Friday, November 21, 2008
Monday, November 10, 2008
A Surprising Thing I Hate About Working in an Office
That Monday-morning small talk about what you did with your weekend.
If you did a ton of fun, interesting stuff, no one really wants to hear you recite it all, and if you did absolutely nothing, just sat around in your sweats, knitted a bit, maybe made that banana bread you've been promising your roommate for weeks, you end up feeling so so boring.
And everyone in the office manages to ask you about it individually, so you end up reciting the same boring list 20 times. By the end you have the same stupid non-jokes all outlined every time. "Ha! I know! It's like, maybe the cable guy could come when he said he would! Ha! Ha!"
Most devastatingly though, once all the little bits have been recounted, "oh, I puttered around, did some errands, saw a movie Saturday night, blah blah blah," it all sounds like SO LITTLE. WHAT HAPPENED TO MY WEEKEND??? I SWORE there were 48 hours in it last time I checked!!
Sigh.
If you did a ton of fun, interesting stuff, no one really wants to hear you recite it all, and if you did absolutely nothing, just sat around in your sweats, knitted a bit, maybe made that banana bread you've been promising your roommate for weeks, you end up feeling so so boring.
And everyone in the office manages to ask you about it individually, so you end up reciting the same boring list 20 times. By the end you have the same stupid non-jokes all outlined every time. "Ha! I know! It's like, maybe the cable guy could come when he said he would! Ha! Ha!"
Most devastatingly though, once all the little bits have been recounted, "oh, I puttered around, did some errands, saw a movie Saturday night, blah blah blah," it all sounds like SO LITTLE. WHAT HAPPENED TO MY WEEKEND??? I SWORE there were 48 hours in it last time I checked!!
Sigh.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Recommended Reading
A couple of days ago, I read this article (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/magazine/20wwln-lede-t.html) by one of my favorite authors, Micheal Pollan, and I keep thinking about it. The article begins with Pollan working through this question of why bother about trying to save the environment - there seems to be too much to do, and not any reasonable assurance that others will join in on the efforts that need to be made, and we are not sure that it would not all be too late anyway.
I think it particularly speaks to me because I really struggle with this question - "why bother?" - not exactly as he describes it, not so much at the beginning of the effort, but more in the middle. I find that I can easily get myself worked up to make changes and save the world, yaddayaddayadda, but that in the middle, when the sacrifices and challenges are no longer novel and all I want is to just eat a cheeseburger and get on with my life, or not spend 3xs as much on the fancy green light bulbs and instead get the regular ones and have enough left over to buy a pretty new skirt. I find myself wilting at that point - find myself standing in the aisle with a light bulb in either hand, talking myself into buying the cheap one. But I think Pollan is right - I believe that it will take one person after another making all the changes they can, it will take one person after another calling for technological, legislative, and truly, moral, change. I do believe that.
And I believe something that Pollan doesn't talk about directly, but opens the way to with his discussion of "living as if". Pollan uses Vaclav Havel, a Czech politician who was instrumental in the overthrow of communism in Czechoslovakia, as an example of what can happen when people go ahead with what they believe is right even when all but sure that those attempts will be futile if not personally dangerous. I think that what Pollan doesn't explicitly say, but is exceptionally true, is that there is something very pure and valuable about doing what you believe is right, regardless of surrounding situations. That in a very direct and simple, yet somewhat elusive way, there is value in doing all the little energy saving, emission reducing things you can - whether or not they lead to others following, to legislative changes, or to technological advances. I believe that there is something valuable in doing what you know to be right, even if that action is ineffective or fruitless.
Additionally - I also wanted to point you towards Pollan's comment about observing Sabbath - I kinda love this idea - it's so simple and direct. I've been thinking about implementing it in my own life, perhaps with the modifications of allowing for use of lights and food-related devices.
I think it particularly speaks to me because I really struggle with this question - "why bother?" - not exactly as he describes it, not so much at the beginning of the effort, but more in the middle. I find that I can easily get myself worked up to make changes and save the world, yaddayaddayadda, but that in the middle, when the sacrifices and challenges are no longer novel and all I want is to just eat a cheeseburger and get on with my life, or not spend 3xs as much on the fancy green light bulbs and instead get the regular ones and have enough left over to buy a pretty new skirt. I find myself wilting at that point - find myself standing in the aisle with a light bulb in either hand, talking myself into buying the cheap one. But I think Pollan is right - I believe that it will take one person after another making all the changes they can, it will take one person after another calling for technological, legislative, and truly, moral, change. I do believe that.
And I believe something that Pollan doesn't talk about directly, but opens the way to with his discussion of "living as if". Pollan uses Vaclav Havel, a Czech politician who was instrumental in the overthrow of communism in Czechoslovakia, as an example of what can happen when people go ahead with what they believe is right even when all but sure that those attempts will be futile if not personally dangerous. I think that what Pollan doesn't explicitly say, but is exceptionally true, is that there is something very pure and valuable about doing what you believe is right, regardless of surrounding situations. That in a very direct and simple, yet somewhat elusive way, there is value in doing all the little energy saving, emission reducing things you can - whether or not they lead to others following, to legislative changes, or to technological advances. I believe that there is something valuable in doing what you know to be right, even if that action is ineffective or fruitless.
Additionally - I also wanted to point you towards Pollan's comment about observing Sabbath - I kinda love this idea - it's so simple and direct. I've been thinking about implementing it in my own life, perhaps with the modifications of allowing for use of lights and food-related devices.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
When You Get What You Ask For
One of my girlfriends here is a woman who is significantly older than the rest of our little group, a woman who went through some major change and upheaval in her life, and moved down here for an indefinite period of time, looking to really find fulfillment for herself. She subscribes to a somewhat more “new-agey” vision of the world than I do, but I love to hear her talk about her process in moving here and staying here and planning the next stages of her life now that she’s substantially altered its course and is no longer on a traditional path. Recently, she was talking about how hard it has been for her to get her career set up here, how she has had to do so much waiting, and being patient. She said that she has been using the time to do a lot of writing, both personal and work-related, but she was becoming increasingly frustrated with all this waiting, until recently she remembered that before moving here she had been thinking over and over and saying to all those around her that she just wanted time to write. She wanted to just write and write, and look! Here she was with so much time to write! How funny, then, that she had been seeing this period with so much impatience. She was using this as evidence that the universe is listening to you, that you will receive what you ask for if you can keep asking for it and keep moving towards what seems like the right destination.
As much as I scoff at the idea of the universe “listening” to you, and delivering what you ask for if you can only keep the faith, I realized that something very similar has happened to me over the past year. This time last year, as I am sure some of you will remember, I was telling anyone who would listen that all I wanted to do was to go sit on some beach somewhere, to just go stick my head in the sand and sit still for a year. I kept asking ironically, “Does anyone pay for that?” I was sitting in my carrel at Firestone Library, staring at the putrid green walls feeling awash with how low I felt my inner self to be, with how exhausted and depleted and done I felt, not just with my thesis but with the world as a whole really. I was not really feeling all that excited by the wonderful job opportunities revealing themselves, or able to power through the writing process, or coping all that well with what were my responsibilities and obligations. I was flailing a fair bit, and very very scared.
I have had about 8 months of a paid semi-vacation. I’ve struggled with the fact that it isn’t quite a vacation, but that there isn’t really much in the way of real work either, and I’ve struggled with the culture and my place here, and with disappointed expectations. But I have done a lot of sitting in the sun, and waking slowly in my own rhythm, with no classes to run off to, panicked because I was late, a lot of swimming and reading and watching TV even!, a lot of talking with friends and going out for drinks. Someone has paid me to do all these things. I got what I asked for. Look at that.
And it feels pretty good. The first part of the year was difficult, but ever since I accepted what this was, I’ve felt (for the most part) happy. The happy isn’t always effortless or easy, but I’ve managed to find it and to continue to find my way back to it when I fall off the horse. This happy is about a number of things: finding friends whose company I enjoy and who I can share my true self with, finding pieces of this culture that I can love, finding ways to block or ignore or simply brush off some of the pieces I cannot find a way to love. But even more than all of that, I think I am beginning to come to see that some of the deep, bubbling happiness I have been feeling recently is about the replenishment of myself that I was doing even when I was not aware I was doing it.
I have been quiet. And not even in a spiritual, open, questing way – just quiet. As me. I have let my brain stop thinking all its thoughts for brief spans. I have Sat Still and have not attempted to unduly enrich myself. I have read some books, but not that many, and probably 60 or 70% non-classic, non-revelatory novels. I have watched a lot of TV. And not great documentaries, or news, or even film.
I feel like the little kid who has spent the summer running and swimming – tan, more flexible, muscles exercised again, head emptier, full of easy grace and easy smiles and the confidence of mastering all the nooks and crannies of the woods on my bike.
As much as I scoff at the idea of the universe “listening” to you, and delivering what you ask for if you can only keep the faith, I realized that something very similar has happened to me over the past year. This time last year, as I am sure some of you will remember, I was telling anyone who would listen that all I wanted to do was to go sit on some beach somewhere, to just go stick my head in the sand and sit still for a year. I kept asking ironically, “Does anyone pay for that?” I was sitting in my carrel at Firestone Library, staring at the putrid green walls feeling awash with how low I felt my inner self to be, with how exhausted and depleted and done I felt, not just with my thesis but with the world as a whole really. I was not really feeling all that excited by the wonderful job opportunities revealing themselves, or able to power through the writing process, or coping all that well with what were my responsibilities and obligations. I was flailing a fair bit, and very very scared.
I have had about 8 months of a paid semi-vacation. I’ve struggled with the fact that it isn’t quite a vacation, but that there isn’t really much in the way of real work either, and I’ve struggled with the culture and my place here, and with disappointed expectations. But I have done a lot of sitting in the sun, and waking slowly in my own rhythm, with no classes to run off to, panicked because I was late, a lot of swimming and reading and watching TV even!, a lot of talking with friends and going out for drinks. Someone has paid me to do all these things. I got what I asked for. Look at that.
