bandera from a local newspaper (in Spanish, but can be translated)

Coño!

2009-02-17T15:37:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was not my day. I got up early to go to the library in the public university to get a book that's supposed to be on reserve for my class "Fundamentos de la historia social de la la Republica Domincana" (Fundamentals of social history of the Dominican Republic). When I woke up, I felt like I'd been hit by a bus. I haven't been sleeping well for the past few nights, and the bed in Dona Josefina's houses is kind of uncomfortable sometimes. So when I got to the university, I was dazed and not at all prepared to communicate effectively with native Spanish speakers. I found the library, which is so big, it's scary. There are two huge staircases on either side and there were tons of people milling around. I managed just enough Spanish to be told I need to go to the third floor to find the reserve desk. The book isn't there. All five copies were checked out. Lovely, as class started in just over an hour (I was a little behind schedule because we'd had a blackout and my back hurt too much for me to suffer through a cold shower).

In class, it turned out that nearly no one in the class had done the reading except the people who were presenting the material to us. Sadly, even our presenters weren't safe; the professor chewed them out for talking about the minutae of Carlos I's birth when there were more important historiographical issues at hand. You would think that this sort of thing would cut our 3-hour class really short but no, never that. We were told about the importance of taking responsibility for our education, the opportunity we were being given, and then a bunch of other stuff I both tuned out and couldn't understand.

I booked it out of the classroom when we were finally released because I had a headache and I was starving. The campus at this university, La UASD (pronounced laWAHS. The 'd' disappears), is a city in itself. There are street names and traffic and stray dogs, almost as if you were in a miniature Santo Domingo. I was lost inside the campus for a half hour.

I finally made it back to my house, only to find that the electricity had gone out again! The Dominican Republic has a huge problem with blackouts. This time, the water had also gone. I thought it wasn't a big deal because I was leaving to come to the program office to use the computer but no sooner do I start writing a cover letter for a summer internship do the lights go out again! They came back really quickly but the computers were gone for good. Christ.

Words:
Mierda! Se fue la luz!--Shit! The lights went out.

Old Home(sick) Week

2009-02-14T12:18:00.000-08:00

As much fun as I'm having, I've been really homesick this week. I guess it's about time, seeing as how I've been in Santo Domingo for about 6 weeks now. When I go out and hear salsa, I miss my dad. After getting a present from Julia and a birthday card from Natalie, I really realized that I have such great friends that are in this fabulous city. Without me. And of course, I miss The Boy, what with it being Valentine's Day (or Week, the way people are here). My host sister's boyfriend came and decked out her room with paper heart cutouts and balloons and flowers and heart-shaped candles and a sign that said, 'Te amo, bebe'. Oy.

So, just know that I'm thinking about all of you up there, freezing to death and doing comfortingly normal things, like buying kosher pigs in a blanket from Westside Market at 4 A.M. Miss you guys.

Spelunker extraordinaire

2009-02-11T15:37:00.000-08:00

Last weekend was sopping wet, which sucks when you're deep in the woods. The program took us to Cueva de las Maravillas (Cave of Marvels? Sounds less cheesy in Spanish), which is a cave turned museum that has lots of Taino cave drawings. And bats. And tarantulas, apparently. As weird as it sounds, the cave had great lighting; the parks organization turned about a third of the cave into a museum with nice, smooth paths. So much for hardcore spelunking.

The second stop on our trip let me get more in touch with my inner Jane of the Jungle (anyone remember that crappy video game? It was great). The bus took us to a hotel called Caño Hondo in Los Haitises, a huge national park in the eastern part of the country. The hotel is gorgeous. It's made of wood and stones and there are waterfalls all through the property. We put our things in our rooms and went into the woods for a guided hike. The guide somethings about the local flora and fauna that I´m sure was really interesting, but I can't remember any of it now. 3.7 kilometers and a million mud puddles later, and a cave (this time, without smooth paths), we got back to the hotel.

That night, we had a great dinner and danced a bit. I then stayed up until 5 A.M. talking to kids in the program. Feels like I never left school.

Saturday morning, the program directors dragged us out of bed at 8:00 for some whale watching. I'm all for seeing Shamu in his natural habit, but this was my worst whale watching experience ever. The boat was tiny--maybe 25 feet long, and even that, I think, is being generous. It was a delightfully overcast day and the waves were big. 30 minutes in, I got seasick. 10 minutes later I was laying on my side, covered by one of the ugly yellow raincoats the tour guides gave us. I felt nauseous and weak and dizzy and lightheaded; at one point, I actually thought I would pass out. The only thing to do was to make myself take a nap. I could hear everyone going, 'Oooo! Aahh! Whales!' but I could not lift my head from the seat. When I woke up, we'd docked my this beautiful restaurant, but for our first 20 minutes on dry land, I couldn't look at food. When I heard we would have to get back on the boat to get back to the hotel, I immediately started feeling seasick again.

