The Beach

As mentioned before, I'm about a five minute walk to the beach. Cabarete beach is very active as there are countless bars and restaurants which have one end on the main street through town, and the other end on the beach. Most places have tables, chairs, etc. on the actual beach which, as you might imagine, is quite nice. During the day people lounge about on the sand, or wind surf or kite board out on the water. Here's a couple shots of me on the beach today. I'll get some later of the masses of windsurfers and kiteboarders on the water. There wasn't a lot of wind today, so the water wasn't too full and wouldn't have given a good representation of what it typically looks like.

Damajagua

Last Sunday, I took a trip with 4 other people to an area called Damajagua. Damajagua is a system of 28 waterfalls and countless pools up in the hills that make for a unique hike/swim/jump/slide experience. Getting there required a two hour bus ride, including a transfer half way, to the west of Cabarete. Once dropped off, there's a little shack with a group of available guides for hire for about $10 per person (for us anyway). The guide led us down a half mile path to where the river began. We put on life jackets and helmets which would become quite useful later on. From there we hiked some more through the jungle until we arrived at the first pool. From this point on, it worked generally like this: swim through the pool, climb up a waterfall, hike a little more, repeat. Each cycle was different in its own way however. Each waterfall was different, each climb was different and sometimes required ropes and help from the very experienced guides, and each hike was different. Even during the hike portions we were usually in ankle deep water or at least walking on rocks sticking out of the water. A few times there were places to jump off the rocks into deep pools. The highest one was probably about 40 feet and was a bit daunting because the pool did not look that wide from above. I was the first of my group to do that jump and, instead of jumping more straight up and down, kind of carried a little towards the rock wall of the pool. I really wasn't that close to it, but everyone else decided to bypass that jump. It looked a lot worse from above than from my vantage point in the water. The trip down was similar to the way up, with some natural waterslides mixed in. The rock base has been worn down so much over the years that they are quite smooth and easy to slide down. Once we got to the bottom we had another two hour ride back to friendly confines of Cabarete and another week of camp ahead. All in all a great way to spend a Sunday.

Bachata

This past saturday, while some of you out there were enjoying Pearl Jam at the Gorge, I attended my second bachata concert. Bachata (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachata) is a type of music native to the Dominican Republic that is quite popular with young people. It has a distinctive high pitched guitar sound, which is backed by a multitude of other instruments and smooth vocals.

This Saturday's performance was by Zacharia Ferreria at the Sosua Car Wash. Now wait just a minute, you might say, a car wash? Yes, for some reason here the car wash/bar makes perfect sense as a business model. I haven't found anyone that can really explain it yet, but when I do, I'll be sure to pass it on. But yes, these places are car washes by day, and also have an adjoining bar area with a dance floor and stage for nighttime entertainment. Anyway, I was not too impressed with Zacharia as he showed up around midnight, played five songs, and then took about a two hour encore break and returned for a few more songs. I am not joking, the break was that long. And I didn't think his music was as good as the other concert.

The prior Saturday I saw Raulin Rodriguez at a similar type establishment, sans car wash. Raulin played for a very long time and didn't take a two hour break to go do whatever it is that Zacharia decided to do. The venue and music were also a lot better, so that was overall a better experience. I suppose I'll see some more of these performances, but not too many as they are relatively expensive. Probably about $10 entrance fee, $5-$10 for taxi fares depending on where it is, and however much extra for drinks should one so choose. Not hugely expensive, but a lot more than just staying in Cabarete.

Until next time, same bat time, same bat channel.

El Campamento de Verano

As mentioned in previous posts, I'm working in a summer camp at the moment. The camp runs for five weeks and is held at a school in the poorest neighborhood of Cabarete, the Callejon. The camp is divided by age into six groups, with each group having a name: the Lobos (wolves), the Payasos (clowns), the Leones (lions), the Tiburones (sharks), the Campeones (champions), and the Matatanes (killers). I especially enjoy the last one.