And it feels pretty good. The first part of the year was difficult, but ever since I accepted what this was, I’ve felt (for the most part) happy. The happy isn’t always effortless or easy, but I’ve managed to find it and to continue to find my way back to it when I fall off the horse. This happy is about a number of things: finding friends whose company I enjoy and who I can share my true self with, finding pieces of this culture that I can love, finding ways to block or ignore or simply brush off some of the pieces I cannot find a way to love. But even more than all of that, I think I am beginning to come to see that some of the deep, bubbling happiness I have been feeling recently is about the replenishment of myself that I was doing even when I was not aware I was doing it.
I have been quiet. And not even in a spiritual, open, questing way – just quiet. As me. I have let my brain stop thinking all its thoughts for brief spans. I have Sat Still and have not attempted to unduly enrich myself. I have read some books, but not that many, and probably 60 or 70% non-classic, non-revelatory novels. I have watched a lot of TV. And not great documentaries, or news, or even film.
I feel like the little kid who has spent the summer running and swimming – tan, more flexible, muscles exercised again, head emptier, full of easy grace and easy smiles and the confidence of mastering all the nooks and crannies of the woods on my bike.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
The Long Way Around
In 2006, after my study-abroad program in Prague ended, I took a trip to Croatia with one of the girls I had been living with. Michelagh and I flew into Dubrovnik, on the south-eastern coast of Croatia, and were flying out of Split, on its north-western coast. We had a loose idea of the places we would like to see, and the idea was to make our way up the coast, traveling from place to place, and arriving in Split the day before our flight back to Prague. One of our last destinations was the city of Havar, located on the island of Havar, one of the largest islands right off the coast.
Because of the way that this type of travel goes however, when we went to get our bus tickets to Havar, we discovered that because of the length of the trip, we hadn’t left ourselves enough time to both see the city and make it to Split in time to catch our plane. The woman at the bus station suggested that instead of taking the most common route, we take a bus to another port along the coast, and then take a ferry to the island. The catch was that the ferry would take us to the opposite side of the island from the city of Havar. The woman assured us that there must be a bus that would take us to the city however, and so we happily set off. The bus ride was hours and hours shorter than it would have been had we been traveling the regular route, and the ferry was located in a tiny town full of Croatians on beach vacations. We got gelato and Michelagh bought a pair of flippers and a snorkel mask and by the time we got on the ferry we were ecstatic with how beautiful everything was and what ingenious travelers we were, to find the hidden routes that would get there faster and would let us see what was off the beaten path to boot!
I’m sure you can guess where this is going. We got to Havar the island, and disembarked from the ferry, only to find ourselves in a one-street town which did (!) have a bus, but since it was (groan) SUNDAY AFTERNOON, the next bus wouldn’t leave until 5am the next morning. We spoke with the town’s only taxi driver, who would drive us to Havar the city, but for just over $200 US. Since $200 US was about what we had combined to last us the rest of the trip, this was not an option. We tried to hitchhike, but to no avail, and ended up sitting for a few hours in the sweltering shade of an old abandoned brick building at the crossroads where the road that led into town left the road that served the island. Finally we gave up and found a room to rent for the night.
At 5am the next morning we were groggily standing outside of the house we had been staying in, backpacks on, waiting for the bus to drive by. When the “bus” showed it was a small white van full of Croatians commuting to work. We climbed in and stowed our packs as well as possible (read: on our laps) and the van took off, flying across the deserted road which climbed and wove through the hills.
Havar is famous for its lavender, which grows both wild and cultivated across the island. This is not lavender like you are used to – that powdery, stuffy smell infused into soaps and constituting overwhelming perfumes. This is another element altogether and as we sat in that small white van that morning, clinging to our seats as the van flung itself around curves in the road, the smell of wild lavender blew through the wide-open windows. Havar, like the rest of coastal Croatia, is all rocky cliffs plunging into the indigo sea, and as the van drove the scenery would abruptly change from green, rocky hillside, strewn with lavender bushes and white stone houses, to impressively tall and steep cliffs falling away into the sea.
I predict that this will be one of the abiding memories of my life and it certainly was not part of any plan or recommended by any travel guide. I did not set out in search of it and in fact would probably have avoided it if I could have. It was the most indirect way to get to where we were going, and it cut down on how much time we had to spend there for sure, but knowing what I know now, I might make sure to stay overnight in that little town on a return trip to Croatia, just to re-experience that bus ride.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For awhile now I’ve been ruminating on the idea that I don’t really know exactly what I’m doing or where I’m going. I think I used to, in that childish way where your dreams are formed by half-imagined pieces of things, and never really involve work. You were going to be a firefighter, but when you saw it in your mind’s eye you were wearing the suit, and climbing down a ladder, holding a child who was clinging to your neck, the crowd below clapping. Paradoxically your firefighter’s suit was crisp and clean, and there was no similar dream of crawling through the flames, sweating and hot, scared that the fire-damaged building might collapse around you at any moment.
I think one of the reasons it’s so hard not to know is because I used to. I used to have these ideas about what I was going to do and who I was going to be when I was a “grown-up”, but now that I find myself here, at the precipice of adult-hood, I find that all the things I have learned over the years have worn away at those dreams. I am still holding firmly on to the honorable intentions so many of my dreams proposed to follow, but without the framework the dreams provided, the intentions can start to feel more like anchors than buoys.
I sort of kinda maybe have some half-formed ideas, and the knowledge of a few pretty concrete things that do or don’t make me happy. A couple of moral values I’d like to hold onto, a few financial goals I’m shooting for, a very loose 5-year plan. Or whatever. You know? And even those things I’m calling concrete or “plans” – well, I’m pretty convinced that they would give way under the sweetest of breezes.
I have been pretty worried about this. Well, I suppose worried isn’t quite the right word. I’ve been panicked by this a little. Ok, a lot. Not knowing where or what or when or how? I find that difficult. Challenging. Recently however, more days than not, I am not so worried. Not so worried, or concerned, not panicked.
The thing is, looking back, I think it’s often taken an indirect route for me to get to where I was going.
And I’ve been pretty fortunate with where I’ve ended up.
I feel relatively confident that I’m going to get somewhere, even if it’s not where I once thought it would be. I’m pretty convinced of the fact that there are a million ways to lead a satisfying and meaningful life, and recently I’ve been able to keep that in the forefront of my mind.
It’s very cliché all this – this idea that life is the journey (the bus ride) not the destination, the idea that the most amazing moments are those we could never plan for or anticipate, that the road less-traveled is the road to take. I don’t know that it’s always true - I definitely have had amazing moments that have been planned out, that are in every guidebook, and learned things I needed to know from the most conventional of sources – but I know that like in the story above, I have in the past been truly blessed by the fact that my plans were laid to waste or that I didn’t have plans in the first place.
And at some point, it’s clear to me that it doesn’t really matter whether or not I agree to this reality of my life. I can fight it with my wide-eyed panic if I like, but that won’t fill in all these blank spaces I am so thrown by.
I am just going to have to take The Long Way Around. And just trust that it will get me where I need to be going.
P.S. Full disclosure: “The Long Way Around” is a song. By the Dixie Chicks. I know. I know.
Because of the way that this type of travel goes however, when we went to get our bus tickets to Havar, we discovered that because of the length of the trip, we hadn’t left ourselves enough time to both see the city and make it to Split in time to catch our plane. The woman at the bus station suggested that instead of taking the most common route, we take a bus to another port along the coast, and then take a ferry to the island. The catch was that the ferry would take us to the opposite side of the island from the city of Havar. The woman assured us that there must be a bus that would take us to the city however, and so we happily set off. The bus ride was hours and hours shorter than it would have been had we been traveling the regular route, and the ferry was located in a tiny town full of Croatians on beach vacations. We got gelato and Michelagh bought a pair of flippers and a snorkel mask and by the time we got on the ferry we were ecstatic with how beautiful everything was and what ingenious travelers we were, to find the hidden routes that would get there faster and would let us see what was off the beaten path to boot!
I’m sure you can guess where this is going. We got to Havar the island, and disembarked from the ferry, only to find ourselves in a one-street town which did (!) have a bus, but since it was (groan) SUNDAY AFTERNOON, the next bus wouldn’t leave until 5am the next morning. We spoke with the town’s only taxi driver, who would drive us to Havar the city, but for just over $200 US. Since $200 US was about what we had combined to last us the rest of the trip, this was not an option. We tried to hitchhike, but to no avail, and ended up sitting for a few hours in the sweltering shade of an old abandoned brick building at the crossroads where the road that led into town left the road that served the island. Finally we gave up and found a room to rent for the night.
At 5am the next morning we were groggily standing outside of the house we had been staying in, backpacks on, waiting for the bus to drive by. When the “bus” showed it was a small white van full of Croatians commuting to work. We climbed in and stowed our packs as well as possible (read: on our laps) and the van took off, flying across the deserted road which climbed and wove through the hills.
Havar is famous for its lavender, which grows both wild and cultivated across the island. This is not lavender like you are used to – that powdery, stuffy smell infused into soaps and constituting overwhelming perfumes. This is another element altogether and as we sat in that small white van that morning, clinging to our seats as the van flung itself around curves in the road, the smell of wild lavender blew through the wide-open windows. Havar, like the rest of coastal Croatia, is all rocky cliffs plunging into the indigo sea, and as the van drove the scenery would abruptly change from green, rocky hillside, strewn with lavender bushes and white stone houses, to impressively tall and steep cliffs falling away into the sea.
I predict that this will be one of the abiding memories of my life and it certainly was not part of any plan or recommended by any travel guide. I did not set out in search of it and in fact would probably have avoided it if I could have. It was the most indirect way to get to where we were going, and it cut down on how much time we had to spend there for sure, but knowing what I know now, I might make sure to stay overnight in that little town on a return trip to Croatia, just to re-experience that bus ride.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For awhile now I’ve been ruminating on the idea that I don’t really know exactly what I’m doing or where I’m going. I think I used to, in that childish way where your dreams are formed by half-imagined pieces of things, and never really involve work. You were going to be a firefighter, but when you saw it in your mind’s eye you were wearing the suit, and climbing down a ladder, holding a child who was clinging to your neck, the crowd below clapping. Paradoxically your firefighter’s suit was crisp and clean, and there was no similar dream of crawling through the flames, sweating and hot, scared that the fire-damaged building might collapse around you at any moment.
