Random Bits

• I'd just like to let everyone know that I picked the Final Four correctly for the first time in my life. I realize this would've been much more impressive last year, or a lot of other years, but it's still a first for me. So I've got that going for me, which is nice.
• Next week, as you might know, is Holy Week which culminates in Easter Sunday. Here it is called Semana Santa and is not only a very religious time, but is also sort of a week-long Dominican holiday. As with all the holidays here, it is mainly celebrated by drinking a lot of rum and blaring bachata and reggaeton music. I can't wait.
• Two weeks from today, I leave for my brother's wedding. This couldn't be coming at a better time as I'm ready for a break from this place. Better get the 'ole wedding dance moves warmed up.

Until next time, keep on keepin' on.

Master of the Ocean

A few weeks back we had a pretty big event here in Cabarete called The Master of the Ocean. I believe I also alluded to this in a prior post or two as this was directly after the flea market/carnival we put on and contributed to my atypical and busy schedule, which resulted in my lack of posting. Anyhow, the Master of the Ocean is an annual water sports competition that has events in surfing, windsurfing, and kitesurfing. There is a champion crowned in each discipline, as well as an overall champion who performs the best in all three events - the Master of the Ocean.

What does this have to do with me you might ask? Well some of us volunteered to help plan the event and do various logistical things. My task was to go through the website and make various updates and corrections. Other people handled things having to do with publicity. During the actual event, some of us helped with sign ups etc., some went to the events and sort of created a DREAM presence to publicize our organization, and others helped with tabulating the results. I spent a few days being a DREAM rep at the events and got to take in some amazing kite surfing and wind surfing. All in all, not a bad day´s work.

Here´s a few photos from the event. It was tough to get any good action shots so I´m not going to post many of them because they pretty much suck.

The scene on the beach

The scene behind the beach

Kim and I, working hard.

Pondering the mysteries of the sea. (sorry Mom)

St. Paddy´s Day

As it turns out, one can celebrate St. Patrick´s day even on a Caribbean island. As you might imagine, this of course took place at Jose O´Shay´s. There was live music (Irish and basic Rock ´N Roll), Irish step dancers and of course plenty of beer. Guinness is available there, and my friends Mike and Meredith were nice enough to buy me one, but it is pretty pricey. I have no one to blame, however, for the four Irish Car Bombs I purchased for myself and three friends. That really blew the March budget.

My first, and most likely only, Guinness on the island.

I thought the Larry Bird jersey was an appropriate sartorial choice.

Hey, you can come. You can bring your green hat.

Carnival

Thank god I´m finally getting something else up here so that last picture is knocked down a bit.

OK, I finally got some of the pictures from that weekend, so let´s finally delve into this subject. Carnival, as you may or may not know, is a Mardi Gras style event that is celebrated throughout much of Latin America. I´m not sure how exactly it is done in other countries such as Brazil or Trinidad, but I can tell you a little bit about what goes on in the DR.

There are many celebrations around the country throughout February, but the supposed best one takes place in a nondescript mid-sized city called La Vega. I´m not really sure how this evolved into the best, but that´s the story that goes around. Anyway, each Sunday in February there is a fiesta culminating in the largest and most out of hand one on the last Sunday of the month. We were there for the first on of the season, and it was fun enough. Starting Sunday afternoon there is a loosely organized parade that goes on for a couple miles I´d say down a main promenade. The parade consists of many different groups that put on elaborate, coordinated costumes and make their way down the parade route. They also carry these whip-type devices that are apparently made out of cow bladders and are sometimes filled with rocks. They can apparently hurt pretty badly and leave your ass bruised for weeks, but I didn´t take any good hits. I was a little disappointed in that regard, but I believe the stories. I think they were just getting warmed up during the first weekend.

Lining the parade route are thousands of people watching, semi-participating, drinking, eating, dancing, and generally having a good time. I was one of these people, as were the three people I was with. We basically just sort of milled about, changing locations occasionally, having a good time. One thing that surprised me was that the crowd seemed to be made up almost exclusively of Dominicans. I did not see many other white people there, which seemed odd since there is a lot of tourism in this country and this event isn´t a secret. It´s in all the guide books anyway. But that made it more enjoyable and more authentic seeming.

