The End is Near

This Friday I fly home to the states, landing in San Francisco just before midnight. It has been... quite a summer. This past weekend, a few friends and I went to Las Terrenas, Samaná for our last hurrah in the country before parting ways. All the sentimentality has left me feeling rather numb this week, although the minor cold I've developed may also have something to do with it :(. At some point I hope to write a longer summary of all that I've seen, done, and learned this summer, but I'm afraid I'm not quite in the right state of mind for it right now.

On the upside, I am very excited to head back home and then up to Berkeley, to see all the people I've been missing quite a bit. I'll probably have a few more postings before this blog goes dormant, but I figure I'll just take the opportunity now to thank everyone for reading. Trying to write anything worth reading is hard; hopefully I didn't bore anyone too severely ;)

Jarabacoa

(the view from the guest house we stayed in at a boarding school in Jarabacoa)

I am back from a very long weekend spent traveling, meeting new friends, hanging out, cooking, hiking, rappelling down waterfalls, jumping down waterfalls, wading down rivers, saying goodbye to some who have become old friends, and soaking in still more of the country that has been my home this summer before my abrupt departure next Friday.

After flying home late next Friday, I will spend Saturday packing and will drive up to Berkeley on Sunday to start class the following Wednesday! It is all happening too fast to be believed.

Last Thursday I made my way to Santo Domingo to spend the evening hanging out with fellow interns and staff members there, a couple of whom were leaving the next day. Notable among these was Maira, an amazing fellow intern of mine who was my close coworker here in the San Pedro office. Maira had been here for roughly a month before I arrived, and did so much to help me get settled when I first started working. This aside, Maira is simply an epitome of awesomeness. All of the interns, and I especially, were very sad to see her go.

Thursday night I slept on the floor of my coworkers who lives in Santo Domingo. On Friday, Anne and I went out and explored the Colonial District of the city. Gringos walking around that part of the city are ceaselessly accosted by Dominicans (mostly men) eager to sell us something, drive us somewhere, or give us a tour. In these situations, I find myself feeling a peculiar mix of righteous indignation and guilt. Indignation because “I just want to wander the city on my own accord, so leave me in peace!”, and guilt because, well, I’m a guest in their country, and they’re just doing their damndest to get by. It can be very frustrating sometimes; living in this country, you come to the realization that many people see your skin color and think “opporunity”.

Anyway, Anne and I wandered around, caught up on the going-ons of our respective stations, and lounged in very old, very air-conditioned churches (hmmm... are we really that interested in history? You decide ;). We eventually had to tear ourselves from the AC, as the church was closing and we had other friends to meet who were arriving in the city.

Because I am lazy, I am going to borrow from Anne’s blog a bit here:

“Prying ourselves from heavenly air conditioning, Jon and I joined up with two other interns and a girl (now old friend) who’s doing an independent research project in conjunction with Esperanza and her home university. We headed out to dinner at one of our favorite locales and then checked out a colmado that, in previous experience, had been quite the dance spot. The colmado was much tamer this night and we just ended up enjoying drinks and conversations. While we were chatting and relaxing, I looked over to the left and spotted the front sign of the university that Pedro Julio (my neighbor) attends; he’s taking night classes to obtain his degree in architecture. I gave him a call to see if he wanted to join, but, as it turns out, he was already at home. While that would have been an interesting mix of my two worlds here, it might be for the best that they remained separate.

We made plans to head back to the hotel and freshen up a bit before heading out for some dancing. Tess was definitely leading the pack in the let’s-go-have-fun venture. After we girls had tidied up, we went to fetch the boys. They were watching a movie and we decided to join them for a bit before officially hitting the dance floor. Ironically enough, Tess (our fearless leader) drifted off quickly followed by an apparently tired Anne (another strong supporter of dance adventure) and so we decided to postpone dancing until the next day.

...

The next morning, we checked out of La Res and, while walking to the bus stop, grabbed some fresh fruit for breakfast--I had piña y papaya! At the bus stop, we met up with another intern (David), his friend, and his sister to travel up to Jarabacoa where David attended high school. Staying in the guesthouse of the boarding school, we had access to warm water, bunk beds, and a full kitchen.”

OK, I’m back. The two other interns we were joined by were Tess, who Anne mentioned above, and Nate, an intern who I've traveled with almost every weekend and who I now count as a good friend. The independent researcher is Danielle, who has been doing research in Hato Mayor with Tess. She goes to Northeastern in Boston, and very quickly made herself a beloved member of the group. As an aside, David and his sister are both super-awesome. David is an intern I’ve become quite good friends with over the course of the summer and with whom I have quite a lot in common, despite the fact that the courses of our lives up to now could not have been more different. David goes to a super-small Christian college in Indiana (that he describes as “cultish”) and spent two years of his high school career living in Jarabacoa, as mentioned above. His sister, Emily, goes to Azusa Pacific in LA, and is tons of fun to hang out with. David and Emily have an enviably close sibling relationship, and seem to have a really good time with each other.