I think one of the reasons it’s so hard not to know is because I used to. I used to have these ideas about what I was going to do and who I was going to be when I was a “grown-up”, but now that I find myself here, at the precipice of adult-hood, I find that all the things I have learned over the years have worn away at those dreams. I am still holding firmly on to the honorable intentions so many of my dreams proposed to follow, but without the framework the dreams provided, the intentions can start to feel more like anchors than buoys.
I sort of kinda maybe have some half-formed ideas, and the knowledge of a few pretty concrete things that do or don’t make me happy. A couple of moral values I’d like to hold onto, a few financial goals I’m shooting for, a very loose 5-year plan. Or whatever. You know? And even those things I’m calling concrete or “plans” – well, I’m pretty convinced that they would give way under the sweetest of breezes.
I have been pretty worried about this. Well, I suppose worried isn’t quite the right word. I’ve been panicked by this a little. Ok, a lot. Not knowing where or what or when or how? I find that difficult. Challenging. Recently however, more days than not, I am not so worried. Not so worried, or concerned, not panicked.
The thing is, looking back, I think it’s often taken an indirect route for me to get to where I was going.
And I’ve been pretty fortunate with where I’ve ended up.
I feel relatively confident that I’m going to get somewhere, even if it’s not where I once thought it would be. I’m pretty convinced of the fact that there are a million ways to lead a satisfying and meaningful life, and recently I’ve been able to keep that in the forefront of my mind.
It’s very cliché all this – this idea that life is the journey (the bus ride) not the destination, the idea that the most amazing moments are those we could never plan for or anticipate, that the road less-traveled is the road to take. I don’t know that it’s always true - I definitely have had amazing moments that have been planned out, that are in every guidebook, and learned things I needed to know from the most conventional of sources – but I know that like in the story above, I have in the past been truly blessed by the fact that my plans were laid to waste or that I didn’t have plans in the first place.
And at some point, it’s clear to me that it doesn’t really matter whether or not I agree to this reality of my life. I can fight it with my wide-eyed panic if I like, but that won’t fill in all these blank spaces I am so thrown by.
I am just going to have to take The Long Way Around. And just trust that it will get me where I need to be going.
P.S. Full disclosure: “The Long Way Around” is a song. By the Dixie Chicks. I know. I know.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
PARTY!PARTY!PARTY!
Here in the Dominican Republic it is Independence Day and also maybe the end of Carnaval - these little details are incredibly unimportant and if a silly American girl asks you about them you should probably just hand her a rum and coke and turn up the music.
I am just here to tell you about the noise really - I was so excited that today was a National Holiday and that I was going to get to sleep in to all sorts of crazy hours (because that's so different from my normal life, but still, National Government sanctioned sleeping-in just feels different) but those plans were abruptly and rudely exterminated by the Party of all Parties that is happening all across this half of the island, starting at 9am SHARP (Dominicans are nothing in life if not SERIOUS about the PARTY).
I mean, seriously people, this is a small island. There are just not that many people living here. How can it be possible for them to sustain this decible level?
I am going to a friend's house down by the Malecon later to watch the parade from her roof. In the meantime, I am dancing, no matter what else I am doing, for there is music literally everywhere.
I am just here to tell you about the noise really - I was so excited that today was a National Holiday and that I was going to get to sleep in to all sorts of crazy hours (because that's so different from my normal life, but still, National Government sanctioned sleeping-in just feels different) but those plans were abruptly and rudely exterminated by the Party of all Parties that is happening all across this half of the island, starting at 9am SHARP (Dominicans are nothing in life if not SERIOUS about the PARTY).
I mean, seriously people, this is a small island. There are just not that many people living here. How can it be possible for them to sustain this decible level?
I am going to a friend's house down by the Malecon later to watch the parade from her roof. In the meantime, I am dancing, no matter what else I am doing, for there is music literally everywhere.
PARTY!PARTY!PARTY!
Here in the Dominican Republic it is Independence Day and also maybe the end of Carnaval - these little details are incredibly unimportant and if a silly American girl asks you about them you should probably just hand her a rum and coke and turn up the music.
I am just here to tell you about the noise really - I was so excited that today was a National Holiday and that I was going to get to sleep in to all sorts of crazy hours (because that's so different from my normal life, but still, National Government sanctioned sleeping in just feels different) but those plans were abruptly and rudely exterminated by the Party of all Parties that is happening all across this half of the island, starting at 9am SHARP (Dominicans are nothing in life if not SERIOUS about the PARTY).
I mean, seriously people, this is a small island. There are just not that many people living here. How can it be possible for them to sustain this decible level?
I am going to a friend's house down by the Malecon to watch the parade from her roof. In the meantime, I am dancing, no matter what else I am doing, for there is music literally everywhere.
I am just here to tell you about the noise really - I was so excited that today was a National Holiday and that I was going to get to sleep in to all sorts of crazy hours (because that's so different from my normal life, but still, National Government sanctioned sleeping in just feels different) but those plans were abruptly and rudely exterminated by the Party of all Parties that is happening all across this half of the island, starting at 9am SHARP (Dominicans are nothing in life if not SERIOUS about the PARTY).
I mean, seriously people, this is a small island. There are just not that many people living here. How can it be possible for them to sustain this decible level?
I am going to a friend's house down by the Malecon to watch the parade from her roof. In the meantime, I am dancing, no matter what else I am doing, for there is music literally everywhere.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Hello folks. It's strange, I know, but I've actually been busy this past week. I know, shocking. :) It's quite lovely. I spent Sunday through Tuesday in a tiny little town - Las Galeras - located on the very tip of the Samana peninsula(http://www.hotelmoorea.com/en/description.html). It's whale season in the DR - every year between January and March hundreds of humpback whales make their way to the north coast to partake in the glorious Caribbean winter. Seriously people, you know how I was doing nothing but complaining about the heat a couple of months ago? Well, I just had an interview with an organization in DC and when the interviewer started the interview by saying that it must be nicer in the DR than it is in DC right now I had to restrain myself from spending the whole hour bragging about how much I love the climate where I live right now. It's nice. Really, really nice. Really, really, really nice. Ok, stopping now.
But whale season. So we went to the north coast, to this tiny little town with one main street and stayed in this wonderful little rustic bungalow with a loft for sleeping, and one of the most stunning beaches I've ever seen. And we went whale watching, which ended up being less like whale watching, and more like wave watching. We spent probably about 4 hours in a 15-foot dingy riding up and down monster waves with no whales in sight. Sigh. Guess I'll just have to make it back up there before the end of March. Life is really rough sometimes, I tell you.
And then since I've been back I've actually had WORK to do!!! I know!!! It's a ... Valentine's Day miracle! (somehow that just doesn't work as well as "Christmas Miracle"...hmmmm) So I'm prepping for interviews and starting to think about what I'm going to be doing with myself in the next year-ish, which is actually taking up a good amount of time, AND I'm actually moving forward on a project for the Department of Education. I KNOW!
I had a meeting about two and a half weeks ago with this woman I know who works for the Department of Education, and she assigned me to this large and nebulous, but quite exciting project. However! I finally had a follow-up meeting with her this week and got a much more clear and exact description of what the project was and a personal-sized, clear assignment! It's so exciting people! The project is a "Godfathering" program run by the Department of Education which connects schools and businesses to create supportive relationships. It has been allowed to lapse over the last 3 or 4 years, and so the woman I am working with is in charge of reviving it. Right now I am working on an analysis of schools that submitted applications to the program in 2004. SO EXCITING. :)
And in other news....pictures from last weekend!
In the boat, setting out.
There was a big collective of little kitchens all under one big communal roof on the beach. I loved these two signs - the one one the left says "Sweet Cafeteria" and the one on the right "God and Ana Maria are Here"
But whale season. So we went to the north coast, to this tiny little town with one main street and stayed in this wonderful little rustic bungalow with a loft for sleeping, and one of the most stunning beaches I've ever seen. And we went whale watching, which ended up being less like whale watching, and more like wave watching. We spent probably about 4 hours in a 15-foot dingy riding up and down monster waves with no whales in sight. Sigh. Guess I'll just have to make it back up there before the end of March. Life is really rough sometimes, I tell you.
And then since I've been back I've actually had WORK to do!!! I know!!! It's a ... Valentine's Day miracle! (somehow that just doesn't work as well as "Christmas Miracle"...hmmmm) So I'm prepping for interviews and starting to think about what I'm going to be doing with myself in the next year-ish, which is actually taking up a good amount of time, AND I'm actually moving forward on a project for the Department of Education. I KNOW!
I had a meeting about two and a half weeks ago with this woman I know who works for the Department of Education, and she assigned me to this large and nebulous, but quite exciting project. However! I finally had a follow-up meeting with her this week and got a much more clear and exact description of what the project was and a personal-sized, clear assignment! It's so exciting people! The project is a "Godfathering" program run by the Department of Education which connects schools and businesses to create supportive relationships. It has been allowed to lapse over the last 3 or 4 years, and so the woman I am working with is in charge of reviving it. Right now I am working on an analysis of schools that submitted applications to the program in 2004. SO EXCITING. :)
And in other news....pictures from last weekend!
In the boat, setting out.
Unsuccessful whale-searching
Awesome fisherman and his fish (dorado for those who are interested)
Playa Fronton
The Playa again
There was a big collective of little kitchens all under one big communal roof on the beach. I loved these two signs - the one one the left says "Sweet Cafeteria" and the one on the right "God and Ana Maria are Here"
Friday, February 8, 2008
It sneaks up on you in this city, its old, violent, mysterious, and not a little bit romantic origins. So much of the city feels new – not new in shiny, chrome, Big Apple, modern architecture way, but new in a more homespun, necessary way – the humidity and susceptibility to serious weather mean that heavy structures don’t last long without major and constant renovations.