One logistical headache was getting all these people in and out of a town in the middle of the country which doesn´t normally have a lot of tourists. There is bus and public transportation service, but everyone is trying to get out of there, which made things a bit difficult. We took a gua-gua (mini bus used as local public transpo) to nearby Santiago and from there walked to the large bus station and took the 2 hour bus home from there. As you can imagine, a good amount of drinking during the day only compounded the problems and coordination issues. Luckily, Jen did not imbibe very much and took on the leadership role of getting us home. I think Anthony, Caitlin and I more than made up for her.

In summary, Carnival is definitely not to be missed if you ever have an opportunity. Oh yeah, and I missed the Super Bowl for the first time since I have had memories of them (´85 is the first I can recall) and do not regret my decision.

Onto the pictures. And please remember everyone, don´t fight, don´t be angry, let´s hug it out.

My new life as a recluse

This has been a pretty strange week for me here and I've definitely learned one thing: I don't think I'm going to become a hermit at any point in my life. Last Sunday my left eye felt really dry and irritated and continued getting worse throughout the day. Sunday afternoon I noticed it was extrememly bloodshot and began to worry that I had pink eye. By Sunday night I noticed it was also getting swollen and was now pretty sure that's what it was. So, Monday morning I went to the clinic and, sure enough, I was told I had conjunctivitis, or pink eye. For those of you that have never had this wonderful condition, I wouldn't recommend trying to contract it. At it's peak, all I felt like doing was lying in a dark room with my eyes closed. I couldn't even really open my eye on Monday morning and it took until yesterday for the swelling to be completely gone. My sight is still a little blurry even today, although it's almost completely better. So most of this week was spent lying around by myself in my darkened room with nothing to do except listen to music and take naps. I couldn't even read because that just irritated my eyes. It's a strange existence just sitting around by yourself doing nothing for multiple days in a row. I did have the foresight on Monday morning to take a picture of myself so that I would have a nice visual aid for this post. I generally don't like to post pictures of myself where I look like an ungodly mess, but I'll make an exception in this case.

No, I did not just go 15 rounds with Apollo Creed

Did I Land the Plane Safely? Are the Passengers Alright?

Sorry, I think I may have blacked out the last two weeks. Really, where did the time go? It's been a bit busy for me here with some special events going on and not a lot of regular time spent at my school or in the office. Actually I have been spending more time at the office, but I've been working hard and haven't had time to update the blog on company time. What's that all about? Anyway, I hope to get back into the swing of things here, and I also have not forgotten about the carnival pictures. As I was telling one of my 247 Harkins cousins in an e- mail recently, I have a bunch of deadbeat friends and haven't been able to get the pictures from them. They would probably tell you it's just that they've been busy too. Agree to disagree.

The main thing occupying my time recently was a flea market/carnival we had as a fundraiser last Saturday and Sunday. We just completed building a new teacher training center which is located next to an existing public school that we work with, and it was at this dual location that we put on the event. At the school we had rooms full of clothing, furniture, and other donated items that were sold to the local community. At our new center, we had the carnival which consited of food, games and music. We had hot dogs, pizza, cotton candy, popcorn, soft drinks, face painting, ball toss, ring toss, twister, prizes, and of course the blaring bachata and reggaeton music. As you can imagine, this took an enormous amount of planning and coordination, with it all coming together last week. My role during the event was supervising the food area and I must say that I did a damn fine job of it if I do say so my damn self.

All in all, I think it was a success but it took a lot of effort to pull off. We raised a little bit of money and it was nice to see the community come together and have a good time while doing it. This may become an annual event, but I think the organization is going to have to decided whether or not the benefits justify the work put in. I think it would have been more successful with a beer tent, but I was told that alcohol sales don't fit well with children, education, etc. Whatever.

Regardless, here's some photos:

Some members of my crack sqaud of hot dog preparers

Soft drink team



I spent a lot of time working the grill...

...that is, when I couldn't convince attractive young ladies to do it for me



More helpers

Super volunteerJen Collett handled the money with an iron fist

Good times were had by all