Life in the DR

Headin' Up Rainier - 2008

2008-06-29T21:35:00.000-07:00

Mt. Rainier 2008 - ridin'

2008-06-29T13:04:00.000-07:00

This past week my friend Noam (from Ballard HS) and I headed up for our annual summer Mt. Rainier climb/board excursion and this one was a doosey. Up and rolling by 6:15 a.m., our boots hit the trail by 9:45; we had perfect sunny weather all day and fast plentiful snow on the way down (firm base with a couple inches of corn snow on top). A giant avalanche let loose on the Nisqually Glacier about 200 yards from us as we were going up and even though we were in no danger, it always rams your stomach into your throat when you hear the loud "woomph"! The ratio of 4 hours of climbing for 25 minutes of cruising suits me just fine...

Mt. Rainier 2008

2008-06-29T12:54:00.000-07:00

The Day Junot Came to Town

2008-05-06T12:51:00.000-07:00

It's not everyday that we get to hang out with a Pulitzer Prize-winning author for a day. Mr. Diaz gave two readings and facilitated two creative writing sessions with upperclassmen; during both he was thought-provoking and hilarious. If you have not yet picked up The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao or his first book, Drown, do so immediately. He was gracious enough to sign endless autographs and pose for that one last picture - we were even able to get most our men's book/scotch club together for a foto with the author of one of this year's selections.

27 Waterfalls

2008-03-30T05:00:00.000-07:00

Mike and Steve came down from Seattle for Spring Break and I knew this would be a good chance to finally do the 27 Waterfalls excursion. Just south of the town of Imbert, about 45 minutes from Cabarete, lies a giant Brugal rum sign which marks the inconspicuous entrance. Dropping off the freeway onto a dirt road that runs through a sugar cane field, you drive for a few minutes before reaching a very nice and reportedly very new reception area, guide cabin, restaurant, giftshop, etc. -- profoundly more than the ticket shack that existed just a year ago. After securing a guide and deciding on the full 27 waterfalls option, the three of us set off for a 3hour tour up a series of waterfalls and pools stretching appoximately 4km up into the hills. The path crisscrosses confusingly through dense forest, streams, and waterfalls and would be nearly impossible to navigate without a guide. Each of the guides does only one trek per day - ours was great and his gutsy six-year-old son joined us for the fun, adding that element of "well, if a six-year-old just did it..." The largest drop was perhaps 35 or 40 feet, a bit farther (and obviously into shallower water) than usual because of the lack of significant rainfall over the past few months. Ailing, being preggers and not able to join us, advised from her first time at the waterfalls a year ago that we should arrive early in the morning and be the first ones up and down. We did so and didn't see another soul until we were almost all the way down and started running running into the large groups of 20+ people coming from Cabarete as part of the Iguana Mama Adventure Tours. Being there early insured that we were able to do the jumps as many times as we wanted and the guide was able to take his time explaining the flora and fauna to us. I can now share the sentiment with the others I have met who have exclaimed, "27 Waterfalls one of the coolest things you can do in DR."

Family Foto

2008-02-18T11:45:00.000-08:00

Ever since Built to Spill's first album came out back in the early 90's (see below), I always wanted to do a dorky "family" photo. Here are the results. The "daughters" in the back row are our friends Tina, Amanda, and Noreen, each of whom is trying to portray a child in a certain family birth order and Ailing and I are being the proud Dominican parents. This was actually meant to be a Christmas card photo but given the mail service here in the DR, you can imagine how far they got...

Baby Richaccia

2008-02-14T11:02:00.000-08:00

Niño o niña? You be the judge; we're just gonna wait 'til July and find out. 19.5 weeks along and counting. All systems go and measurements within normal limits - it's like flying to the moon... ;)

36 - you just gotta make it look good

2008-02-12T17:11:00.000-08:00

My good friend Stacy (looking short in the first foto) and I have b-days two days apart, so we decided to celebrate 'em together. After a fine Italian meal at Il Capo, we headed over to the famous Embajador casino (where some scenes in The Godfather II were filmed) for some gambling. Roulette was a no go for but blackjack treated me just fine.