Along the coasts here (or at least the coasts that do not boast big resorts) you see these small shacks – structures that are really just boxes made of wooden planks covered with sheets of plastic or metal. I always find myself, sitting on a bus watching them skip by through the window, thinking about how when a storm comes through, these flimsy houses, sitting right on the beach like that, must just get washed out to sea or scattered among the lines of palms standing against their back walls. Obviously economic factors are key here - these are cheap, perhaps free, building materials, and most anyone can put together a structure like that, with a minimum of effort and difficulty. But I also have come to wonder if there isn’t a part of it that is that yes, storms destroy the houses, but having a house that is easy to rebuild makes more sense than having one that is difficult to rebuild, given the fact of living so close to the edge of the sea, living so much more in direct contact with the basic precariousness of our situation on earth. A brick and mortar house, perched on sandy soil at the edge of ocean will be splintered and washed away by the storms that rage over this island, just as a wooden hut will, their “order” giving way to the infinitely more powerful and inevitable chaos of the sea.
And although Santo Domingo does not sit on the sand, it is most definitely perched right at the edge of the ocean. I live on the very edge of the ocean. Did you know that? I have to admit, that this city is so dense, so very intense and loud and consuming that I very often forget this fact, living all of two blocks away from lapping waves. I often find myself walking or driving down to the Malecon, and when I hit that street, and suddenly the buildings give way to palms and then suddenly, ocean as far as the eye can see, I am habitually surprised. Ocean! Did you know?!
So even without the precariousness of the sand, and even though so much of the city is not directly next to the water since it extends for many miles away from the Malecon in all directions, the weather does not allow much to stand for long. Which means that much is new here, belying the age and complexity of this city and its history. In the Zona Colonial however, driving in a taxi around a dark corner or strolling on a Sunday afternoon with frozen yogurt in hand, these centenarians appear, and instead of being consumed, as you were a minute earlier, with the thoughts of the date you are late for or the absolute deliciousness of the pineapple, raspberry, and blackberry combination you chose for your frozen yogurt mix, you suddenly see Columbus and priests and many Spaniards, here to terminate who knows how many years of indigenous order and fit the Old World arrangement into the New, like a little child, determined to make a square peg fit into a round hole.
The grand Basílica which takes up one side of the main park in the Zona, the Parque Colón, is perhaps chief of these buildings. It is the oldest such building in the New World, and was intended to be the religious center of the West Indies and the base for converting all of the indigenous people of the Americas. A pretty intense purpose for one stone and mortar building, no? This building somehow manages to live up to its history however, in a way that not that many buildings in my experience do. It is intense and brooding, and watches the square and the all the merriment happening within it with a forbidding eye.
I see one of its cupolas peeking up over the skyline from streets away and am suddenly reminded of its presence. I suddenly find myself strolling along one of lengthy sides and suddenly am located in a city where I hardly ever know where I am. It sneaks up on me, in places where I least expect to see it, and silently states its deep, dark, romantic purpose. Spaniards, streaming over the sides of ships, causing havoc which reverberates into the present day.
Along the coasts here (or at least the coasts that do not boast big resorts) you see these small shacks – structures that are really just boxes made of wooden planks covered with sheets of plastic or metal. I always find myself, sitting on a bus watching them skip by through the window, thinking about how when a storm comes through, these flimsy houses, sitting right on the beach like that, must just get washed out to sea or scattered among the lines of palms standing against their back walls. Obviously economic factors are key here - these are cheap, perhaps free, building materials, and most anyone can put together a structure like that, with a minimum of effort and difficulty. But I also have come to wonder if there isn’t a part of it that is that yes, storms destroy the houses, but having a house that is easy to rebuild makes more sense than having one that is difficult to rebuild, given the fact of living so close to the edge of the sea, living so much more in direct contact with the basic precariousness of our situation on earth. A brick and mortar house, perched on sandy soil at the edge of ocean will be splintered and washed away by the storms that rage over this island, just as a wooden hut will, their “order” giving way to the infinitely more powerful and inevitable chaos of the sea.
And although Santo Domingo does not sit on the sand, it is most definitely perched right at the edge of the ocean. I live on the very edge of the ocean. Did you know that? I have to admit, that this city is so dense, so very intense and loud and consuming that I very often forget this fact, living all of two blocks away from lapping waves. I often find myself walking or driving down to the Malecon, and when I hit that street, and suddenly the buildings give way to palms and then suddenly, ocean as far as the eye can see, I am habitually surprised. Ocean! Did you know?!
So even without the precariousness of the sand, and even though so much of the city is not directly next to the water since it extends for many miles away from the Malecon in all directions, the weather does not allow much to stand for long. Which means that much is new here, belying the age and complexity of this city and its history. In the Zona Colonial however, driving in a taxi around a dark corner or strolling on a Sunday afternoon with frozen yogurt in hand, these centenarians appear, and instead of being consumed, as you were a minute earlier, with the thoughts of the date you are late for or the absolute deliciousness of the pineapple, raspberry, and blackberry combination you chose for your frozen yogurt mix, you suddenly see Columbus and priests and many Spaniards, here to terminate who knows how many years of indigenous order and fit the Old World arrangement into the New, like a little child, determined to make a square peg fit into a round hole.
The grand Basílica which takes up one side of the main park in the Zona, the Parque Colón, is perhaps chief of these buildings. It is the oldest such building in the New World, and was intended to be the religious center of the West Indies and the base for converting all of the indigenous people of the Americas. A pretty intense purpose for one stone and mortar building, no? This building somehow manages to live up to its history however, in a way that not that many buildings in my experience do. It is intense and brooding, and watches the square and the all the merriment happening within it with a forbidding eye.
I see one of its cupolas peeking up over the skyline from streets away and am suddenly reminded of its presence. I suddenly find myself strolling along one of lengthy sides and suddenly am located in a city where I hardly ever know where I am. It sneaks up on me, in places where I least expect to see it, and silently states its deep, dark, romantic purpose. Spaniards, streaming over the sides of ships, causing havoc which reverberates into the present day.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
A couple of nights ago, I met a few friends for dinner at what may be my favorite restaurant in Santo Domingo – this little two-room place which is painted a startlingly orange-red and serves the best falafel I have ever eaten. I’m normally pretty take-it-or-leave-it when it comes to falafel, which is why the first time I ate there I almost ordered the shawarma, which I generally like a lot more. I’m so glad I didn’t. This falafel is the kind of entrée that makes you feel that calories spent eating anything else are for the most part wasted.
After dinner we walked a few blocks to Parque Duarte, to sit in the cool 85 degree night air on a classic Latin-American-park bench and drink rum and cokes out of styrofoam cups filled with ice at the closest colmado. I’m pretty much in love with Latin American park culture – it is something I feel innately attracted to, something that just feels completely right. I love the people watching and the intersection of all parts of life, I love the way that sitting languorously in the park is seen as almost purposeful. Parque Duarte is definitely not Santo Domingo’s prettiest or most popular or most atmospheric park, but it is quite special and unique nonetheless, because it is the haven for the “alternative” kids.
Santo Domingo, as an extension of Dominican culture and maybe Latin American culture generally, is not a place that fosters or even tolerates much in the way of deviation from the norm. As a result, if you are not a über-typical young adult, that is to say, if you are not fanatical about baseball and clearly demonstrative of your heterosexuality as a man, if you do not adhere to the ultra feminine, flashy, and tight fashions sported by all the young ladies, then you may find yourself in an extremely small minority, living in a city which will shun you if it does not loudly and widely condemn you. As a result, the “alternative” kids are a much smaller group than the analogous group in say, New York, or even Trenton for that matter (I would guess, from my very unscientific method of observation and computation), and they gather in little Parque Duarte, each different group staking out a bench or two a representation of a category; the gay kids, the rasta kids with their dreads and their weed, the artsy girls with short hair and baggy jeans.
Now, this being a recognized park with benches and trees in a Latin American city, the edges of all parts of society spill over, even when deterred by such difference. There is the handful of drunks who slowly become intoxicated enough to begin their proclamations, loudly prophesizing to no one in particular, and the overflow from two colmados which sit on the park, men in plastic chairs crowded into the small one-room centers of Dominican life. They drink beers whose labels have been obscured by paper napkins failing the fight to keep the condensation which occurs as the previously frozen beers meet the tropical air, off of hands which alternate between sips and fists pumps, depending on the larger-than-life hits or misses, home-runs or OUTS displayed on the tiny television screen shoved into an upper left-hand corner between cans of sweet corn and spray bottles of Raid.
After dinner we walked a few blocks to Parque Duarte, to sit in the cool 85 degree night air on a classic Latin-American-park bench and drink rum and cokes out of styrofoam cups filled with ice at the closest colmado. I’m pretty much in love with Latin American park culture – it is something I feel innately attracted to, something that just feels completely right. I love the people watching and the intersection of all parts of life, I love the way that sitting languorously in the park is seen as almost purposeful. Parque Duarte is definitely not Santo Domingo’s prettiest or most popular or most atmospheric park, but it is quite special and unique nonetheless, because it is the haven for the “alternative” kids.
Santo Domingo, as an extension of Dominican culture and maybe Latin American culture generally, is not a place that fosters or even tolerates much in the way of deviation from the norm. As a result, if you are not a über-typical young adult, that is to say, if you are not fanatical about baseball and clearly demonstrative of your heterosexuality as a man, if you do not adhere to the ultra feminine, flashy, and tight fashions sported by all the young ladies, then you may find yourself in an extremely small minority, living in a city which will shun you if it does not loudly and widely condemn you. As a result, the “alternative” kids are a much smaller group than the analogous group in say, New York, or even Trenton for that matter (I would guess, from my very unscientific method of observation and computation), and they gather in little Parque Duarte, each different group staking out a bench or two a representation of a category; the gay kids, the rasta kids with their dreads and their weed, the artsy girls with short hair and baggy jeans.
