I´m Leaving, On a Jet Plane

For those that weren´t already aware, in two weeks I´ll be heading home. Presumably this will happen on a jet plane, but I can´t be sure until it actually happens. I do, however, know when I´ll be back again. I´ll be home from December 15th to December 30th, although I´ll be in Whistler, B.C. the first weekend for my brother´s bachelor party. Get those red carpets cleaned and prepare the fatted calf.

Mr. Sunshine on my Goddamn Shoulders, John Denver

Seat at the table! Starting defense!

I have found that I'm a pretty intelligent guy in some ways. Unfortunately, the type of things I'm most proficient at have no societal value whatsoever. Here's an example: Notre Dame men's basketball plays tonight against Winston Salem St., who are coached by Bobby Collins. When I read of this fact I immediately thought of this person (you'll have to scroll down to the eighth person listed):

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107889/

Now, if someone can tell me how to turn this talent into a profitable enterprise, I'm all ears.

Béisbol

Last Saturday I traveled to Santiago with five other people, mainly to take in a Dominican league baseball game. The Dominican league lasts from November to February and constists of six teams. The closest to us is Las Ágilas del Cibao, which play about two hours away from us in Santiago, the second largest city in the country. We left late Saturday morning on a Caribe Tours bus (quite comfortable actually) which got us to Santiago in the early afternoon. We found our hostel pretty easily (due to my amazing leadership skills) and then spent a while relaxing and just getting settled. After a bite to eat in the neighborhood it was time to make our way to Estadio Cibao. The stadium was a little ways away so we had to take some form of transportation to get there. After getting off the gua gua (a public bus, but not what you are used to seeing) at the wrong place we eventually found a taxi that took us right to the stadium. This misstep, of course, had nothing to do with my leadership, but can only be blamed on the other members of my group. Anyway, we got there right about the 7:30 game time and were immediately bombarded by scalpers. Since I don´t even like scalping in the US if I don´t have to, I suggested we play it safe and buy from the ticket booth. The scalpers claimed we would only find bad tickets at the booth, but I thought to myself, "self, this stadium only holds 15,000 people, how bad can the worst tickets be?" So we got the 120 pesos ($4) tickets from the ticket booth and ended up on the first baseline about twenty rows up. Not too bad. Perhaps the greatest thing about the game was when we entered the stadium we were immediately handed free cups of rum from a woman in some sort of skimpy cat suit type of costume. It was baffling to say the least. The play on the field was also pretty decent and the home team won 6-5, so it was a good atmosphere for us nonpartisans just looking to have a good time. Among the players were some lesser known current Major Leaguers, as well as former Major Leaguer and Tacoma Tiger Luis Polonia, and Felix Fermin who was managing Las Ágilas. All in all, it was a great experience and definitely something I´d like to do again if I have another opportunity.






Jen, Me, Anthony at the game














Julie, Estelle, Jen, and Anthony

Luis Polonia

Julie and Rebecca on the bus, being uncooperative as I was trying to take a picture

Break out the wine coolers and pedicure kits

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before, but there's a definite gender imbalance here among this group of volunteers. I believe there are three males, including myslef, and twelve females. This monday Jeff had to fly home unexpectedly for a funeral, and Anthony left yesterday afternoon to head home for Thanksgiving (when you live in NY it's a lot more reasonable to do short trips), leaving me as the lone remaining male volunteer for the time being. So what happens? Sure enough, last night I found myself watching Sex and the City. I suggested we watch the Maui Invitational basketball tournament, but was quickly shot down by a 5-1 vote. On the bright side, I did have about 15 free Oreos.

What has my life become?

No, that´s not Haiti, it´s Canada

One of the things I´ve realized over the past few weeks is that I really need some simple, educational computer programs for the students to use. I wanted some things that could be used by students that couldn´t read very well, and would be somewhat fun for them and keep their interest so I wouldn´t find them searching for internet games every time I turned my back. Last week, I found a couple good ones that are free and downloadable--just what I was looking for. One has simple games like memory, hangman, and simple math. That seems to be vey popular so far. The other one is geography based, and requires the students to find the correct country, city, continent, etc. on a map. Watching a few of them do the geography games was just another example of how poor the level of education here is. I usually started them with the game that had them identify countries of North and Central America. I figured this would be the easiest one for them. Most kids, however, could only, at best, identify The Dominican Republic and Haiti. Some, could not even accomplish that much, which is what my title alludes to. That was an actual comment I made today. There´s a lot of room for improvement, I guess.