10K - Hot and Sunny "Winter" Running

2008-02-12T13:14:00.000-08:00

I pulled off my second timed 10k in around 52 minutes, 10 minutes less than my last one. Now if I can just shave off about 7 more minutes, I might actually beat that ba$tard Jeff Dungan (pictured with the donut).

SUPER SUNDAY FLAG FOOTBALL

2008-02-09T04:30:00.000-08:00

Every Super Bowl Sunday at CMS is initiated by an early afternoon flag football game followed by a nice trip to Colmado Los Muchachos for some ice cold Presidente'. This year, the good guys in red won and I even pulled down two fairly sweet catches for touchdowns to earn MVP honors (truthfully, my friend Tasha (with the seattle u shirt on) deserved it for her stellar running and catching). Then, the Giants beat the Pats and all was right with the universe.

euro vaca 2

2008-02-09T03:45:00.001-08:00

A few more fotos from the Europe. Most of these were taken on short day trips from where Ali and Paul live in the southern Netherlands: a trip to Maastricht and their great Christmas market and then over to Belgian city called Liege which is sort of akin to Glasgow - very industrial, but with an exciting downtown. Liege had loudspeakers set up all over the city center which blasted strange things in French; it was like having an afternoon story teller from on high. The narrator caused the Sunday pub denizens to periodically raise their glasses and say or sing phrases at the top of their lungs in unison - it was surreal. By looking at the last foto I am sure you are wondering... ok, we were tempted but didn't actually eat at "Hamburger Restaurant"!

Euro vaca with ali and paul - Berlin

2008-02-09T03:16:00.000-08:00

All fotos are from our first ever trip to Berlin. After a long, long trip from the DR (Santo Domingo -- NYC -- London -- Amsterdam by plane and then Amsterdam -- Landgraff by train - Ailing had already been there for a week after doing Thanksgiving in Denver) we all caught about 5 hours of sleep and then hit the road for Berlin. What should have taken 5.5 or 6 hours from Paul and Ali's place in Landgraf in the south Netherlands took more like 10 because of traffic (needless to say, I was mighty sick of travelling at that point). We rented an apartment for three days, braved the bitter cold, ate copious amounts of brats and pomme fritz, and fell in love with the place.

fotos from DR - Tropical Storm Noel

2007-11-02T04:43:00.000-07:00

The rains raged for 5 days straight and as you can clearly see from the photos, have devastated many parts of the country, particularly on the southern coast. The storm was projected originally to miss the DR and only hit Haiti and then turned unexpectedly; all government agencies were basically caught off guard.

Murder Mystery Party

2007-10-23T03:06:00.000-07:00

Now... the new librarian

2007-10-22T13:57:00.001-07:00

Well, it has certainly been a big shift to go from English teacher to librarian, but here I am doing two very important things for our facility that I have recently mastered: 1) providing a positive expression of library enthusiasm, and 2) modeling reading behind a relevant backdrop of pop-culture iconography (this was actually part of a joke between another teacher and myself). We are in the middle of a big "celebrity reader" poster project and had teachers from all three schools (elementary, middle, and high) pose with books that we will then be hanging all over the school in an effort to promote reading (kids here are NOT generally readers).
More updates from la biblioteca soon!

book recommendation

2007-05-12T07:28:00.000-07:00

Fans of Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius + You Shall Know Our Velocity) and/or readers who are looking for an inventive and powerful book should get ahold of a copy of What is the What which tells the story of Valentino Achak Deng, a member of the thousands-strong Sundanese Lost Boy diaspora. Eggers interviewed Deng and tranformed the interviews into a first person "autobiographical" account even though the book is billed as a novel. Eggers and Deng admit that certain aspects of the story have been reorganized and some moments amended for the sake of cohesion, but it is for the most part a very accurate account of Deng's 15 year survival of the Sudanese civil war by eventually travelling to Ethiopia and then to the U.S. in 2001. As moving a read as the book is, I was equally stunned to find out the following: "All of the proceeds from What Is the What will go to aiding the Sudanese in America and Sudan. Created and overseen by Valentino, the Foundation's first aim will be the rebuilding of his hometown of Marial Bai, in southern Sudan. Every purchase of the book constitutes a donation to The VAD Foundation." In addition to the altruistic task of starting several teen writing centers around the U.S. using proceeds from his first two books, it's so impressive to see an author take his work to the next level to actually improve the state of the world around him - Eggers is quite a guy.
You can read more at:
http://www.valentinoachakdeng.com/
http://store.mcsweeneys.net/index.cfm/fuseaction/catalog.detail/object_id/B769DBC1-5B6F-4EBC-83FF-777C21AF0F0B/WhatIstheWhat.cfm

El Limon Waterfall

2007-04-23T08:45:00.000-07:00

20 minutes east of Las Terrenas on the Samana Peninsula lies the little town of El Limon that we were told offers access to a beautiful waterfall, and after three days in our overly sedate beach environs, the time has come for some adventure. "Some dudes on motorcycles will just see you coming and will guide you to where the horses are," rings in my ears as the guy on a white bike makes eye contact with me and asks "El Limon?" to which I nod. We follow him to the south and soon we are pulling onto a steep, narrow road, rolling past a number a little farms with more chickens than seem plausible. We then see groups of horses that are being draped in plastic sheeting as an afternoon cloudburst opens up. We are ushered into a parking spot just past the horses and the guide group's leader just nods at me and says "diez minutos, no problema." Sure enough, 9 minutes later, the rain stops and we are negotiating a price for our crew. Each person is assigned a horse and a guide (ranging in age from 14-67) and then the clip clop of trotting is all we hear. The trail is rocky, uneven, and so steep at in sections that one of the horses in our group falls to all four knees but the guides assist it in standing and is thankfully uninjured. We stop about 1/4 mile from the waterfall and we finally catch a glimpse of it and understand what the recommendations were all about: rather than a more or less "solid" stream of water pouring off a cliff, this is broken up into a hundred fingers that trickle over the moss and jutting rocks. We leave the horses and with the help of the guides and a shakey handrail, we make it down the last few feet of the slick trail to the base of the fall where many visitors are taking a swim in the spill pool. I join in and am treated to an amazing sight while floating on my back of gallons of water falling from 60 feet above me. You can also swim behind the fall and duck into a little cave and enjoy the sound of all that water coming down. The nag of responsibility tugs at me as I remember the evening's scheduled fish fry and our as yet unbegun contribution to it, and realize it time to head back. After we clamber back up to the horse post, we see that our mounts are rested and fed and we let them confidently return us to the car.

The Moca Route

2007-04-19T07:10:00.000-07:00

We've been using a new route to get to the north shore of the island which runs up and over a windy mountain pass through a town called Moca and allows one to be privy to a host of Dominican sights and sounds rarely seen in most other spots. Our first time taking it was on the way home from another sun and surf soaked weekend in the party town of Cabarete. Driving up two days before, we took the typical route through Santiago which produced, as it always does, a series of SNAFU turns that get you so far encsconsed in the belly of the town that you may as well rent an apartment and live there for a month or two. We knew that we couldn't handle another pass through Santiago on the way home so got good directions to go through Moca. As you leave Cabarete, you can see the green mountain whose pass you will be ascending just to the south of you and you wonder if your little car and its 1/2 cylinder can handle it. Los Brasos (the arms) is the first town drivers pass through and we promise ourselves to come stay at some point at the rumored-to-be amazing Blue Moon resort to be treated to a 6 course Indian feast. As we climbed in elevation, it was quickly obvious to us that we were in for a beautiful drive; the challenge with mountain driving, though, is of course to take in the strange and beautiful scenery while making sure you don't go careening off the edge of a cliff in mid-gawk and this is doubly true of The Moca Route as travellers must also contend with myriad road hazards - both moving and stationary - that suprise you faster than a springtime Seattle sunbreak. One of our favorite sights (and one that is often tough to catch on film because I usually feel like a putz taking peoples' pictures without their permission, and because we are in a moving vehicle, besides) is the bee hive of rollers on Dominican womens' heads. These heads of colorful rollers are ubiquitous on the Moca route and it seems to be the activity of the day for nearly all women, young or old. The men seem to be much more inclined to race their motorcycles or scooters at insanely high speeds up and down the narrow highway, often positioning themselves in "super man" pose with their stomachs on the seat and legs sticking straight out over the back tire - it's crazy to watch. The route takes drivers through dozens of blink-of-an-eye villages, each hosting a few domino games, colmados blasting enough bass to rip your face off, and a few dozen dogs - all female - with painfully swollen teets. Before we knew it, we had crested the pass; the valley spread out wide and yawning before us, its lushness breathtaking. A few minutes of brake-testing decline and we have reached the bottom of the hill and are on the Duarte heading for home.