Now, this being a recognized park with benches and trees in a Latin American city, the edges of all parts of society spill over, even when deterred by such difference. There is the handful of drunks who slowly become intoxicated enough to begin their proclamations, loudly prophesizing to no one in particular, and the overflow from two colmados which sit on the park, men in plastic chairs crowded into the small one-room centers of Dominican life. They drink beers whose labels have been obscured by paper napkins failing the fight to keep the condensation which occurs as the previously frozen beers meet the tropical air, off of hands which alternate between sips and fists pumps, depending on the larger-than-life hits or misses, home-runs or OUTS displayed on the tiny television screen shoved into an upper left-hand corner between cans of sweet corn and spray bottles of Raid.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
If you really don't know where you're going....keep going I suppose :)
I meant for this blog to be more of a travel journal – I wanted to record and share my impressions of and discoveries in this new culture I was transplanting myself into, but it has not turned out that way. Instead, looking back over the entries, they are much more about my internal process. I think this expectations and hopes vs. reality is probably pretty representative of my experience here as well. I had high hopes for getting deeply immersed in work and learning about the culture and exulting in the adventure of it all and finding those thrilling places within the Other where you suddenly hit upon something that feels familiar at the core. It has not turned out that way, so far at least, and I think my writing here is representative of that. Instead, these have been five months where I have been much more withdrawn into myself than I would like. I have found myself over and over again set up against the culture rather than finding ways to search within it, and the places where I see similarities are not the comforting, joyful discovery of connection between man, but instead disheartening recognition of the wreckage produced by my country and culture, as well as the general, universal folly of man.
I have been back from my trip home for about two weeks now and I think I have not been able to bring myself to write here because there is so little actually happening in my life right now. I am in limbo – I am standing around waiting. I am still hopeful that the project I have been offered through the Department of Education will pan out, but I have not been able to arrange a meeting to get things rolling yet. I have less hope that work will surface for me at CIPROS, the development organization which has taken me on. Nevertheless, I like the people who work at that office, and if the Department of Education project works out, it will be a good place to base myself, so I continue to go in, to show up and make small talk with the various employees, to eat lunch with them and to hope on the off chance that if I show up enough, if I establish myself as there, that perhaps something will change.
In the meantime, I am playing a lot – there have been a number of guests visiting my friends down here, and so I’ve been going to the beach, and on self-led walking tours of the Zona Colonial, and on picnics to the Botanical Gardens. I’ve been reading a lot, and swimming, and waiting. Parts of it are wonderful – sometimes I stop and wonder what my friends are doing on a Wednesday afternoon, while I read a novel on a lounge chair at the pool in 80 degree, perfectly sunny weather, and in those moments I recognize that this is exceedingly temporary, this break from real life. Other parts of it are much harder, and I am struggling with not having even something small to be accomplishing.
I do have a game plan however, and it is to try and exploit the temporary nature of all this free time I have. It is to get my gym routine started again, and to use the yoga DVDs I brought back from the States. It is to work my way through the enormous stack of books I lugged from Philadelphia to Minnesota to New York to DC to Santo Domingo. It is to try to post here, even if I find myself with nothing to say, or at least, nothing new to say. On that account, I’ve been thinking maybe photo essays might save me – you all seem to like the photos, right? If not feel free to say so, but otherwise, expect to be seeing a lot of photos and maybe not as many words for awhile. Well, I’m off to the pool with Peter Singer under my arm. See you later :).
I have been back from my trip home for about two weeks now and I think I have not been able to bring myself to write here because there is so little actually happening in my life right now. I am in limbo – I am standing around waiting. I am still hopeful that the project I have been offered through the Department of Education will pan out, but I have not been able to arrange a meeting to get things rolling yet. I have less hope that work will surface for me at CIPROS, the development organization which has taken me on. Nevertheless, I like the people who work at that office, and if the Department of Education project works out, it will be a good place to base myself, so I continue to go in, to show up and make small talk with the various employees, to eat lunch with them and to hope on the off chance that if I show up enough, if I establish myself as there, that perhaps something will change.
In the meantime, I am playing a lot – there have been a number of guests visiting my friends down here, and so I’ve been going to the beach, and on self-led walking tours of the Zona Colonial, and on picnics to the Botanical Gardens. I’ve been reading a lot, and swimming, and waiting. Parts of it are wonderful – sometimes I stop and wonder what my friends are doing on a Wednesday afternoon, while I read a novel on a lounge chair at the pool in 80 degree, perfectly sunny weather, and in those moments I recognize that this is exceedingly temporary, this break from real life. Other parts of it are much harder, and I am struggling with not having even something small to be accomplishing.
I do have a game plan however, and it is to try and exploit the temporary nature of all this free time I have. It is to get my gym routine started again, and to use the yoga DVDs I brought back from the States. It is to work my way through the enormous stack of books I lugged from Philadelphia to Minnesota to New York to DC to Santo Domingo. It is to try to post here, even if I find myself with nothing to say, or at least, nothing new to say. On that account, I’ve been thinking maybe photo essays might save me – you all seem to like the photos, right? If not feel free to say so, but otherwise, expect to be seeing a lot of photos and maybe not as many words for awhile. Well, I’m off to the pool with Peter Singer under my arm. See you later :).
Friday, December 14, 2007
A Peter Pan Year
Dominicans love to decorate for the holiday season, I’m learning, and the PLD, just across the street from me is no exception. It is covered in multi-colored strings of lights and the effect as I’m walking home is completely wonderful. I’m so excited for the holiday season this year. I hope you all are finding some of that holiday warmth in your own setting.I’m sorry there has been so much radio silence around here recently; I think I just really needed some time to let things marinate. It has been a very difficult three and a half months, but I think I’m finally coming out to the other side and I’m feeling so happy and positive about my decisions. Since my last post I have cemented a couple of projects for myself, changed my thinking about this year, and decided not to come home for good tomorrow, when I come to the States for a nice long holiday vacation. It’s been a very busy month J.
I started work last week for CIPROS, a development NGO which has ongoing projects in a number of the poorest suburbs of the city, as well as in another region in the south of the country. They have a center which helps single mothers train for and find employment, a medical clinic, and a prenatal care clinic. I have been put on the team that is working on a new project – a young child (2 to 5 years old) education center that will also provide services for families – education on nutrition and hygiene practices, etc. I spent the last week working on developing a form that will be used to interview all the families in that suburb with children in the age range, to determine basic facts about the families’ situations. I am not convinced that this position is really going to provide me with much interesting work to do – this one form was really the only concrete suggestion that came out of a long meeting we had to determine how I could assist – but I am hopeful that as I get more into the organization that may change, and if not, it provides a nice “home base” of sorts.
The reason I feel ok about this is that there is another project that I have been offered which will provide real work to sink my teeth into. The Secretary of State’s Department of Education has a department which administers funds for educational programming, both within the government, and to NGOs. I will be examining the programs run by NGOs funded through this department in the last year, and determine keys for success employed by these programs which could also be employed by governmental programs. This is pretty much exactly what I am interested in – determining how to successfully address issues of social concern. It is what I feel I most tried to study at Princeton, and I completed a very similar project the summer I lived in Uganda. It feels like a major challenge, and I feel somewhat intimated by taking it on, but it doesn’t feel completely out of my reach, and I actually believe that I have the skills to do this job and do it really well. It will allow me to do real work that will be actively used for social good, it will challenge me, but I have the skills to begin to chip away at it. I am incredibly excited about beginning this project.
So, while CIPROS may not provide me with much intellectual stimulation, it will provide me with a home base, and this project through the Secretary of State will provide me with a lot of intellectual stimulation. The idea is to work somewhat part-time at both of these places, and then to not actually be working full-time overall. Here’s where the change-of-mind piece comes in. I came into this experience with my usual perfectionist goals. I wanted a job that was going to involve me intensely and allow me to affect real! change! I wanted to be totally immersed in my work experience, and once I began to realize just how much I clashed with the culture I was living in, this became even more important to me. I spent a couple of weeks focusing on a sort of trade-off – if I wasn’t going to like the culture, I needed to LOVE my job to make up for it. This makes sense to me still, abstractly, but I’ve come around to thinking that perhaps it doesn’t make much sense in the context of the Dominican Republic.
My drive and work ethic seems to be confusing to people around me. I was pushing so hard for work, more work!, give me work to do!, and the people around me were asking if I had gotten around to going to any of the beaches yet. I’m going to start approaching this year differently. I’ve decided that instead of making myself crazy by pushing the current, desperately seeking work that I don’t think really exists, I’m going to swim with the current. This is the advice for those caught in rip tides, and I’ve begun to think that Dominican culture very much qualifies for rip tide status. I’m going to do good, quality work on my projects, I’m going to try to make sure I have something to occupy my mind and something to work at developing my skills through, but I’m not going to try to take on a lot of work. I am, in fact, going to work part-time overall. Wow, that feels a little scary to announce that to you all. I am styling this year as my hooky-year, my Peter Pan year. This is just not going to be the year that I grow all up and have a “real job” and work long hours and change the world. Instead, it’s going to be the year when I do a small amount of quality work, and the year that I sleep late and go out with friends a lot and the year that I go to the beach way more than is good for my skin.
I’m feeling pretty excited about the self-styling as Peter Pan. It sounds like a lot of fun, and even more than that, pretty restorative. So far I’m really loving the amount of breathing and thinking time it is giving me, the way my rhythm is slower. I don’t think this would work if there was a long stretch of time in front of me, but I am also thinking that it is likely I will end up leaving here earlier than I had originally expected and for another 4 to 6 months, I’m a little in love with my plan.
I’m heading to Philly tomorrow morning, and things are almost all in place. I’ve been running errands and cleaning like crazy (confidential aside to my Mom: I think you can consider your job done – I am officially an adult who is constitutionally incapable of leaving for a vacation without making sure her apartment is squeaky clean), and I am SO beyond excited to be home and to see so many of you. I hope you all have wonderful holidays and I’ll be back here in the New Year!
All my love.
Katrina
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Happy Thanksgiving
Hi All, I just wanted to wish everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving. I am thinking of you all and being thankful for you and wishing you warm delicious dinners. Eat some turkey and maybe a sweet potato or two for me.
love
Katrina
love
Katrina
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Well hi there! What’cha up to? Not much you say? Just surfing the web? You wanna take a little photo tour of my neighborhood? You do?! Awesome! Step right up! Ok folks, no pushing, everyone gets to come along, this is after all, an electronic tour. Geez.
