Adios November

Time has been going really quickly the past few weeks here, I can’t believe it’s almost December!  I leave in a little over 2 weeks, which is really strange to think about.  This week is more or less my finals week, and I’m hoping to get everything done by Thursday, although Monday is when I have to turn in my last project, the infamous Independent Study, so realistically, it will be Monday.  I haven’t exactly decided what I’m going to do with my free time post-school, because all my original plans are a little cost-prohibitive.  I have spent a lot of time along the north coast and in the capital, so I was hoping to explore more of the country, but our trip to the south got canceled because of the cholera epidemic and there are some reimbursement issues, so we’ll see what actually happens. 

Things at my host family’s house are plugging along, although not ideal.  I haven’t seen my host mom for more than 15 minutes in a few weeks and things are a little tense because she and my host dad are in the middle of a divorce.  I probably interact the most with the woman who works in our house.  She lives with us (in, oh yes, the servants’ quarters) and sometimes sits with my while I eat dinner.  However, she has a super thick accent, so I generally only understand about 35% of what comes out of her mouth. Her favorite topics of conversation include her blood pressure meds, how she doesn’t like sleeping in the heat, and the quality of the mashed plantains of the day.

This weekend I went to a jazz festival in Cabarete, which was a good time, and last weekend I went to Santo Domingo, which was a really good time.  There, I ran in a 10K race along the coast, ate at a delicious Taiwanese Vegetarian restaurant, walked around the Zona Colonial, and went to a concert in a building with no roof!  The lens cap on my camera got stuck shut (problem solved now…AKA lens cap was removed with a Swiss army knife) so I don’t have many pictures, but it was a delightful affair. I’ve kept in touch with some of the people I met at the Greenlover’s camping trip awhile ago and they showed me around Santo Domingo and let me stay in their beach condo in Cabarete.  It’s been great to finally meet some Dominican friends…but let’s be honest, it was a long time coming!    

My program also had a Thanksgiving celebration this weekend, which included a potluck meal and a guitar performance that my friend Maria and I did.  It involved some panicked YouTube tutorials 2 hours before the dinner, but we managed a rough rendition of “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” and a pretty solid “Feliz Navidad.” It was strange to be away from home on a major holiday though, I definitely found myself missing homemade stuffing balls, sweet potato casserole and familiar faces more than I was expecting!

I’m mainly just trying to finish up on school right now though.  My sex education project is wrapping up, thankfully.  Last week I went to 3 high-school equivalents to administer my surveys, and it was a series of humbling experiences that left me incredibly happy to no longer be in high school.  But, moral of the story is that data has been collected although with a debatable level of reliability (I was really hoping to have some privacy for the students to fill out the surveys, but that was definitely not happening) and my suspicions that I look 15 have also been confirmed.  Tons of students kept approaching me and asking me if I was a new student.

“The Monument.” After Trujillo’s assassination it was abandoned and just reopened for visitors and tourists in 2004.  I think.  If you pay to go into the museum and climb up to some of the higher levels you are rewarded with a lovely view of the valley.   

Maria, my friend and guitar partner, performing her guitar song for the "Afternoon of Culture" show.  We also played a duet for the adoring crowd.

My friend Pablo in the midst of cooking our delicious eggplant lunch.

Getting some reading in while the eggplant cooks! 

Weather update: It’s been in the low 70’s in the mornings and evenings which has caused me to whip out my flannel and become extremely worried for the transition to Minnesota winter…yikesaroo.  This reminds me, mom, can you bring my winter coat to the airport?

  Also, here’s some Dominican text slang that I thought was funny: DTT.  It’s short for “dónde estás tu?” or “where are you?”  But the way they speak here, no one inverts the verb/subject in questions and they don’t pronounce “s” so it’s like “dónde tu ‘ta?”