Once on dry land for good, I took a nap. My group played a lovely game of musical chairs and 'baile de la escoba' (dance of the broom), where everyone has a dancing partner except one person, who has the broom. When the music stop, everyone has to run around and find a different partner so they won't get stuck with the broom. It was a lot of fun. I love how every now and then our program allows us to regress to the kiddie birthday party games. Baila de la escoba turned into a spontaneous dance party. I think I'm getting the hand of this merengue business. I'll report back once I go out again.

It rained all day Sunday, so I spent a few hours playing dominoes before we all boarded the bus back to Santo Domingo. Mind you, this is the same rain that had kept our clothes wet and smelly for the weekend.

Oops.

2009-02-11T15:07:00.000-08:00

I'm an idiot. People from Santo Domingo are called capitaleños, not capitalistas. Here's to fact checking.

Don't laugh.

Ay, cono

2009-02-10T15:29:00.000-08:00

Craptastic day yesterday. I had a hard time getting to my class in this huge university that's more like a city than a school, I got lost trying to get back to the program's office (how many guaguas and carro publicos does it take to go a mile?), it rained as soon as I got my hair done, and I closed the gate on my hand when I got home.

Fortunately, I have great friends back at school. Julia sent me a birthday present and Natalie sent me a birthday card. Thanks again, guys!

Lo ma' heavy en la musica latina

2009-02-02T19:32:00.000-08:00

I hear this song wherever I go, all the time, at least once a day and I absolutely love it. It's called Chambonea by Omega. I finally managed to get a hold of one of one of his CDs. Here's a crap YouTube video that at least lets you listen to the song. This is some sort of super extended version but it's OK. The more Omega, the better. He apparently performed in Santo Domingo last Friday, but no one knew where, which is surprising because he's so popular.

Disfrute!

Cabarete, pt. 2

2009-02-02T10:53:00.000-08:00

Because Cabarete is such a touristy area [there are lots of Germans that come; the menus at a lot of the restaurants are in English, Spanish and German], you see a lot of prostitutes. It breaks my heart. When we went to Sosua for the concert, the first band we heard wasn't that great, so we found a cute little bar. There were some women sitting at tables on the sidewalk and Natalie, one of the girls that I went with, said to me, "Most of these women are prostitutes". Sure enough, within 10 minutes, one of the women from outside was pumping this American tourist full of Presidente and inviting him to cop a feel. The bar was called Bar Las Flores. Shakespeare would've appreciated the irony. It's so sad how many prostitutes there are here; after 9:00, I can't walk down the street without tripping over one. Sex tourism is big in the Dominican Republic. It's weird to think that people travel to other countries just to have sex with prostitutes, and a lot of the customers look normal, like Bill in accounting, but there are also the sleazy fat old men. I saw an enormous American man walking down the beach in Sosua with three prostitutes, none of whom could've been older than I am, and they were all fighting for his attention like little kids. I could go on about the commodification of the non-white female body but it'd just be too depressing.

I'll be volunteering with an organization that both helps sex workers stay safe and trains them for other types of work.

iz mah birfday, pt. 2

2009-02-01T11:38:00.000-08:00

One of the biggest birthday highlights: my parents FedExed me a pound cake for my birthday! It got to me on my birthday, intact and smelling good. It tastes great, too [thanks, Ma!]. I only had one class, and everyone sang happy birthday to me, both the translated Spanish version, and the real Spanish/Dominican version. If I can find the lyrics, I'll post them because they're really sweet. They say something about you being a gift from God.

I had a less-than-great experience at a hairdresser, but I wanted my hair to look nice for the club. I'm starting to find that when people realize you're not a native speaker, they just turn off and stop listening. I'm sitting there trying to explain to this ridiculous woman that I don't want my hair to have a ton of volume and she just sucks her teeth and points to this other girl in the salon that speaks English, and the girl more or less says the same thing I said to them [in Spanish] using slightly different words.