Ok. So. Stepping outside of my gate, across the street we see a big purple and yellow building. Yes, that’s right, purple and yellow. This is the headquarters of the PLD (Partido de la Liberación Dominicana - the Dominican Liberation Party - which is the party of the current president). I find the difference in what we see as appropriate political colors and what Dominicans see as political colors to be very interesting. There are always a ton of people coming and going here, and a couple of watchmen all night who play music which you can sometimes hear softly in my room.
It has a ton of great murals, 
and this one in particular always reminds me of my Dad – the heads look just like him when he had short hair and a beard. Hi Dad!
Walking up the street we see the corner that is a flower shop in the morning, and a painter’s studio and gallery in the afternoon. Since it’s 3pm, we can see the paintings on display. 
In the afternoons the flower woman moves across the street to another corner. I really wonder what this arrangement is about.
Across the street, conveniently located about 100 yards from my apartment is a local branch of a big supermarket chain here, La Cadena (which literally means the chain). 
On the cross street we see my local internet café, J&G Computers. 
Isn't this an exciting tour? Aren't you so glad you decided to come along? Me too!!
One block over and we can visit the first apartment I lived in – it’s the top floor of the building straight ahead. 
Across the street from this building is my favorite colmado, the front is all one big long porch.
This colmado is so great it's actually a supercolmado. (whenever I see this sign I think of SuperWawas)
So now we’re back to my street,
walking home
and now we’re here! This is my building
and this is my little apartment!
I hope you all enjoyed visiting me – it was lovely to have you here :). Please come again soon!
Ok. So. Stepping outside of my gate, across the street we see a big purple and yellow building. Yes, that’s right, purple and yellow. This is the headquarters of the PLD (Partido de la Liberación Dominicana - the Dominican Liberation Party - which is the party of the current president). I find the difference in what we see as appropriate political colors and what Dominicans see as political colors to be very interesting. There are always a ton of people coming and going here, and a couple of watchmen all night who play music which you can sometimes hear softly in my room.
It has a ton of great murals, and this one in particular always reminds me of my Dad – the heads look just like him when he had short hair and a beard. Hi Dad!Walking up the street we see the corner that is a flower shop in the morning, and a painter’s studio and gallery in the afternoon. Since it’s 3pm, we can see the paintings on display. In the afternoons the flower woman moves across the street to another corner. I really wonder what this arrangement is about.Across the street, conveniently located about 100 yards from my apartment is a local branch of a big supermarket chain here, La Cadena (which literally means the chain). On the cross street we see my local internet café, J&G Computers. Isn't this an exciting tour? Aren't you so glad you decided to come along? Me too!!This guy is selling coconuts – you can see guys with these types of carts selling all kinds of things – mangos, avocadoes, etc. – all over the city.
One block over and we can visit the first apartment I lived in – it’s the top floor of the building straight ahead. Across the street from this building is my favorite colmado, the front is all one big long porch.This colmado is so great it's actually a supercolmado. (whenever I see this sign I think of SuperWawas)So now we’re back to my street,walking homeand now we’re here! This is my buildingand this is my little apartment!I hope you all enjoyed visiting me – it was lovely to have you here :). Please come again soon!Tomorrow at the ungodly hour of 5am I take off for the north coast for a long weekend, so look for some awesome beach and kite-surfing shots next week. Love you all!
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Messy
I’m sorry there hasn’t been more posting happening here recently. I wish there had been, and I mentally start posts all the time, planning them out as I walk down the street or prepare dinner or grocery shop. I think of the things I could tell you all, the little stories, like how recently I was sitting on the couch early on a Saturday morning, watching a little TV, and I had just turned on the ceiling fan and sat down and suddenly, plop!, something landed, a little wetly, on my shoulder. I took a BIG breath, and stamped down the overwhelming urge to hurl my body off the couch, to shake whatever it was off, off, OFF! I slowly turned my head to see a little black gecko peering back at me. He must have been chilling out on the fan when I turned it on. I set him free in the jungle-y alley running alongside my apartment’s back door.
I think about telling you how much I love my new gym. There are a set of huge fancy hotels that run along the Malecon (the street which fronts the ocean – named George Washington, of all things) and I joined the gym in one that is located just one block from my house and I go and work out on the elliptical machine and then one of the gym guys helps me think of interesting weight stuff to do and although it’s only been a few weeks, I am so excited to have a regular exercise schedule for the first time since high school, really. There’s a rooftop pool at this hotel as well, and access to it was included with my gym membership, and although I wasn’t really even thinking about it when I joined, it has turned out to be the most wonderful place to escape the city for brief periods. It gets a wonderful breeze since it’s close to the ocean and elevated, and I get a towel and lie in the sun and read a book or take a swim and it’s quiet and clean. I’ve been going a lot since I haven’t been working and today a bunch of my friends came as well and we made a whole Saturday of it.
The thing that blocks those peppy little mental posts however, is that I’m not really very happy right now. I am happy, quite happy, in small doses. I have friends I really like, and an actual social life that I’m finding quite fulfilling, which is not something I really expected at this stage. I have a lot of time and I am doing more nothing than I think I’ve done in years – in fact, most of the last two weeks of my life has consisted of going to the gym, reading, hanging out with friends, and watching movies. This nothing makes me happy in small doses – I can’t believe how wonderful it is to have time to go to the gym and do a whole, long routine, without the pressing dread of how I’m going to get my reading done for Metaphysics tomorrow. I love staying up late re-reading the 7th Harry Potter. I love that I can meet my friends for dinner any night of the week and that I can plan a long weekend away (next weekend I’m going to the kite-surfing capital of the world on the North Coast. I’m so excited!). I haven’t had the ability to do that much in the last four years.
But. But the truth is that outside and around and in all the times other than these small doses of fresh air, of light, of fun and relaxation, I feel very very messy. And I’m having a hard time writing about this messiness. I can write about true feelings – good or bad, but messiness trips me up more – things are not clear in my own mind and I am disturbed by how I feel.
It is of course, partly that I am effectively unemployed. I am working on finding a new position, but although I have a couple promising leads, it may take a couple more weeks to track them down and make a couple of site visits. I am disheartened by the lack of organization and drive and proficiency I have been presented with. I am trying so hard to let go of my American expectations, expectations which I believe are ultimately not good for us, expectations which I see as working us into the ground, expectations which I find myself frustratedly using to make grand cases against people around me here. It’s such an endless process for me – I let go of my expectations, I accept that things just work differently here, and then I find myself angry again the next day, all zen forgotten.
And if that was all – if I could tell that my feelings were occasioned by a lack of purpose and place, if I thought that the intense messiness that I currently feel would be mostly erased by a well-fitting job, I wouldn’t worry about it. I am optimistic that even though it might take a couple more weeks, one of my leads will turn up something that will be good for me, and I do think this will help. I think that a schedule, and a purpose, and being part of an organization that is doing something to combat the conditions I see around me will improve my mindset a ton, will help to clean up a bit of that messiness.
But the dark truth is that I don’t like this country right now. I really don’t want to admit this to you. I re-wrote that sentence multiple times before I finally got down to it, slowly unwrapping the deception I would like to cover my ugly feelings with. I got up and went to grocery store after writing it, letting it sit there on the page, thinking through what it meant to post that sentence on the worldwide web as I chose between all the different kinds of fresh breads. I even came back and changed it. You’ll notice I chose the noun country instead of other possibilities and that I end the sentence with a lovely little clause meant to temper, to contain, to limit my ugliness. I am so hoping this is a temporary, culture shock feeling.
It is unfair to feel this way about a country and a people. That you, from your tiny little, one-person perspective, do not like them. And I know so many people who love this country. And I have never felt this way before. Despite being in situations that were hard or trying, I have never felt that I couldn’t unearth redeeming qualities somewhere that could help me to gain a better picture of those around me, that could help me get the better of dislike.
I am having real trouble doing that right now. And this feels like an exceptionally dark thing to me, too dark, really, to write about on my “year in the DR” blog. It feels unwieldy and unjust and I don’t want to admit it about myself. I am posting about it nonetheless, because I feel a little stuck and I sincerely believe in the power and importance of putting it all out there and because I want you all to know who and where I am, even if I’m not very proud of it at the moment. Let’s hope that in a couple more months I can write a post talking about how much this has changed, okay?
Look for more posts on geckos, coming soon :).
I think about telling you how much I love my new gym. There are a set of huge fancy hotels that run along the Malecon (the street which fronts the ocean – named George Washington, of all things) and I joined the gym in one that is located just one block from my house and I go and work out on the elliptical machine and then one of the gym guys helps me think of interesting weight stuff to do and although it’s only been a few weeks, I am so excited to have a regular exercise schedule for the first time since high school, really. There’s a rooftop pool at this hotel as well, and access to it was included with my gym membership, and although I wasn’t really even thinking about it when I joined, it has turned out to be the most wonderful place to escape the city for brief periods. It gets a wonderful breeze since it’s close to the ocean and elevated, and I get a towel and lie in the sun and read a book or take a swim and it’s quiet and clean. I’ve been going a lot since I haven’t been working and today a bunch of my friends came as well and we made a whole Saturday of it.
The thing that blocks those peppy little mental posts however, is that I’m not really very happy right now. I am happy, quite happy, in small doses. I have friends I really like, and an actual social life that I’m finding quite fulfilling, which is not something I really expected at this stage. I have a lot of time and I am doing more nothing than I think I’ve done in years – in fact, most of the last two weeks of my life has consisted of going to the gym, reading, hanging out with friends, and watching movies. This nothing makes me happy in small doses – I can’t believe how wonderful it is to have time to go to the gym and do a whole, long routine, without the pressing dread of how I’m going to get my reading done for Metaphysics tomorrow. I love staying up late re-reading the 7th Harry Potter. I love that I can meet my friends for dinner any night of the week and that I can plan a long weekend away (next weekend I’m going to the kite-surfing capital of the world on the North Coast. I’m so excited!). I haven’t had the ability to do that much in the last four years.
