La Vida, La Playa Ensenada, and La Solapa

Rarely do I experience boredom or too much down time here. Even the weekends are packed with a wonderful business. I have started to form as close to a rhythm as it gets here. I am taking 8 classes: a Spanish language class, Socioeconomic and Political Processes (it’s required. I haven’t changed that dramatically…and yes, it is about as awful as it sounds!), Hispanic Women’s Lit, a seminar on living and learning in the DR, Intro to the Bible, a Jesus class, Volleyball and a DANCE CLASS. That’s right, watch out, world, I am learning to dance merengue and bachata and a little bit of salsa. And I love it. The professor is so sassy and so cool. He threw down in class one day after showing us what to do. Made my day. My friend David put it well when he told me, “I really want him to be my wing-man at clubs at some point.” Volleyball’s fun and super entertaining too. Myself and a Haitian student are the only two non-Dominicans in the class, but I’m not sure if Creole or Spanish is her first language because she does seem to speak Spanish very well. At any rate, the professor speaks SO quickly and I’m glad I can rely on my volleyball experience to compensate for my lack of Spanish-speaking skills… o.O The rest of my classes are…class. I’m really blessed to have attended Christian schools my whole life for many reasons, but one of them is that now understanding everything in my Religion classes isn’t critical (although if I’m being completely honest with y’all it isn’t understanding that’s the struggle in this case as much as focus. Shocking, right?) I really enjoy my women’s lit class because most of my favorite themes across all forms of literature come from Hispanic women. Our seminar is….well…interesting. I think we learn more from our moms and taxi drivers about culture than we do in the class but it is a good time to talk about things we observe and I get less annoyed with it than I thought I would at the beginning! I really hate Procesos but I’m not sure yet if it’s the class’ fault: it’s at night and on Wednesdays it’s a 2-hour class after already having 7.5 hours of class. Plus so far we’ve pretty much just watched a documentary on Trujillo made by his family. Documentaries of this historical sort are boring in any language (sorry Dad :/ tehe). In any case, Spanish could be boring but it’s really not. The professor is really good about picking cool things to do so I actually really love that class. It’s weird not having any math and having 8 classes. It’s an entirely different kind of busy!
We don’t have Friday classes, which is favorable for taking weekend trips and trying to conquer some of those 25 Retos! The first weekend we went to and Aguilas game and went to the capital and toured through the colonial zone (diversion from the point: I have become obsessed with the Aguilas. Seriously, I have never ever been dedicated enough to any team of any sport to watch it religiously and if I would have been it never would have been baseball. I thought it was the most boring sport next to golf. But I love it! It’s contagious…) The next weekend we went to La Playa Ensenada, which is a pretty remote beach. It is gorgeous, but a lot of Dominicans said it’s ugly and dirty when I told them I went there hah. There was seaweed-ish stuff right on the shore but past that it was perfect and clear. But the really cool part about it was we took this crazy/a-little-bit-terrifying boat ride out towards the middle of the ocean and somehow arrived at this sandbar/island thing. It was an island that looked like it was constructed by someone who just dumped a pile of sand in the ocean and it had 6 wood shacks on it and nothing else. And it was right by the dropoff. So we went snorkeling and I got to see Dory and lots of other fishies :) But more than seeing them, I swam with them. I would go under and be completely surrounded by schools of fish. I would reach out tentatively with a single finger to touch one but they would always escape at the last second, darting in and out of their cohorts. I nailed my shin on some coral, who leave nasty infected cuts as I’ve been told, but mine healed just fine :) And on the coral were cool things too! I touched a slimy round thing. That was actually kind of gross. But the idea was cool. I have no idea what it was. Anyway, it was so incredible to get to explore part of the great big ocean. I felt so…alive in those moments!
Last weekend, 17 of the 27 people in my program went to La Solapa on a work retreat. This was the best weekend I have had here so far! I don’t hate the city, but things just make so much more sense to me in the rural areas; I feel so much more at home. People don’t worry about what they’re wearing because they don’t have the money to. But everyone knows everyone and everyone takes care of everyone’s kids and they all just help each other out. The sense of community is unreal. People don’t have to worry about the same things they worry about in the city. As long as we didn’t wander off by ourselves, we could walk back to our houses at night. And nobody locks their doors. In fact, they keep them wide open to let the fresh air blow through. Everything is so natural and beautiful. Hens and roosters strut about, sometimes getting into fights with one another and dogs ran around pretty unhindered as well. These combined with donkeys making whatever noise they make makes sleeping at night a challenge (contrary to popular belief, roosters don’t just crow in the morning-they do it all night long!). The stars at night were indescribable. As many of you know I have been hiking in the Grand Tetons a couple of times. I’m pretty sure I saw more stars here than I even saw then, though. It was unbelievable!
We were there to help build latrines. During peak growing season, many Haitians come to pick the fruits and veggies and the people don’t have enough toilets for them and a lot of the people who do have toilets have toilets that don’t flush so they have to do the duty elsewhere anyway. I got to stretch my mathematical muscles (forgive me) by calculating how many of each size board we would need and how to be efficient in our cutting of the boards we had :) It was also fun to hammer things. Great way to relieve angst of any color. Once we built the latrines we had to mix and lay the cement on which to put them. This was not as fun. Cement is heavy! But it was an adventure nonetheless :) We worked really well as a team and got all 7 done by dinner time on Saturday so we had the rest of the time free!
I was a little bit saddened by what our free time looked like. Essentially, free time meant the gringos went in someone’s kitchen to play games (in English, so even the Dominicans who wanted to spend time with us couldn’t understand us) and a lot of the Dominicans did their thing outside. The first night, especially, I spent the majority of my night outside with the Dominicans and I was such an amazing experience! First one of the older men taught me how to dance, and then I danced with some of the little girls. And then a couple more kids came and they wanted to play catch with this block of wood that was “on fire”. Then several more kids came and they wanted to play this other race/structure-building game. I think every kid had their own rules to this game because they changed every time and I never knew what we were doing other than running around a lot with blocks in our hands and building things and taking them down and rebuilding them and so on and so forth. It was exhausting. And it was phenomenal. When you’re playing games with kids you don’t really have time to think about your Spanish you just have to speak it. And they will most certainly correct you if you say something dumb. It’s wonderful. Plus they are so adorable. The second night I finally learned how to play Domino! From the best :) And before dinner we were dancing and playing games with the kids by candle and moonlight (they never go a full 24 hours with electricity and it was off longer than normal this day). I could go on and on about the kids. They were so adorable and so affectionate. The girls love to play with your hair and be held. During the day on Saturday a board fell heavily on my shoulder and about 8 girls nearby came over to check it for me, pat it, stroke my hair, and help me up. It was so precious.
All in all, it was such a great weekend. When we were leaving everyone was asking when we were going to return, and the little kids were so sad! Almost as sad as we were. We left tired, a little hungry, and dirtier than we have been since coming to the country, but I somehow had not yet felt quite so clean, so pure and so alive as I did in that moment.