funny things

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

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

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

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?

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

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

More photos from the weekend.

Puerta Plata Weekend

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

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

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

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!!!

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

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?