I went home to my host family, and the sisters, Dona Josefina, and 4 other girls shared a chocolate cake and Coke with me. Dona Josefina's family always does biscocho y refresco [cake and soda, usually Coke]. I wanted to go to a club in the Zona Colonial, but we decided it'd be best to stop by Ladies' Night at Vamvu [pronounced Bamboo] House because 1) that's where everyone was and 2) we could get free drinks before heading out. It seemed like half the people from the program plus our friends from the colmado were there. I got a cigar as a present from one of the students. This week, there were other people in Vamvu House, including one very pushy, very small Dominican man. He danced really close and told me he liked morenas and not white girls and that I needed a Dominican boyfriend. Rachel talked the bartender into giving me free drinks for the night so I would stay. It was a great time. And yes, I remember everything that happened.

Word of the day:
borracha-drunk
Yo estaba bien borracha: I was really drunk.

iz mah birfday, i cud do wut i want

2009-01-29T15:43:00.000-08:00

Today I'm 21. Lots of clubs to go this weekend, maybe the beach, a little Dominican rap concert perhaps? I don't feel older, but maybe I will by next week. My host family bought me a small gift and a cake, which I really appreciate [haven't opened it yet, but when I do, I'll let you know what it is]. More thoughts later, and a real post about my weekend in Cabarete with Dominican rastas and such.

La semana pasada/Cabarete pt. 1

2009-01-27T12:32:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the delay:

Our rasta friends at our favorite bar told us a few weeks ago about DR´s first World Music Festival in between Cabarete and Sosua. We were like, yay, let´s go, this will be amazing. Not so much.

Cabarete and Sosua are in the north, about 4 hours outside of the capital. They're both really pretty towns, but very touristy. I went to Sosua with three other girls, and when we left, the weather was beautiful. About an hour into the bus ride, it starts to pour. We have to make our way up and around a bunch of mountains, and believe, that´s not fun in a bus that seems to stop every 45 minutes anyway. The whole thing took about 6 hours and at the end of it all, our hotel was crappy and damp. The only redeeming thing about the first night was our meeting up with some really cool guys who lived next door. Most of them are students in Santo Domingo and three of them are in a band together. They brought a lot of their CDs to pass out at the music festival. I got a copy and they're pretty good even though I'm not really into reggae and I hate ska.

The next morning, we moved, in the rain, of course, to a least scuzzy hotel. It was more of an apartment set up with a tiny stove and a mini fridge. We got 3 hours of good weather so we sat on the beach for a bit, but the rain chased us inside.

The music festival flew in a popular reggae band from California called Groundation and they were really good. They had a really solid groove, to the point where it's not music but more like ambient good feeling. And then it rained again, but of course Sunday was beautiful as we were leaving.

una vaina bien

2009-01-26T13:33:00.000-08:00

Friends Natasha & Kellie with Luis on the beach>>

I know some of you have seen the photos I posted on Facebook in the album 'Una vaina bien'. Una vaina bien is a expression that translates roughly to, "that's some good shit" [sorry, Ma]. I learned that last weekend when I went to the beach and met a guy named Luis who was really friendly and told us about the area and how he'll never date another Dominican girl and bought us Brugal. Una vaina bien.

Trabajo y diviertemento

2009-01-22T16:05:00.000-08:00

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.

Azucar

2009-01-20T15:23:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday [late, I know] our program took us to visit the ruins of a sugar mill from the seventeenth or eighteenth century. The ruins are actually gorgeous, even sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic had tons of slaves and were in general horrible. The slaves had to sleep in shifts because they needed slaves to turn huge wheels to extract the juice from the cane in the middle of the night. They slept in tiny rooms like this and were allowed to have sex but not marry:
This particular plantation had about 200 slaves and half of the land was devoted to growing the cane and the other half was for sugar production. Germany was one of the biggest importers of Dominican sugar.

More photos:

NB:The "official history" of the Dominican Republic denies the existence of slavery. This particular plantation is being restored based on what the Cuban plantations of the time looked like. So now, having the confront the fact that plantations mean slaves, they explain it as being paternalistic and good for the slaves and not necessarily that rigorous. They also say that the slaves were Taino Indians, which explains the, um, darkness of the population. A lot of this happened under Trujillo, who made it one of his big projects to bleach the population. He murdered Haitians and offered Jews who were victims of the Holocaust.

La ciudad

2009-01-19T11:48:00.000-08:00

New York is the city that never sleeps but Santo Domingo is the city that never shuts up. It´s incredibly loud, so loud that it's hard to sleep in. My house sits right on Avenida Independencia, one of the main avenues of the city so from 8 to about 9 the whole world is honking their horns outside my window. At night there's merengue and bachata coming from every where at once, and when the neighbors are screaming at the kids or the dog, I swear it's right in my room. I'm going to invest in a pair of earplugs.