But. But the truth is that outside and around and in all the times other than these small doses of fresh air, of light, of fun and relaxation, I feel very very messy. And I’m having a hard time writing about this messiness. I can write about true feelings – good or bad, but messiness trips me up more – things are not clear in my own mind and I am disturbed by how I feel.
It is of course, partly that I am effectively unemployed. I am working on finding a new position, but although I have a couple promising leads, it may take a couple more weeks to track them down and make a couple of site visits. I am disheartened by the lack of organization and drive and proficiency I have been presented with. I am trying so hard to let go of my American expectations, expectations which I believe are ultimately not good for us, expectations which I see as working us into the ground, expectations which I find myself frustratedly using to make grand cases against people around me here. It’s such an endless process for me – I let go of my expectations, I accept that things just work differently here, and then I find myself angry again the next day, all zen forgotten.
And if that was all – if I could tell that my feelings were occasioned by a lack of purpose and place, if I thought that the intense messiness that I currently feel would be mostly erased by a well-fitting job, I wouldn’t worry about it. I am optimistic that even though it might take a couple more weeks, one of my leads will turn up something that will be good for me, and I do think this will help. I think that a schedule, and a purpose, and being part of an organization that is doing something to combat the conditions I see around me will improve my mindset a ton, will help to clean up a bit of that messiness.
But the dark truth is that I don’t like this country right now. I really don’t want to admit this to you. I re-wrote that sentence multiple times before I finally got down to it, slowly unwrapping the deception I would like to cover my ugly feelings with. I got up and went to grocery store after writing it, letting it sit there on the page, thinking through what it meant to post that sentence on the worldwide web as I chose between all the different kinds of fresh breads. I even came back and changed it. You’ll notice I chose the noun country instead of other possibilities and that I end the sentence with a lovely little clause meant to temper, to contain, to limit my ugliness. I am so hoping this is a temporary, culture shock feeling.
It is unfair to feel this way about a country and a people. That you, from your tiny little, one-person perspective, do not like them. And I know so many people who love this country. And I have never felt this way before. Despite being in situations that were hard or trying, I have never felt that I couldn’t unearth redeeming qualities somewhere that could help me to gain a better picture of those around me, that could help me get the better of dislike.
I am having real trouble doing that right now. And this feels like an exceptionally dark thing to me, too dark, really, to write about on my “year in the DR” blog. It feels unwieldy and unjust and I don’t want to admit it about myself. I am posting about it nonetheless, because I feel a little stuck and I sincerely believe in the power and importance of putting it all out there and because I want you all to know who and where I am, even if I’m not very proud of it at the moment. Let’s hope that in a couple more months I can write a post talking about how much this has changed, okay?
Look for more posts on geckos, coming soon :).
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Well....I guess I asked for it....
oh going to the beach - it was hot and bright, although slightly cloudy on my walk from my house to the hotel where I am sitting in the lobby and using the WiFi, and I pushed the warnings I've been hearing that we'll see rain through the weekend and into next week to the back of my mind and merrily emailed and posted that I'd be feeling the sand between my toes by this time Saturday.
It's pouring. The palm trees are whipping back and forth outside the windows. Sigh.
It's pouring. The palm trees are whipping back and forth outside the windows. Sigh.
Hey There Square One
I quit my job last Thursday. Well, not the whole job – I am still employed by Princeton in Latin America to be in Santo Domingo and to work in the non-profit, non-governmental, public service field, but I am no longer working for Censel.
I haven’t talked about this on here much, but I assume that through what I did say and through other conversations, most of you were aware that I was having some serious difficulty with my job. While I thought (and continue to think) that the work done by Censel is of the utmost importance, the organization is undergoing something of a financial and administrative crisis and the truth is that they don’t have any work, or that they are not set up at this time to be able to find work for me to do. They’ve been attempting to find new sources of funding for quite some time and they’ve been mostly unsuccessful, leading to major cutbacks of educational and promotional programs, and a loss of staff members, which has curtailed their legal program as well.
Because of these factors and a number of others, there really wasn’t anything for me to do. I’m not a lawyer and my language skills are not good enough to take statements from generally emotional Dominican women about the legal difficulties they face. There’s a small amount of grant applying happening, and this is what I’ve spent time doing in the last two months, but even that is slow and small and not enough to sustain the number of women working there.
So, I quit. I…well, I feel pretty conflicted about this – have since the moment I walked out of my boss’s office and a week later the confliction has subsided somewhat, replaced by the firm reasoning I am trying to do and by the really incredible support so many of you are offering me. I don’t like the fact that I wasn’t able to make that situation work – it was, and is, an incredibly interesting organization with some simply amazing history and I wanted to be a part of what they are doing and I wanted to learn from them. But, I couldn’t. And I don’t actually think that’s my fault, although it’s easy to let that little doubting voice pipe up with other opinions when I’m feeling low.
I am currently working on researching other opportunities for myself here in the city – as I said, I am still employed by Princeton in Latin America to be here, working on something in the same range of non-profit posts, and I’ve thought it through and I’m committed to staying here if at all possible. I have a little while to work on communicating with contacts and researching organizations and I hope to find a number of promising organizations to examine in depth. I’ve started with that process a little, but was thrown off track a little by the storm – as I know some of you have read, there has been some pretty intense weather around these parts recently – Tropical Storm Noel blew through and although it has been seriously impressive to watch, and somewhat inconvenient as everything has been closed and the electricity has been going out for days, I am very safe.
It’s amazing however, how much a storm can throw something like this off. Unlike the States, the DR basically closes down when hit with serious weather. The infrastructure is simply not strong enough to handle the wind and water, and pretty instantaneous flooding and power outages result, leading to a standstill for most industries. It’s been a little like having a string of snow days as a kid – the first day or two are really fun and feel like a reprieve from life, and then as the days go on, people start getting cabin fever – no where to go, nothing to do. Today is bright and dry, although still a little cloudy, and although I’ve heard rumors that another storm is going to blow through this weekend, I’m choosing to hope that it’ll pass us by.
In the meantime I’ve been spending a lot of time with friends – my friend Rachel (who is now reading the blog (well, maybe), despite my intentions to be all sneaky about blogging to real life friends here - hi Rachel! Hope you don’t mind how much I talk about you here!) introduced me to a wonderful new café (with WiFi!) where the hipster crowd all congregates, and I’ve spent a couple of days there with her, and we also went to the ballet last weekend – Sleeping Beauty :). We’ve been doing movie nights and making brownies ala mode, and going to the gym a lot. It’s funny – I was so worried about the friend issue, much more worried in fact, about the friend thing than about the work thing, and as my life seems to like to do to me – the very opposite is true.
I feel like I’ve got a somewhat cemented friend thing happening – there are a group of kids from a study abroad program who I see very regularly and really like, and although they leave in December, it still feels like enough of a social life to sustain me. And I feel like I’ve found a real friend in Rachel – so often these situations quickly and artificially bond people to one another (not that that’s bad – just that it might not happen in different circumstances), but I feel like I would like to be friends with her in real life, and I feel incredibly lucky that that’s true. So…I’m starting to feel like not only do I have a social life, I also have someone to have a deeper friendship with too, and that’s pretty much having a magical, no-calorie, but tastes like normal, cake, with butter cream icing, and eating it too.
So, as usual, things are a mixed bag and I’m going to try to keep on keeping on. Oh, and I think if the weather holds, I will definitely be going to the beach this weekend. The beach solves career worries, right?
I haven’t talked about this on here much, but I assume that through what I did say and through other conversations, most of you were aware that I was having some serious difficulty with my job. While I thought (and continue to think) that the work done by Censel is of the utmost importance, the organization is undergoing something of a financial and administrative crisis and the truth is that they don’t have any work, or that they are not set up at this time to be able to find work for me to do. They’ve been attempting to find new sources of funding for quite some time and they’ve been mostly unsuccessful, leading to major cutbacks of educational and promotional programs, and a loss of staff members, which has curtailed their legal program as well.
Because of these factors and a number of others, there really wasn’t anything for me to do. I’m not a lawyer and my language skills are not good enough to take statements from generally emotional Dominican women about the legal difficulties they face. There’s a small amount of grant applying happening, and this is what I’ve spent time doing in the last two months, but even that is slow and small and not enough to sustain the number of women working there.
So, I quit. I…well, I feel pretty conflicted about this – have since the moment I walked out of my boss’s office and a week later the confliction has subsided somewhat, replaced by the firm reasoning I am trying to do and by the really incredible support so many of you are offering me. I don’t like the fact that I wasn’t able to make that situation work – it was, and is, an incredibly interesting organization with some simply amazing history and I wanted to be a part of what they are doing and I wanted to learn from them. But, I couldn’t. And I don’t actually think that’s my fault, although it’s easy to let that little doubting voice pipe up with other opinions when I’m feeling low.
I am currently working on researching other opportunities for myself here in the city – as I said, I am still employed by Princeton in Latin America to be here, working on something in the same range of non-profit posts, and I’ve thought it through and I’m committed to staying here if at all possible. I have a little while to work on communicating with contacts and researching organizations and I hope to find a number of promising organizations to examine in depth. I’ve started with that process a little, but was thrown off track a little by the storm – as I know some of you have read, there has been some pretty intense weather around these parts recently – Tropical Storm Noel blew through and although it has been seriously impressive to watch, and somewhat inconvenient as everything has been closed and the electricity has been going out for days, I am very safe.
It’s amazing however, how much a storm can throw something like this off. Unlike the States, the DR basically closes down when hit with serious weather. The infrastructure is simply not strong enough to handle the wind and water, and pretty instantaneous flooding and power outages result, leading to a standstill for most industries. It’s been a little like having a string of snow days as a kid – the first day or two are really fun and feel like a reprieve from life, and then as the days go on, people start getting cabin fever – no where to go, nothing to do. Today is bright and dry, although still a little cloudy, and although I’ve heard rumors that another storm is going to blow through this weekend, I’m choosing to hope that it’ll pass us by.