Bahia de las Aguilas photos

2007-02-02T06:23:00.000-08:00

Bahia de las Aguilas, aka heaven on earth

2007-02-01T03:42:00.000-08:00

We spent three glorious days this past weekend at Bahia de las Aguilas (Bay of the Eagles) in the arid southwest region of the island very near the Haitian border (it seems like I have also spent about three days trying to get the photos on this blog in the right order which is a task I have now given up on!). 4x4's are required to get in the camping area and the hill climbing definitely demands all your rig can give, but this assumes that you can even find your way there in the first place. Dominican sign-making is something that leaves me and the rest of the newbies a bit non-plussed, so thank gawd we had knowledgable drivers to get us there safely. The entire area of Bahia de las Aguilas has been now sold twice, initially to a French consortium whose deal fell through and recently to some other group pushing for development. It is easy to say that any development of the area would be an irreversable travesty (and I am sure that any eco-friendly promises would quickly be forgotten), but after seeing the abject poverty in the towns nearby it does make you wonder how the people might benefit from such a move. The first thing we noticed upon arrival is that the wind drums up impressive force as the heat of the day goes up, but with the first hints of evening, the wind softens quickly. Indeed, we found that the evenings and nights are perfectly tranquilo. Tranquilo is a fitting Spanish word for the experience of being in a place like Bahia de las Aguilas as it means calm, tranquil, or "chill" as my friend George translates it. You can see from the photos that the sunsets are glorious and even inspired my friend David to dust off his sense of awe. We discovered what is easily the best snorkeling so far in DR and the water felt perfect just about any time of day. The intrepid Paul Keene even began each day with a "reverse evolutionary crawl" from tent to water at about 7:30 a.m. and never once shivered from the temperature.

Getting home was much harder than getting there as we ran into a massive traffic jam that was created by some angsty men in a cliffside town (see 2nd and 3rd photos in the top post above) whose name we never did get; ostensibly, they moved all sorts of detrititus (flaming and non) onto the road to get attention from the press about their quality of life -- specifically and, for me, ironically because they have not had running water in 8 years. This sad fact that we learned a few days later is ironic because I am currently reading a nonfiction book Water by Marq de Villiers which discusses many spots around the world which are on the precipice of violence because of water shortages; the DR wasn't mentioned in the book, but I'm sure it would be apt for the context. My buddy Ian and I along with a few other hearty drivers who really needed to get moving learned that angry Dominican mobs don't necessary take kindly to people moving their well-placed detritus (especially gringos), so we backed off and just waited for the proper authorities to arrive to take care of things. It really made me wonder what happened 8 years ago that would have changed their water situation so dramatically and how very poor people who live in the middle of Dominican nowhere have any sort of contact with the government to appeal for improvements. The situation finally ended after a very toasty hour of trying to find shade and we got on our way, but with end-of-weekend traffic the total drive back was about 8 hours --that's a lot for island driving!

This whole week since coming back I have been reminding myself of the Bahia de las Aguilas sunset+deep breathing=tranquilo formula which helps solidify my dedication to go back again next year.