I am one of three counselors in charge of the Payasos, who are the second youngest group, 9 years old. We can often be found trying to round up our kids, or get them all to do something by shouting, "Payasos, come here" or "Payasos, be quiet please." As someone pointed out, when you think about it it's kind of funny, because we're saying, "hey you clowns, get over here" etc. Anyway, there's 27 of them when they all show up, and they are quite a handful. They generally don't follow directions very well and like nothing more than punching each other all day. And in my case, I have trouble saying complex things and can rarely figure out how to say what I want to say, not that they'll listen to it anyway. They're generally good kids, but I just don't think they've had a lot of discipline in their lives at this point.

Half of the counselors are in charge of groups, like myself. The other half are in charge of a subject area. The six subject areas are science and nature, sports, life skills, academic tutoring, arts and crafts, and music and dance. Those counselors generally stay in their classrooms and each group rotates through the different areas.

Camp runs from 9-3 each day and it also includes a simple breakfast of fruit and yogurt, and a lunch. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday we walk to a local restaurant and have a traditional Dominican meal of rice, beans, and chicken usually. The kids behave themselves pretty well at the restaurants, probably because it's something they're not used to. Tuesday and Tursday we have ham and cheese sandwiches in camp. Not the greatest, but decent enough.

The first week of camp was quite a shock. It took a while to get used to the unlimited energy of the kids and get comfortable with the fact that it will never be completely quiet, and there will always be distractions. I generally consider it a success if they are all either paying attention or, if not paying attention, at least sitting quietly and not distracting others. You have to look for little victories. The Friday of the first week we had a parade through town and back down the beach. It was something fun for the kids, and also a way to provide some publicity for what we do. It was certainly nice to break up the monotony of being in camp all day long.

Another thing that mixes up the routine is field trips, which began on week 2. Each group probably has about 2-3 field trips per week for weeks 2-4. Some are all day trips which require a long bus ride like going to a museum in Santiago, while others are half day walking trips like simply going to the beach. Most of the trips are essentially donations by whatever establishment agreed to let us come for free.

So that's pretty much where I stand now. Today is Thursday of week 3, just over the halfway point. Today I went with a group of the youngest kids to a nice hotel pool for a couple hours. You might not think that kids who have lived their entire lives right on the beach would be that excited about going to a swimming pool, but they are.

Lets get some more pictures....

Breakfast for the campers.

The Payasos doing an arts and crafts project.

During the parade.

Another parade shot.

Alright, that'll do it until next time.

More Pictures

Let's try a few more

One evening we all took a trip on a little river boat down a river to where it meets the ocean. This is that same trip that the kids will have one of the many field trip. At the beginning there was a small reptile park. Here I am holding a nonpoisonous snake (a python I think). And yes, I am wearing a Guns 'N Roses shirt.

Here's Lilly enjoying the boat ride. If there are no posts after this one, it's probably because she killed my for putting this picture here.

Me with Tarin and Rachel, two BYU students. The Mormon ladies just can't get enough of me.

Me with Antoinette, a student at Middlebury College.

Anthony, myself, Joe

Kim and Caroline, two recent graduates of Middlebury College, and also full year volunteers.

Well, I think that'll do it for now. Hopefully you enjoyed those and I'll keep them coming in the future.

Back To Getting Caught Up

For those that are interested, I had an amoeba last week. A few doses of the antibiotic, Paramox, and I was good to go.

Alright, so the first full I week I was here was orientation week. This consisted of getting to know everyone else, learning about how the camp would work, and also becoming familiar with Cabarete. We would generally meet from roughly 9-4, and no one day was like any other. We had the always enjoyable ice-breaker activities, a tour of the town, general information sessions, a basic first aid class, tours of a lot of the DREAM facilities, and various other activites which weren't all that interesting at the time so I'm guessing they won't be terribly interesting to read about either. A side note here, I don't really care if I post run-on sentences or have other grammatical errors, I'm not going back to change them. Just deal with it.

Let's try something new and see if I can get some pictures up.

Here's a shot of my room from the entryway. There really wasn't a better angle so this is the best I could do. Maybe I'll add some more in the future. The bathroom is to my immediate left and you can kind of see the rest. Behind my bed is the wall and to each side is a nightstand. A bit spartan, but it gets the job done.