In the meantime I’ve been spending a lot of time with friends – my friend Rachel (who is now reading the blog (well, maybe), despite my intentions to be all sneaky about blogging to real life friends here - hi Rachel! Hope you don’t mind how much I talk about you here!) introduced me to a wonderful new café (with WiFi!) where the hipster crowd all congregates, and I’ve spent a couple of days there with her, and we also went to the ballet last weekend – Sleeping Beauty :). We’ve been doing movie nights and making brownies ala mode, and going to the gym a lot. It’s funny – I was so worried about the friend issue, much more worried in fact, about the friend thing than about the work thing, and as my life seems to like to do to me – the very opposite is true.
I feel like I’ve got a somewhat cemented friend thing happening – there are a group of kids from a study abroad program who I see very regularly and really like, and although they leave in December, it still feels like enough of a social life to sustain me. And I feel like I’ve found a real friend in Rachel – so often these situations quickly and artificially bond people to one another (not that that’s bad – just that it might not happen in different circumstances), but I feel like I would like to be friends with her in real life, and I feel incredibly lucky that that’s true. So…I’m starting to feel like not only do I have a social life, I also have someone to have a deeper friendship with too, and that’s pretty much having a magical, no-calorie, but tastes like normal, cake, with butter cream icing, and eating it too.
So, as usual, things are a mixed bag and I’m going to try to keep on keeping on. Oh, and I think if the weather holds, I will definitely be going to the beach this weekend. The beach solves career worries, right?
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
The Good List
Last week I flew to Chicago. One of my best friends was getting married on Saturday and so on Wednesday morning I took a cab in the rain and flew through Atlanta to get to be with her, help with wedding preparations, and be there for the event. It was wonderful – that word is pretty insufficient to explain what last weekend meant to me, but when I first found out, last summer, that she would be getting married in October, I had a split second of thinking about not going, since I would be in the DR, and it would be expensive to go. And now, thinking about what it would have been like to not have gone, I can’t believe I even considered it. So wonderful doesn’t really cover it, but maybe you can understand what I mean for that word to cover.
Anyway – I want to write a post about the weekend, about what it was like to be home in the US for four days, and now what it is like to be back here, but my life here is a little tumultuous at the moment – I am thinking this week may be my last week working for this organization, and I don’t feel clear enough to write it.
So, because there’s general consensus that focusing on the positive side of things helps one to actually feel more positive about the things in question, I’m going to write you all a little free-form list about the good, surprising, enjoyable, funny, useful things about the DR, Santo Domingo, and my life here.
The Good List
- Avocadoes. Dominicans LOVE avocadoes, and I eat a slice for lunch everyday, all mixed in with my rice and beans. I have hated, for 22 years, avocadoes, and I was dismayed when I first got here and Dona Ramona put a slice of one on my plate at lunch and I realized that I was either going to have to eat it or say I didn’t like them, and I didn’t want to say I didn’t like them since pickiness in general is not a quality favoured by Dona Ramona and I was new and I wanted everyone to like me and think I wasn’t a stuck-up American princess. So. I ate it. And the first day I didn’t really like it. Or the second or third, but I think that around the fourth I started thinking about how the combination of flavours with the beans and the rice was actually pretty interesting, and now, closing on two months of eating avocadoes semi-daily, I LOVE avocadoes. I weep at the thought of all those years wasted, deprived of the buttery, green taste of avocadoes.
- Beaches. I’ve already posted some pictures on here, but no Good List of the DR would be complete without mention of the beaches. People, this is good stuff. The Caribbean is an awful place to live in lots of ways (and yes, I am listing them in my head, but I will not write them down – this is a good list!), but the beaches are GOOD. The beaches are definitely God’s way of saying sorry for the giant cockroaches and the rampant ants (I tried so hard but apparently I’m feeling pretty bitter about the bug thing – it just kept creeping in!). The beaches, with their perfectly white sand and perfectly blue, perfectly warm water, ringed by their perfectly arranged palm trees blowing in the perfect hint of a breeze, might just be enough to get Him out of the doghouse for those ants.
- Coffee. I don’t drink coffee. I don’t like coffee. Well, except for those three weeks I spent in Cuba in high school, where I learned that Cubans drank their dark, already sweet coffee in tiny cups with more sugar than coffee. Turns out the Dominicans drink it the same way. And Dona Ramona keeps a carafe full in the office kitchen, and one of my co-workers gave me a pretty brown cup. Oh coffee.
- Cold showers. I bet you’re surprised. What are cold showers doing on a List of Good? Cold showers are bad, right? Cold showers should be avoided. And, yes, while most households in the DR do not have hot water heaters, my apartment is fancy enough that it actually has one, so if I wanted to, I could switch it on 20 minutes before I wanted to take a shower and avail myself of lovely, relaxing hot water. Except it wouldn’t be. Lovely or relaxing that is. This country, friends and family, is what we call HOT. Today it is 88°F with 70% humidity. That is a recipe for making a girl discover the restorative properties of cold showers.
- Candles. Now, I always knew I loved candles, but when the power goes out for more than five hours at a time, and then the generator runs out, I find a whole new appreciation for candles.
- Dominican Rum. I don’t really feel this one needs any explanation.
- Geckos. I really love little lizards. They are so cute and they eat bugs! Two weeks ago, I had just turned on the ceiling fan and sat down on the coach to watch a little TV when all of a sudden there was a weird little “plop!” noise, and something definitely landed on my shoulder. I fought the urge to completely freak out and run around desperately trying to shake off whatever the thing was, and calmly looked down to discover it was a little gecko who must have been chilling out on the fan. I know this story should probably bar geckos from the Good Thing list, but somehow, it only makes me like them more. Plus, did I tell you? They eat bugs!
- Friends on my same wavelength. This one is not very specific to here, but since I just sent a tentative text message to a friend, asking if there was any way that I could convince her to go to the National Theatre’s production of Sleeping Beauty the Ballet with me this weekend, and she called back immediately, SUPER EXCITED, I believe I can add it.
Anyway – I want to write a post about the weekend, about what it was like to be home in the US for four days, and now what it is like to be back here, but my life here is a little tumultuous at the moment – I am thinking this week may be my last week working for this organization, and I don’t feel clear enough to write it.
So, because there’s general consensus that focusing on the positive side of things helps one to actually feel more positive about the things in question, I’m going to write you all a little free-form list about the good, surprising, enjoyable, funny, useful things about the DR, Santo Domingo, and my life here.
The Good List
- Avocadoes. Dominicans LOVE avocadoes, and I eat a slice for lunch everyday, all mixed in with my rice and beans. I have hated, for 22 years, avocadoes, and I was dismayed when I first got here and Dona Ramona put a slice of one on my plate at lunch and I realized that I was either going to have to eat it or say I didn’t like them, and I didn’t want to say I didn’t like them since pickiness in general is not a quality favoured by Dona Ramona and I was new and I wanted everyone to like me and think I wasn’t a stuck-up American princess. So. I ate it. And the first day I didn’t really like it. Or the second or third, but I think that around the fourth I started thinking about how the combination of flavours with the beans and the rice was actually pretty interesting, and now, closing on two months of eating avocadoes semi-daily, I LOVE avocadoes. I weep at the thought of all those years wasted, deprived of the buttery, green taste of avocadoes.
- Beaches. I’ve already posted some pictures on here, but no Good List of the DR would be complete without mention of the beaches. People, this is good stuff. The Caribbean is an awful place to live in lots of ways (and yes, I am listing them in my head, but I will not write them down – this is a good list!), but the beaches are GOOD. The beaches are definitely God’s way of saying sorry for the giant cockroaches and the rampant ants (I tried so hard but apparently I’m feeling pretty bitter about the bug thing – it just kept creeping in!). The beaches, with their perfectly white sand and perfectly blue, perfectly warm water, ringed by their perfectly arranged palm trees blowing in the perfect hint of a breeze, might just be enough to get Him out of the doghouse for those ants.
- Coffee. I don’t drink coffee. I don’t like coffee. Well, except for those three weeks I spent in Cuba in high school, where I learned that Cubans drank their dark, already sweet coffee in tiny cups with more sugar than coffee. Turns out the Dominicans drink it the same way. And Dona Ramona keeps a carafe full in the office kitchen, and one of my co-workers gave me a pretty brown cup. Oh coffee.
- Cold showers. I bet you’re surprised. What are cold showers doing on a List of Good? Cold showers are bad, right? Cold showers should be avoided. And, yes, while most households in the DR do not have hot water heaters, my apartment is fancy enough that it actually has one, so if I wanted to, I could switch it on 20 minutes before I wanted to take a shower and avail myself of lovely, relaxing hot water. Except it wouldn’t be. Lovely or relaxing that is. This country, friends and family, is what we call HOT. Today it is 88°F with 70% humidity. That is a recipe for making a girl discover the restorative properties of cold showers.
- Candles. Now, I always knew I loved candles, but when the power goes out for more than five hours at a time, and then the generator runs out, I find a whole new appreciation for candles.
- Dominican Rum. I don’t really feel this one needs any explanation.
- Geckos. I really love little lizards. They are so cute and they eat bugs! Two weeks ago, I had just turned on the ceiling fan and sat down on the coach to watch a little TV when all of a sudden there was a weird little “plop!” noise, and something definitely landed on my shoulder. I fought the urge to completely freak out and run around desperately trying to shake off whatever the thing was, and calmly looked down to discover it was a little gecko who must have been chilling out on the fan. I know this story should probably bar geckos from the Good Thing list, but somehow, it only makes me like them more. Plus, did I tell you? They eat bugs!
- Friends on my same wavelength. This one is not very specific to here, but since I just sent a tentative text message to a friend, asking if there was any way that I could convince her to go to the National Theatre’s production of Sleeping Beauty the Ballet with me this weekend, and she called back immediately, SUPER EXCITED, I believe I can add it.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Bocadito
I thought I'd show you all the little gecko (? - I'm not sure how to tell between different types of small lizards) I found in my kitchen last night. There are a million little lizards everywhere, and I keep wanting to take pictures of them to show you all, but since I don't normally have my camera on me, it's been difficult. Anyway - gecko!
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