Caitlin- rain rain go away

I have officially started some classes. Well…2 of my 5…this week another 2 start (hopefully) and then the week after that my last class starts…My Dominican-Haitian relations class is going to be amazing, one of the professors was Haitian Ambassador to the Dominican Republic during the 90’s so he knows all the cool stuff. I seem to also be taking a Spanish class, which is a bit of a joke. Today we gave 5 minute presentations on random important Dominicans like Oscar de la Renta and Juan Marichal (baseball player, was on the SF Giants for a long time, only Dominican in MLB hall of fame)…it took the entire two hour period…everyone made powerpoint presentations.

Two weekends ago I went to Las Terrenas, which is a beach town on the north easter coast of the island. The trip to Las Terrenas was less than uneventful, we all walked to the Caribe Tours bus station in Santo Domingo, got our tickets, got on our bus. Got of at Sanchez, then had to figure out how exactly we were supposed to get to Las Terrenas which was on the other side of the peninsula. Our guide books said “walk to the Texaco station and get a pickup truck” well there was no Texaco station… but there were pickup trucks! So we all piled in, the views were amazing miles and miles of palm tree jungles with view of the sparkling blue Caribbean waters. Then it started to pour, not rain, pour. All of us and all of our stuff were completely soaked by the time we got to Las Terrenas…not very amusing. Even less amusing was when our ride attempted to make us pay more because our hotel was “5km outside of town on a bad road”…it was in town less than two minutes the same road … But we made it, and now the only obstacle in our venture for a beautiful beach weekend was the rain… With the plan of spending a few days lying by the beach drinking pina coladas and tanning out of the question we were forced to find other activities to entertain ourselves. We played games in our hotel room, when it cleared up we explored around a bit, played some beach baseball, did a little swimming.

The next day we decided we would “hike” to El Limon waterfall. We got our ride to the head of the trail and started walking, we had heard that we would have to cross rivers but it was supposedly hikeable so we weren’t worried. Well lets just say the rain of the day before had other plans for us. The rivers were waist deep and the paths to them ankle deep slippery mud, so we hired horses and guides and went that way instead. An amazingly beautiful 45 minute horse ride through the mountains later and 10 minute hike we reached the waterfall. It was about 50m high, and one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. We all got to swim in the water and check out the caves behind the waterfall which were cool as well…That was definitely the most successful part of the trip to Las Terrenas…The next day we caught a direct gua gua from Las Terrenas to Santo Domingo, we were packed in like sardines and there was no AC when we went up hill but it was a lot easier than the pickup truck ride to the Caribe tours stop in Sanchez, and less expensive too.

Lets see other than that… I have been to the beach a few times, hung out at the pool at my gym, wandered around Santo Domingo…. We found a great place for live music on Sunday nights at the ruins of an old Franciscan Monastery it goes from 5pm to 11pm and is really fun. They play all kinds of music, from Dominican Bachata to Cuban Son to Merengue and Salsa, lots of people (of all ages, mostly older) get out and show there well practiced dance moves…a nice way to spend a Sunday night…

Santo Domingo has started doing this new thing where it randomly rains for two minutes and then stops and is really hot until the next time it rains. Its nice to watch when you are inside but not a great experience when you are walking somewhere…Sometimes it only rains in a certain spot, the people here say that its because of a bruja (witch)…

I had my first class at Universidad Autonoma de Santo Domingo (la UASD pronounced “la wa”) today. It is Santo Domingo’s public university, with over 100,000 students of all different disciplines…It was the first week of classes, but there was still a huge long line of students trying to sign up for classes, something that the University is always having issues with. Similarly in the first week of classes the professors and the students don’t generally attend class…My class is taught by the director of my study abroad program so I knew she would be there, but out of the 80 students that were supposed to be there only 24 actually showed, and at least half were American. There were also only about 20 desks in the room, so people had to go and grab desks from other classrooms…Getting a seat is gong to be especially exciting once all 80 people start showing up. Another funny thing was that we had to pay to get a photocopy of our syllabus and class schedule, our teacher gave out three copies to three people who took the papers to the copy stand outside of the building and got the copy of the syllabus for you…for 13 pesos (less than 50 cents US). Funny funny.

That’s really all that has been going on around here…I would like to give a big HOLA to JD, who even though he just got to Italy is escaping to Spain as soon as possible to return to his comfort zone. (Fun Fact: Supposedly being Peruvian in Italy gives you good street cred…suspicious.)