At a lunch one day during orientation. From left to right, Niko (a dominican counselor), Mel, myself, Anthony (also a full year volunteer), and Joe.

OK, I seem to have the picture thing down so let's see how they look and I'll get more up soon.

All I Need Are Some Cool Buds and Tasty Waves

I forgot to mention in my last post that the first Friday I was here was the day I learned how to surf. Cabarete is world renowned for wind surfing and kite boarding, but it also has some decent surfing (so I've been told. I don't really have any place to compare it to). There's a surf company that has a shuttle in the morning out to the surf beach, which is about a ten minute ride from the main strip. Out there, they have a little shack with all of the boards and equipment. I paid about $50 to be able to head out there as much as I like for at least the summer. I phrase it that way because there isn't a real firm price structure for anything and I plan on just going as much as I feel like until, if ever, he asks me to pay more. We'll see how that end of it goes.

Anyway, that first time I had a lesson on land, which covered the basics of surfing. Then I got out into the water and had another guy assisting me and giving me pointers. Basically, I would lay on the board towards shore, and he would give me a nice push when a good wave came. After a while I was able to get up and ride the waves straight in. I was surprised at how easily I picked up the basics.

That day was the first of 7 days in a row I surfed. The surf is always best in the morning here so that worked well even during orientation week. A group of us would get up for the 6:30 shuttle every morning, surf for about an hour, and still make it back for orientation at 9. Not a bad way to start the day. As the week went on I got better and better (relatively, I'm still terrible) and learned about how to paddle better to build up speed when catching the wave (very important), how to turn and ride down the wave a bit, and other such things.

I haven't gone during the week since camp started, but have only made it out once a week on the weekends. That may change, though, as we have become more comfortable with the routine in the morning, I don't think we'll have to be there as early and may have enough time to hit the beach beforehand. We'll see.

A Brief Note From The Present

Taking a break from recapping past events, I'd like to take a minute to discuss yesterday and today.........

The word for today is parasite. It might sound surprising, but parasites are not all that enjoyable. Since Tuesday night, I have had to "use the bathroom a few more times than normal" and have also had some nice feelings in my stomach. I think I now know what if feels like to have menstral cramps. If this is already too much information for you, you may want to skip the rest of this post.

The good news is that there is a medical center here that provides basic services. They gave me a general antibiotic and will probably have something more specific to what exactly is ailing me after they do an analysis today. What kind of analysis you ask? Why an analysis of the stool sample I gave them this morning, of course. Yes, I can now cross that one off my list of life experiences.

So anyway, I'm not at the Summer Camp today and hopefully on the road to a quick recovery.

Day 3

OK, where were we? The next day, a few more people began to show up and the group started to take shape a bit more. A guy named Joe, also going back to a senior year at Dartmouth, got in that evening. I suppose this is a good time to mention that over half of the people here are female, which is nice on the one hand, but hanging out with a bunch of chicks all day can be tiresome. One needs someone with which to discuss important things such as Ben Wallace signing with the Bulls and also someone to watch Zinedine Zidane do one of the most boneheaded things I've ever seen in a championship event. We decided it was the equivalent of charging the mound in the 9th inning of the 7th game of the World Series with the game still undecided, among other things. But I digress.

The rest of Thursday was pretty similar to Wednesday: getting further acclimated to the town and country, sitting around talking, and of course being hot. By this point I think I've somewhat adjusted to the climate, but it was tough initially.

By Friday, almost everyone had arrived, including the 20 or so people from BYU. The BYU kids are all very nice and friendly, but the contrasts between them and the rest of us (what I call the heathens or other such things) provide for some interesting interactions and discussions.

Anyway, Friday night included our first trip down to the beach restaurants and bars. There are some pretty nice places down there to eat and drink, but if you know how to do it right you can have a night out on the town very cheaply. There are a lot of 2 for 1 dinner specials, 2 for 1 happy hours, and also less upscale places to eat and drink. I enjoy a place called Sandro's for dinner because you can have a basic chicken, rice, and beans meal for less than $4 including tip. Another thing to consider is that the bars all spill out onto the beach and have tables on the beach and people trapsing back and forth all over the place. So its possible to buy a cheap Presidente (the national beer) or a cuba libre (rum & coke) and walk up and down the beach or meet your friends at a table somewhere.