Palabra.

politics 1.2

2007-02-01T03:36:00.000-08:00

Oh Oh Oh, did I call it or what! Al Franken announced yesterday that he will be running for the Minnesota Senate in '08 -- great news.

politics

2007-01-15T09:13:00.000-08:00

Read a great article by Al Franken about the media coverage in Iraq. Franken deftly illustrates that the backlash against the supposedly "negative" reports about Iraq in the mainstream media is unjustified and how realistic appraisals of the situation do not diminish the micro-stories of positive growth and progress made by our troops currently on the ground. The more I hear about/from Franken the more impressed I am -hopefully there is some possibility of him running for office one day and he can show that a background in comedy is really quite perfect training for a future in politics (certainly better training than acting)! How about this: Al Franken/John Stewart in '08!

http://www.startribune.com/562/story/905313.html

funny things

2006-12-13T04:57:00.000-08:00

Saludos.
Many people have been emailing me questions about some of the finer details about life here in the DR. Jim from Sioux City, Iowa, wants to know whether or not people eat plantains the same way they eat regular bananas. Debbie from Provo, Utah, is curious if we have ceiling fans AND air conditioning units in our classrooms. And finally, Viurnesh from Zagreb, Croatia, wants to know when I will be visiting beautiful Zagreb for their annual Kicking The Car festival. Well, in answer to these and the dozens of other questions I've gotten over the last few months from readers around the world, here is the blog entry for December written as an average weekday in Santo Domingo.

Rising at 6, I indulge in my daily breakfast of Bruggen fruit cereal purchased from the nearby La Cadena grocery store with some sliced banana on top (unless our lovely maid, Juana, made us Spanish tortilla that week to munch on). The air conditioned bus, driven by the ever-popular Demitrios, makes its rounds at both 6:40 and 6:50, and I usually opt for the 6:50, but sometimes, if I am in the mood for a little morning sweat stroll, I march down Ave. Enriquillo to Sarasota to the school and it takes only about 10 minutes. Upon passing the 10 or so security guards who always check all vehicles for bombs with their giant-sized dental mirror and the 10 or so maintainance workers sweeping the sidewalks, I pass into the hallowed halls of Carol Morgan School. The first thing I do after opening my classroom door is turn on the two overhead fans and then to the wall by my desk to switch the two air conditioning units on max. When the kids come in at 7:30, they will invariably tell me it's too cold in the room but I promptly insult them for being pampered and weak and tell them the cold will keep them far more alert for the day's lesson (they don't seem to pick up on the irony that even having air conditioning is pampering). (FYI, my two AP Language and Composition classes have about 12 students each and my English 11 classes are closer to 20.) I will likely have to ask students to stop speaking Spanish a couple of times during each class period, which they decend into when they are either wanting to talk to one another about their social lives or get stymied when trying to express their ideas related to class in English; this has been such a problem that the school has signs posted all around which instruct students to speak "English First." Depending on where we are in the unique "5 period per day out of 7 period tumbling schedule", I might get the chance to see my amazingly deft principal teach his S.A.T. prep class that he chose to do in order to "keep [his] sanity." How refreshing to see an administrator do whatever he can to keep a legitimate connection to actual teaching.

The CMS cafeteria serves up food for three lunches per day, one for each school (elementary through high), so by the time it our turn, most of the food is picked over. Dominicans have a thing for fried food and grease so there is never any shortage of anything that will piss off your cardiologist. Not cheap for either a cafeteria or the Dominican, the food usually rings up to something around $3.50 or $4, and if you want a salad, keep dreaming. The school day ends at 2:15 and then kids who need extra help will come in for a half hour of Enrichment. When I leave school, the temperature is around 80 degrees which is just about right to head to the Hotel Fiesta for a dip. A good choice for dinner would be Zona Fria which is owned by a Taiwanese couple and they make light and healthy asianish food (though we still debate exactly what some of the menu items are and what their "background" is); a dinner there usually sets us back about 6 dollars for two people. Another good possibility might be the local chain favorite Adrian Tropical which serves great Mangu (mashed plantains), Mafongo, and Sancocho.

If I am lucky, I will at some point in the day have a chance to use my newly learned Dominican facial expressions taught to me by friend George (see photos above). The first is the proper way to indicate that you mean that thing over there. The second is a way of indicating to whom you are speaking that you want more information. George is seen here performing a special version of the maneuver that he strangley only reveals at gringo parties and therefore is probably an expression that means something like "kick my white American ass, please" -- I'm glad he taught us all that!

When it is all said and done, I will likely have seen about 50 or so hired security guards throughout my day around the city, all of whom carry shotguns -- the DR LOVES guns in a way that would make Charleston Heston wet himself.