The Internet

I realize that I haven´t written much recently about what I actually do all day here at the school, so I figured I´d give you a little taste here today. The main thing I do is teach (or try to teach) computer skills to the students here. One of the tasks I help them with is performing basic internet searches. This proves to be difficult for a number of reasons.

First of all, I don´t think there are many students here that understand what the internet is. They seem to think that it´s some sort of magical thing contained within the computer that can give them answers to their homework questions, as well as show them pictures of Daddy Yankee. I think just having a general understanding of the vastness of the internet and how it actually functions would greatly improve their ability to use it effectively.

Secondly, most kids seem to think that the internet has to open up with the google home page, and if it doesn´t, they are immediately lost. They don´t have the ability to navigate to the google homepage (or anywhere else for that matter) and are continuously opening up new windows if they want to start a new search. There are also varying degrees of skill using the back and forward buttons, and clicking on links.

Lastly, the majority of students have trouble understanding that the computer cannot read their minds and doesen´t always know what they mean. This also goes beyond computer skills to basic knowlege, because the root of the problem is just being uneducated in general. An example of this is a student who was in here yesterday. His homework, as he copied down verbatim from the board in class, was "find information about the constitution of the republic(meaning the Dominican Republic)." So of course he types "the constitution of the republic" into google and finds a page discussing the constitution of Costa Rica. He immediately starts copying down some information, not really paying attention to what the words mean, and ignores our attempts to get him to understand that this is not what he wants. Finally, Anthony walks him over to a map and explains where Costa Rica is, where we are, and why what he´s looking at is not correct. I think we made a small amount of headway.

I guess, all we can do is keep trying and do what we can do.

Have a geat weekend everyone.

Notre Dame to face Bellarmine

I sure hope Bernie has the boys ready tonight.


Irish To Face Bellarmine In Final Exhibtion Game
Tip-off schedule for 7:30 p.m. Monday.

Nov. 5, 2006


Notre Dame plays its final exhibition tuneup on Monday night against Bellarmine. The Irish are coming off of a 79-44 win against Rockhurst on Wednesday in its exhibition opener. Notre Dame opens up the 2006-07 campaign on Fri., Nov. 10 against IPFW before traveling to Indianapolis, Ind., for the first two rounds of the 2006 Dick's Sporting Goods NIT Season Tip-Off where the Irish are scheduled to play Butler in first-round action

http://und.cstv.com/sports/m-baskbl/spec-rel/110506aaa.html

Big Papi

Here´s where blogging gets really fun. This will almost be a real time post. I just went over to Janet´s supermarket to buy myself a couple bananas, and what did I see? Pepsi Gold. I had never heard of this new product, but judging from the sucess of Crystal Pepsi, I figured any new product Pepsi put out must be a winner. If that wasn´t enough, Pepsi Gold is endorsed by Big Papi himself, David Ortiz. I would be foolish to not try this product. So I got myself a couple bananas and a Pepsi Gold and had myself a nice little afternoon snack. The verdict? Pepsi Gold is a bit like coke mixed with sprite, decent, but not something I´ll purchase again.

But this got me thinking about another product Big Papi endorses. I´m sure everyone is aware of Viagra and Cialis in the U.S., but have you ever heard of Elevex? Elevex is a similar type of product, which is endorsed by David Ortiz. Elevex is great for a number of reasons. Not only does it have a much more amusing name than the other products and is endorsed by one of the most famous Dominican baseball players, but it also makes the claim that it gives the user 36 hours of pure masculine potency. Now, I don´t know how to reconcile this with the fact that the products in the U.S. include a disclaimer that states erections lasting longer that 4 hours require immediate medical attention. Perhaps "pure masculine potency" has a bit of a different meaning. I sure hope so anyway.

In Case You Never Checked Back

I finally got the pictures up for my mealtime post below. As you can see, they are breathtaking really. You can all exhale now.