When we got in to Jarabacoa, we immediately shopped for groceries to make dinner that night. David is a wicked-good cook, and with help from the rest of us made a wonderful dinner of marinated chicken, vegetable curry, and cucumber salad. One of the things I’ve learned that group activities such as this are really a fantastic form of bonding and getting to know other people. Knowing this, I’m looking forward to having friends over and cooking more frequently during this upcoming school year in Berkeley. I’m really hoping to improve my cooking skillz.

On Saturday night, we went out to a dance club in Jarabacoa. At first they played a good amount of salsa and merengue, which I had a very good time dancing to, before they started playing endless loops of the same five or six annoying, repetetive Reggaeton songs (basically a Caribbean form of rap). Some of the Dominicans in the club took this music as an excuse to start dry humping in all kinds of interesting positions (there was one guy we nicknamed Crazy Sexual Dance Man).
(Emily and David in front, and the always awesome Nate Sooter in the back. On the way to dancing)

(Tess, Anne, and Danielle, at the ice cream shop before dancing. Anne's expression is classic)

The next day several of us went Canyoning. Canyoning involves wading and hiking down a river wearing a harness and, when the time comes, rappelling down waterfalls. It was scary at times, but still very safe (hi Mom!), and was one of the most fun things I’ve done here.

Sunday night was a much simpler dinner, cooking hot dogs over a wood fire and later making s’mores. Normally, I only want one s’more (a “s’no-more”), but this time I must have had about four, I think because we used these round cookie/cracker things that actually worked much better than graham crackers.

(Nate and I chopping wood with a machete)

The next day, Monday (we took a bit of an extra-long weekend), we traveled up to Imbert to do the legendary “27 Waterfalls”. This involved hiking down a river and jumping off of a bunch of waterfalls into pools below (we had to wear helmets and life jackets, so also quite safe, Mom). Some of the jumps were higher than anything I’d done before, and required a little bit of psyching up before leaping. It was another super fun day doing a incredibly unique activity.
(I'm fairly sure I was stretching here, not dancing)



Tuesday was a long day of travel back to Santo Domingo. Not wanting to go back to San Pedro quite yet, I hung out with David and Emily that day. Emily’s passport expired the day after she arrived, so we had to go to the consulate to see if she could get a new one. The walk from the Esperanza office to the consulate turned out to be much longer than expected, and soon after setting out it started pouring. By the time we got to the consulate, all three of us were soaked to the bone. Once there, an ornery woman informed us that Emily had to make an appointment online to get a new passport and the next available appointment was late September. That, clearly, would not work.

We spent that evening hanging out at the apartment where several of our coworkers live. For dinner, we had an excellent vegetable curry. David and his sister made caramel, which we then poured over oreos for a delicious, if somewhat hard to eat, desert. I slept on their floor that night and was back in San Pedro early Wednesday morning.

At Long Last...

...I am being hit on by hot Dominicanas. I was at a repayment meeting earlier today, and near the end of the meeting, one of the associates inquired with Alejandro, the loan officer I was with, about my relationship status. Alejandro, always eager to put me in awkward situations, quickly told her that I would be happy to be her boyfriend.

She then turned to me and (to paraphrase) said "he said you will be my boyfriend. Let me give you my number." A bit flustered, I replied that I didn't really think that would work out. "Why? Am I ugly?" was her reply.

"No, you're very pretty," I assured her. And she was. Very.

"Are you engaged?" she then asked me.

"No. I'm just leaving the country in two weeks!"

"I can wait!" she happily replied. "Alejandro has my number," indicating I should ask him if I want it.

And so it was. I guess I appreciated the compliment. The female Esperanza interns have to beat away local boys with a stick; generally speaking, no self-respecting Dominicano can hold his head up high to his buddies if he didn't at least try to hit on a rubia (literally means 'blonde', but is applied to pretty much any white woman) when the opportunity arises. But up until this morning, I hadn't noticed any similar interest from Dominican women directed towards gringos like me. In the interest of equity between genders, all I can say is: about damn time.

Caberete

I spent this past weekend with a bunch of the Fellows up in and around Caberete, on the DR's north coast. We had the immense privilege of staying in an apartment owned by one of Esperanza's major donors, a really sweet place right on the ocean. On Saturday several of us rented surfboards and tried to surf. I for one failed miserably; the waves broke so frequently that it was next to impossible for me to even paddle out far enough to catch waves. I basically just made myself really tired and inhaled a whole bunch of saltwater. Fun. It was still a really good time, though! We all went out and got pizza that night, and then enjoyed mojitos at a bar on Cabarete Beach.
On Saturday night, we went to a bar in Puerto Plata where there was a, ahem, John Mayer cover band playing. The house band that opened for them was really good, but the cover band that then played was, ummm, decidedly unremarkable. We all got really bored fairly quickly, and soon were ready to leave.
Still, only a minor disappointment in what was otherwise a very fun weekend.