So my first taste of the nightlife was pretty sucessful, if uneventful. Uneventful is probably a good thing as it means everyone had fun and also got home safely. The main strip is a generally safe place, but one just needs to be a little more careful than during the day and not walk alone in any dark areas of the beach.

Alright, I'll pick it up at Sat. and also keep summarizing a lot more because, as you can see, there's a lot of repetativeness to my days here. You don't need to read, and I don't want to write, about every trip to the beach or even every day in camp when I get to that point. Basically it's going to eventually be when I have something different or interesting to write about.

Thanks for the comments, keep them coming. Also feel free to send me e-mails. To answer a question, the typical Dominican greeting is hola, or buenas dias (nothing to special). I haven't come across anything distinctively Dominican at this point.

Hasta Luego.

Here We Go

This will be my first substantive post. I suppose I need to catch up on what I've been up to for the past three weeks, so I don't know how organized this will be, or if I'll even get it all down right now. Probably not.

Anyway, I arrive here in Cabarete on the evening of June 20th. I was picked up at the airport by Freddy, the husband of the director of the organization. Freddy is a local Dominican so I took the opportunity to have my first conversation in my broken Spanish. I'm not sure that all of my comments made any sense and I definitely know that I didn't understand everything he said to me, but you have to learn by trying. That's something I'm constantly telling myself.

Freddy dropped me off at my new digs here at the Residencia Dominicana. This place is, more or less, a hotel with various people staying for various lengths of time. There are probably 30 units with 10 or so of them being DREAM volunteers here for the summer, or possibly longer. My unit consists of one room with a double bed, small table, two chairs, two nightstands, and a closet. I also have my own bathroom with a shower, toilet, and sink. In the corner of the main room is a mini fridge and a two burner stove. The fridge has been used extensively, but the stove has not been used at all up to this point. Basically I need to buy a pot and/or pan to begin using the stove. I also have a little balcony that overlooks the quiet (except for when drunk Brits come home at 3am) street and unused land next door. Everything in my room was about what I expected except for the "kitchen." I thought that would be a little more extensive, but it's no big deal. One rule I've learned many times over already is to not expect a whole lot. I also briefly met the few people who were already here and then went to bed.

The next morning I got up and had the first of many cold showers. I assume the hot water in my shower works, but I choose to make them cold because they just feel so good. I feel that I'm constantly sweating in the heat and humidity so a nice cool rinse off works well about any time of the day. I usually take one before bed just to cool down as much as possible. I don't have any a/c as you might imagine, but I do have a fan mounted above my bed. Back to day two. I met some of the other volunteers and walked down to the DREAM Project office and checked that out and met a couple of the full time employees. Everybody except myself and one other person had been here for a while planning the summer camp and they had more work to do, so I walked around town a little with the other unoccupied volunteer, Lilly. Lilly is going to be a senior at Dartmouth and had actually volunteered here last year for 4 months. So she was able to give me the lowdown on various things in town and tell me about how things work. After a while it actually began to rain, which was to be a fairly common occurrence the first two weeks I was here (usually in the late afternoon though). So after slogging back to Residencia I worked on unpacking and getting settled. After that I headed down to the beach which is about a five minute walk from where I live. As you might imagine I've spent a lot of time on the beach in my free time.

The rest of my day was pretty lazy, consisting of sitting around, reading, and making my first trip to the wonderful Janet's supermarket. Janet's has a pretty wide selection and it was a bit overwhelming at first trying to figure out what these new brands were and also deciding what was a good deal since everything is priced in Dominican Pesos. 1 dollar equals roughly 30 pesos. So I bought some water (essential because the tap water is not good for drinking) and a box of cereal and called it good.

I think that's a good start for now, and I'll pick it up from here sometime soon.

Adios.

Greetings to all in the real world

I think I finally figured out this blog thing, so this should be my maiden voyage into the blogosphere. Since this is more or less a test post, I'm going to keep this short and sweet. With that said, I will let you know that life has been good the past three weeks. Hopefully, more to come.