Well, hopefully everyone has a jolly holiday season and these blogs will continue back up in January after I freeze my arse off for two weeks in the snowy land of Idaho. And, Viurnesh, I am not sure when or if I will make it to Zagreb, but I will be sure to kick a few random cars just to imagine how much fun that festival of yours must be.

Feliz Navidad y prospero ano!

The Secret Garden

2006-11-11T08:08:00.000-08:00

Our trusty Skoda (pronounced Sszzchhkoda) Felicia transported us safely to the north coast to chill out at the transcendent Secret Garden resort which is owned by two lovely Hungarians. An absolutely beautiful and nearly deserted beach was only about 100 meters from the place, and we made good use of it. The first day we were there was cloudless and hot with mellow surf good for boogie boarding and body surfing; the next two days, however, brought in a few ominous clouds, nightly rain storms, and some very fierce surf. We body surfed throughout the days just to see what our scrawny selves could withstand and it turned out to not be much. My favorite sight was the formation of wave pinnacles from two colliding ways going in almost opposite directions. The pinnacles were about two or three feet higher than the normal waves which were already five or so feet tall and just flat out crushed you everytime they formed - great fun.

Getting a good night's sleep was a tall order since the electricity from the Secret Garden's solar panels routinely dies out at around 1 am bringing the ceiling fans to a dramatic halt. As the midnight sweat begins to pool on your neck, the bionic Dominican crickets that are squatting just outside the window sense it is the right time to begin their hours-long orgiastic emissions. Combine that with a nasty, lingering cough from Dominican strep throat and you have yourself a night from hell. Thankfully, the incredible homemade $7 Hungarian breakfast took some of the sting off of what would have otherwise been a morning defined soley by insomnia-induced ugly man mood.

Down the road a few miles from The Secret Garden is the town of Cabarete that we had heard so much about. Cabarete feels like a slightly burned-out California surfer town, but has a kinetic night life and some great restaurants and also has the hilariously named Sports Bar Jose O'Shay's where everyone can make up their best possible jokes pertaining to Spanish and Irish stereotypes.

We will definately make it back up to the Secret Garden soon.

Halloween Dominican Style

2006-10-29T08:17:00.000-08:00

Even though Halloween registers barely more than a blip on most Dominicans' holiday radar screens, my colleague Daryl and his wife Virginia host an annual Halloween bash in their beautiful top floor apartment near the U.S. Embassy. Four of us came up with a plan to be Mexican wrestlers and spent some hard-earned cash buying beautiful fabric to create costumes of which Nacho Libre would be jealous. Every half hour or so at the party, we would initiate a match (and thus becomming "those people" that everyone must watch out for at parties) and wrestle one another or innocent by-standers to the ground using a particular specialized move that matched our names: Atomic Pedro, Hombre Handler, Senor Smash, and Lethal Labios. Everyone was reminded once again not to let Mark on the dancefloor with a beverage as my butterfingers just can't hang on to anything while trying out new Merengue moves (especially in costume, for gawdsakes). Unfortunately, my friend Lissa took a nasty fall to the elbow before a towel arrived to swab up the mess. Those revelers who remained at the party to the end were treated to a huge steaming bowl of delicious Dominican soup called Sancocho that put each of us to bed happy.

Ghoul Bowl

2006-10-29T08:02:00.000-08:00

CMS held its annual "Ghoul Bowl" ultimate frisbee round robin tournament yesterday, and my very own team 'Stache pulled out an amazing comeback when we were down 6 to 1 in the final round in order to secure a first place finish. Almost all members of the team sported a special 'stache inspired by famous moustaches of the last century and had t-shirts to match (Gallagher, Ernest Hemingway, Frida Kahlo, Salvador Dali, Ron Jeremy, Tom Selleck, etc.); undoubtedly, these 'staches were the source of our power. Play was inspired and tough and as the tournament organizer said in the post-game news post on the offical tournament website, "It was the best disc ever played at CMS." Throughout the game, ominious lightning bolts and rumbling thunder threatened to make the Ghoul Bowl a mud bowl, but it held off so that the proper team could win the tournament without having to run with 6 pounds of Dominan mud clinging to each shoe.

