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.