El transporte

2009-01-12T10:51:00.000-08:00

Sorry I´ve been so bad about updating. It´s hard to get to a computer sometimes.

Public transportation in Santo Domingo is insane. It's sort of a nightmare, actually. On Saturday, we went over the finer points of the transit "system":

Carro pùblicos (conchos, carros): these are a lot like cabs, except they have specific routes and you're almost always sharing them with other people, most likely people who are sitting on top of you. More often than not, they're little cars from the 90s that are more or less falling apart. You pay 15 pesos to hop on and yell, "Dèjame!" when you reach the corner nearest where you want to go.

Guaguas (voladoras): another form of transportation that's falling apart and tries to carry way too many people at once. Guaguas like buses but more in the shape of those hideous VW buses from the 60s. They spout horrible black fumes and there's a guy hanging out of the door, called a cobrador who shouts the route number and tries to collect people from the sidewalk to ride, since there aren't really any formal stops. They cost the same amount as the carros pùblicos but the routes are longer so they're a little more convenient, if more smushed. Extra seats come out of nowhere, but you almost always end up sharing a seat with someone else.

Guagua OMSA: these are the buses that the government makes available. They're shiny and new and mostly air conditioned. I forget how much it costs.

Blog Name Change

2009-01-08T12:47:00.001-08:00

Capitalista: a person who lives in the capital (Santo Domingo)

Saludos!

2009-01-08T12:26:00.000-08:00

Finally, a computer. This is my third full day in Santo Domingo and I´m exhausted but having a lot of fun. It´s true what they say, that trying to live your life in a language other than your native language is really tiring for the first couple of weeks.

This first week is orientation so we´re doing lots of tours, which have been really interesting. The Dominican Republic has a really cool, rich history, not least because Santo Domingo is the oldest city in the New World. We took a tour of the Zona Colonial (on Tuesday=, where all the old government buildings and old church buildings are.

Tuesday I also moved in my host family and so far, so good yay! I´ve heard horror stories and I really lucked out. I live with Doña Josefina and her two daughters, Gabby, 18 and Ligia, 20. Doña Josefina is really, really nice and this morning she gave me a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice without any pulp which meant a lot to me because 1) making fresh juice is work and 2) I hate pulp and I didn´t even have to say anything! Both the daughters are really nice, but Ligia is the most friendly. She seems genuinely interested in me. She studies psychology and her sister studies interior design. They live in a cute neighborhood, next door to a tiny pharmacy.

On my first night with them, Ligia invited me to go to the movies with her friends and we saw Madagascar 2. Here, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are really big nights for the movies because it´s only 5 pesos for a ticket (Note: There are about 35 pesos to one American dollar).

More orientation things to do but please, email me!

Word/Fact of the Day
piropo: catcall. Very, very common in the Dominican Republic and they range from harmless and a little funny to really crude. Yesterday, I was walking home with Doña Josefina and a guy asked her if he could be her son so he could be close to me. I thought it was pretty funny.

Pre-departure: Almost there

2009-01-03T11:27:00.001-08:00

The day after tomorrow I'll be in Santo Domingo. Holy crap. Getting cold feet.

Still barely packed.

Pre-departure: FAQs

2008-12-28T21:29:00.000-08:00

I can't believe I'm leaving for the Dominican Republic in a week. My vacation has gone by too fast, my Spanish is too bad, and my bags are too unpacked. Before leaving, I thought I'd just post some quick FAQs about my trip:

Where'd you get the name for your blog?
'Mi Swing Es Tropical' is a song by Nickodemus. It was used it an iPod commercial a few years ago and I love the song. Here's the video:

Where are you going?
Santo Domingo.

Why the Dominican Republic?
I went to Spain with my parents and loved it, but everyone goes there for study abroad. I wanted to try something different. The fact that it's a Caribbean island doesn't hurt , either...

Where you will be staying?
I'll be assigned a host family that lives in the area. The program doesn't tell me who my host is until I get there.

Is this a program through your school?
No, my school doesn't have a program in Santo Domingo but the program is approved through my school, which pays for my tuition.

What kind of program is it?
It's a direct enrollment program. I'm just enrolling in the local university and taking classes.

So, are all your classes in Spanish?
See above.

What are you going to be doing?
I'll be taking classes in literature, history, and Caribbean studies. I'll probably do some public health volunteer work as well.

Are you and your boyfriend going to stay together while you're abroad?
I get this question a lot, though most of the people who ask don't have any business bringing that up. Yes, we're going to stay together. Thanks.

More coming soon.