It is hard not to think about the fact that if this sort of activity were taking place right now in Seattle, we would regard it as our season-ending hoorah and begin hunkering down for the winter wait -- not so here in the Dominican. In fact, this signifies that our season is now truly up and running and that all trades and labor negotiations are taken care of and teams are ready to get on with the business of playing hard for the next, oh, 7 months. And now that the humidity is just about within tolerable limits, we expect the level of play to increase dramatically.

Tuscan Village in the Dominican Republic?

2006-10-08T18:32:00.000-07:00

Today we drove a couple of hours east of Santo Domingo on Highway 3 and tooled around an interesting place known as Altos de Chavon which is a kitchy 17th century, Tuscan-styled village that a guy built for his daughter many years ago (http://www.altosdechavon.com/fs_village.htm). Altos de Chavon borders the largest all-inclusive resort on the island known as Casa de Campo and serves as its "high culture" alternative to body shots and golf. All the limestone that was used for the faux-Tuscan village project was imported, and the location, at least when it was built, was in the middle of nowhere, so the logistics and cost must have been a monumental challenge. For lunch, we had some wonderful pizza pie and enjoyed the stunning view of the Rio Chavon while a feral cat tried to attack Salvador (and it may have been just flirting, who knows?). Ailing and I missed our 15 minutes of fame by about, well, 15 minutes, as we were approached by a French documentarian who was working for the Discovery Channel to make a show about Altos de Chavon. She was going to buy us lunch and interview us, but the bill was just being delivered and her camerman declared that the clouds were creating imperfect light. We tried to convince her that our inner radiance would correct any lighting problems, but her Gallic reasoning won out.

We then drove down to a former fishing village called Bayahibe and got to experience the local vs. gringo beach division (see last foto). For the hour we were relaxing on the tiny, crowded beach, there was one white guy hanging out on the loooong stretch on the other side of the rope. As with much of the island, the weathly resort developers leave a little strip of the land for the Dominicans to enjoy and rent the rest out at nightly rates to the tourists -- ahhh, what an industry! Technically, it is illegal to "ban" anyone from a stretch of Dominican beach but given that the resort security guards wield very tough-looking shotguns, I doubt the casual beach-going local is going to raise much of a fuss.

Living in My Own Sweet Sweat

2006-09-28T14:11:00.000-07:00

For the past week, the city of Santo Domingo and the Carol Morgan School have been having major power issues that have made life here, if nothing else, very, very moist! (http://www.luxner.com/cgi-bin/view_article.cgi?articleID=1463) Most people who have been here a few years think it is the hottest right now since they can remember: to wit, the humidity is constant and thick, the sun is large and oppressive, and people are generally beginning to unravel -- especially those of the student variety. Normally, we have two functioning ceiling fans and two functioning air conditioning units per classroom. These days, the AC units are out almost daily and the fans seem to make little difference as does opening the windows. The kids appear to be melting into their desks and it is definitely a challenge to keep their attention (good thing I am extremely funny and an excellent dancer (see Puerta Plata post below)). The ultimate frisbee crew still charges enthusiastically out to the field every Wednesday to perform their duty, but the injuries are mounting and the heat tolerance might be reaching a head. At the end of every play, those who are particularly susceptible to heat exhaustion or sunburn scurry like roaches to the nearest patch of shade -- pathetic gringos that we, I mean they, are. The one thing that has been my salvation in all of this heat is the sweet Dominican woman who brings me a huge glass of freshly squeezed iced juice (orange, pinapple, sometimes lemonade) for the astounding price of: 30 pesos a day (less than 1 dollar) - oh yes.

Another fun component of life at Carol Morgan School is the way that the power outages affect the technology that we rely on in our classrooms. You are using your overhead and the power goes out -- good luck and scramble quick to come up with alternative. You just spent 25 minutes working on a document or email and, hey, for the fifth time today, it's gone just like that. It makes for a lot of redo's. You learn to save often and breathe deeply.

In other news, Ailing's middle school volleyballers just won their first game this afternoon. The 10 year-old scorekeepers may have helped our cause just a bit, but a win is always a win.

