Day 7

There is a rooster who lives close by to our house. He crows everyone morning at 2 or 3ish and continues at intervals of about 5 minutes until later in the morning. Last night, I heard him crow before I went to sleep. The cute cat who lives with us is a sneak. He hid himself in my room last night and since I sleep with the door shut he had no way of getting out. He is such an abnormal cat and his purr is very loud. He jumps on everything!

I woke up to eggs and potatoes for breakfast. The potatoes were gray and Caridad's neighbor told me that they were sweet potatoes. I read the paper while I ate and Caridad (host mom) talked on the phone. Juan was there for a brief second, throwing seductive looks my way as usual (no worries - he is just crazy and funny).

I had to pack for Santo Domingo so I went downstairs to do that. When I came back up, Juan had brought me suntan lotion, a banana, and another bracelet. By now, I can safely assume that all of these gifts are from the trash. I excitedly responded ohhhhhh muchas gracias when he gave them to me as my host mother laughed in the background. Robinson drove me to PUCMM where we were meeting to leave for the trip. He taught me a little bit about driving standard along the way and blasted really loud reggaeton music in hit tiny, crappy little car. Funny that his parents didn't get him a better car - hid dad drives a BMW and his mom drives an explorer, but his car is more like something that came out of my driveway back home. I wonder what this means.

We took a bus to Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. It was a 2 hour ride. When we got there we ate at this amazing dominican restaurant with a dominican buffet and watched this incredible merengue dancer who danced on a bottle with one foot, and spun around super fast, among other things. Afterwards, I danced with some of the male merengue dancers. Then we checked into our hotel and drove off to a market to bargain and shop. It felt like being in NYC, except everyone spoke spanish and all the products were a lot more colorful. Dominican artwork is so awesome!!! So colorful and a lot of it seems to be about African women. There was a lot of jewelry and a lot of the same tiny knicknacks. I bought some stuff and bargained a bit and learned how to say how much. It was fun to negotiate and I got some good prices!

My camera broke!!!!!!

Then we reboarded the bus and went back to the hotel to get ready for whatever it is we wanted to do at that night. I decided to go to a Dominican Baseball game!! My first baseball game and it wasn't even in the US!! It was a pro game in a really dirty stadium and some of the players were American because apparently American players come down to play in the Dominican to learn more/keep in shape during the winter. There were salespeople walking around the whole time selling popcorn, pork rinds, fruit, pizza in a cardboard box, candy, cheese, and empandas - all out of cardboard boxes. The game proceeded much like I imagine an American game would and I spent a good amount of time learning more Spanish words from the Spanish man sitting next to me and trying to explain how, exactly, baseball worked to my Chinese friend because there is no baseball in China. We were given these orange blowup long balloons that everyone hit together to make noise when their team needed support. The home team was called the Tigers. They had a big screen in the distance showing the players who were up at bat and the stats and videos of the crowd and twice someone from the audition sang kareoke! It was a great experience.

Then we took a taxi home and I got ready to go out again. I was going to go dancing, but by the time everyone agreed on a plan I was a bit tired and didn't want to take a taxi far away from the hotel so me and my Chinese friend Alicia went and got a drink and a sandwich nearby. When we were first looking for a place, two guys started walking with us and attempted to guide us into a dangerous neighborhood, but we luckily were able to make it clear that we had no intentions of hanging out with them or of going where they wanted to take us - that was sort of scary! I had one of the greatest conversations of my life with her and I am so thankful that she is on this trip! she is a real gem. We talked about Americans and how they complain a lot, since, during our complaint session back at PUCMM we both said nothing and before going out to the club here, when the other girls started talking about the teacher, and the experience in general, and different people, which inevitably evolved into more complaining, we both sat their and smiled and laughed. We both agreed that you can always find something to complain about and that people should just be grateful. We also both agreed that being alone is important and that when there is nothing else to say or do people start complaining and that some ideas/things simply cannot be translated. She is amazing and she said that she admired me because I was different, approachable, optimistic, not superficial, and spiritual. It was interesting to hear this assessment of myself, since I  am often unconscious of the way I am coming across to people. She said that her goal, like mine, was to develop into a person who could function cross-culturally, and that she was beginning to sense that she was becoming such a person. We discussed  how important it is to be uncomfortable sometimes and culture shock and and her experience in America and in China and values/qualities that make it easy to become  a person who can navigate through different cultures. I told her about peace corps and we both agreed that we were seeing a lot of poverty on this trip, but not experiencing it, and so we were not developing empathy in this respect, which is what Peace Corps does and why I want to do it! It was such an important conversation and I am blessed that she has entered into my life!

Today, I thought more about Americans that I did about Dominicans, since a lot of us are beginning to become more comfortable here and therefor showing our true colors.

Santo Domingo is awesome! Sort of touristy (there's a hard rock cafe down the street), but nice and colorful and I still feel like I am in a dream!! Let see how long it lasts!

You are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience.