Llego la hora

My flight leabes on Saturday at 5PM and I’ve already started crying a little bit.  Obviously I won’t have time to do full updates (I have a laundry list of things to do between now and then, one of which is watching the sunrise on Saturday morning) but watch the Twitter stream if you’re interested: http://twitter.com/desireeindr

I speak espanish, mas o menos

Last night, in my late night delirium (again, teachers piling on crap we could’ve done months ago), I was reading an article and it wasn’t until I got three sentences in that I realized it was in Spanish.  Oddly enough, it was an article about bachata.

Diaaaablo

It’s my last week and I’m frigging here, in my friend’s house, at 3:30 AM working on the stupidest Powerpoint presentation I’ve ever had to give in my life.  I’m beyond fed up with school at this point.  Don’t cram all this work into the last week and a half of class when you’ve barely assigned anything important in the last 4 months!  I’m trying to get everything done tonight/this morning so I can try to enjoy myself.  I know I haven’t posted much about school, but that’s because my classes are more or less irrelevant and dumb.  Ranting done.  Back to writing about the all the fun things you can do with oregano, mint, ginger, etc. (I shit you not; the assignment is “the linguistic expression of food customs”.)

‘¿Tú eres gay?’

Most of the friends I’ve made here are guys.  Dominican girls can be kind of unfriendly; even my host sister Ligia said the same thing.  My guy friends are so sweet, both to me and to each other.  It’s kind of surprising, though, because I knew coming here that I was coming into a super machista culture and living in a city where, according to my guide book, gay clubs are still shut down from time to time.

Mira la “Dancing Queen”!

Dominicans love ABBA. No one knows why, but I can’t say I blame them.

Enjoy!

“No te mire’ pa’bajo…”

That's one of the things I jumped off.

I hate that I’m always in arrears with the posting, but trust me, if I had Internet in my house, there would be a lots of fresh, late night posting. That’s what El Twitter Stream is for (look to the right).

Last week was Semana Santa, the week that everyone that can heads to the beach. Monday night, I took a bus to Puerto Plata, on the northern coast and rested up for my big adventure. At 8:00 the next day, I was on a bus on my way to 27 Charcos. 27 Charcos is a system of pools and waterfalls in the hills just outside Puerto Plata. It’s amazing; the water, though freezing cold, is the most beautiful blue, and so clear. At some parts, when you’re in the pools (charcos) you can float on your back with these rocks on both sides and see the sunlight filtered through the trees. All this communing with nature crap doesn’t mean I wasn’t scared out of my mind. The company that runs the tours through the Charcos asks you to put your life in the hands of a helmet, a life jacket, and two really strong guides. These men tell you where to put your feet and hands and pull you up–whoosh!–right out of the water to safety.

Me boy pa’lla…que vaina.

It’s April now, and I’m closing in on my Last Days of my program. I keep hearing the same old-man salseros my dad plays in his car. In a weird way, I think it’s a sign telling me to it’s time to go home but I’m not ready. I miss family, friends, Starbucks, reliable wireless Internet, but really all I wish I could do is transport the people I love here for a bit and then send them back til I start pining again. There’s so much I haven’t done, so many places I haven’t been, so much Spanish I don’t yet know how to speak. I know this program, these conditions that let me meet my rasta bartenders, the boys from el barrio, and everyone else are unique and that even if I come back next year for Spring Break—which I decided about three weeks into the program when I was sitting on a beach drinking rum and loving life—I’m worried it won’t be nearly as much fun or as powerful. Even on the days I get sick of Dominicans (no one in this damn country understands the concept of waiting in a line unless you’re at the bank) I know I’ll be back as soon as I can.

Santiago de los Caballeros y otros sitios

This week hasn’t been as productive as I would’ve liked, which is why I’m just now writing about last weekend’s adventure when I’m already trying to figure out what club I’m going to tomorrow night.

Batey Lecheria

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.

Babes in Gringoland

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.