More Puerta Plata Pictures

2006-09-15T08:58:00.000-07:00

More photos from the weekend.

Puerta Plata Weekend

2006-09-12T03:22:00.001-07:00

It took about a month, but we finally drove up to the famed Silver Coast and stayed at the lovely Puerta Plata Village. As you can tell from the pictures, the ultimate frisbee was obviously as ultimate as you get and the evenings were quite exciting, too. You are unable to see me in the bottom picture, but when the owners of the resort saw me dancing in the disco the night before, they begged me to suit up and join the locals for some meregue in front of all the resort goers for the big Saturday night party. In other hot dancing news, there was a local guy at the disco on Friday night who enjoyed dry humping everyone's leg, including that of my friend Tim who selfishly "gave up the body" and went in to rescue his female colleagues who had had enough Dominican rubbing for one night. Tim is still not quite sure what happened.

School is going well, but is still an insane amount of work in spite of the small classes because of added responisibilities and the seemingly permanent state of adjustment. Tonight is our first open house night and the projected parent attendance for high school is about 30% (imagine 13-18 students per class and you get some idea...).

I have finally written a couple of poems in honor of our monthly Poetry Club Meeting (drinking endless PRESIDENTE at corner "grocery store" called a Colmado):

Circularity

Denizens of a foreign land
eaters of mangu and mophongo
waking every morning with sweat and thirst
to teach the upper class
the meaning of hard work
and academic toil in order to ensure
that they remain:
the upper class.

Dominican Beer Haiku
This green bottle is
my new never-ending joy
All hail: PRESIDENTE

Mark out.

The beach at Salinas

2006-09-08T03:18:00.000-07:00

We spent our first day snorkeling last Sunday at a place called Salinas, approximately 1 1/2 hours from Santo Domingo. The fans on the reefs were huge and purple and pretty neat to look at, but there were not, unfortunately, too many fish to spy. I got a sunburn :(
These are some of our friends: Tim, Stacy, Paul, and Janice.

Roof Parties on Kury V

2006-08-28T14:31:00.000-07:00

The apartment complex down my lovely avenue Enriquillo is called Kury V. Many nice and some crazy people live there. These wonderful residents have graciously hosted two roof parties that provided breath-taking views of the Carribean Sea and the bottoms of many, many grande Presidente bottles. I just met a teacher from Seattle named Betty who learned to speak Spanish at the Las Margaritas on the corner of Aurora and 145th, 4 blocks from my house -- she's my new buddy. Pictured above is a photo with my colleague Paul who was just teaching in Croatia and is very much what his t-shirt advertises, but we like him anyway.

BTW, Ailing and Salvador arrived safely last week, and one of them is rumored to be the new Carol Morgan middle school volleyball coach...

No Ernesto, but lots of scary thunder and rain

2006-08-27T14:00:00.000-07:00

The thunder has been ripping through the sky all day today adding an ominous tone to the start of school tomorrow...

Best of luck to all you teachers out there who are getting ready for day one!

Love,
Mark

made it!!!

2006-08-11T09:02:00.000-07:00

After 6 straight months of macro and micro cosmic preparation, I have finally arrived in one piece in the beautiful city of Santo Domingo. The national beer is Presidente and the locals pride themselves on serving it as close to frozen as possible and it is pretty tasty for a macrobrew. The new teachers are an interesting an diverse cast of characters, and I am currently ranked 13th smartest out of 14 but hope to move up once I rebuff any requests to dance in front of anyone in public. We had a massive thunderstorm this morning that shocked the hell out of Kitty and me at about 6:45 a.m. with two of the loudest claps I have EVER heard; I seriously thought a bomb went off across the street. The streets were flooded in a matter of minutes.
The apartment is nice and the air conditioner in the bedroom works now after a very sweaty first night of (pequeno) sleep.

Ailing is still preparing to leave and will be here on the 22nd with Salvador in tow.

More updates later.
mrk

Day before departure

2006-08-06T12:16:00.000-07:00

Renters signed the lease this morning; house is nearly empty and garage is swelling with our stuff; travelling with Kitty is proving to be increasingly complicated, but who else can I get to wake me up at 3 in the morning 2-3 times a week by jumping on my face?