Week Whatever (time has no meaning; it's the Carribean!)

Guess I'm not so great at this blogging thing since we've been here for two months already and I haven't written since week 1. I will try to do better! That is my Halloween resolution.

Jess is enmeshed, immersed, and entangled in Last Terrenas International School teaching middle schoolers how to be conscientious consumers and other things muy importante for tweeners to know (I'll leave it to her to describe how it's going at school since she has the first-person perspective, and I don't want this blog to sound like a Christmas letter). I started taking Spanish classes twice a week with a German woman who has lived in Las Terrenas for over 20 years. It's possible that when she moved here there was no electricity since that is how recently electricity came to town. Now we have some of the most expensive electricity in the world! Wouldn't you think that young and inexperienced electricity would cost less? Kind of like an intern fresh out of college? It certainly acts like an intern--bright and eager to please one minute, and then cutting out of work early and taking the water with it the next minute!

Anyway, it's maybe a little strange to take Spanish from a German in a country full of native speakers, but she was highly recommended, and if I'm honest, she is much easier to understand than Dominicans (for me as a novice, anyway). I am having a hard time deciphering spoken Dominican Spanish. If only when people spoke big text bubbles came out of their mouths! I'd be fluent in no time. Can Google glasses do that for me?

This is kind of how I feel when I'm trying to understand what people are saying.

I've been volunteering at the library, which is part of the school, for a while now. We're only open in the afternoons, and since it had been closed all summer, patrons are slow to return. Unfortunately, the library and school are down an alley off the main road and so passersby are not likely to stop in because it's invisible. Probably I should get a sandwich board made or something. Or maybe neon lights... There is a lot of visual stimuli to contend with on the main road, so getting people to notice a sign, decide they want to use the library, walk all the way down the alley past the strange man who spends all day picking up dead leaves from the dirt in front of his house, past the pack of semi-owned, semi-wild dogs, past Esther the well-meaning but screechy second-grader yelling "You're crazy!", through the entrance of the school and way down to the left where the library entrance lies hidden by curtains of bougainvillea seems like a tall order. I'm thinking maybe we need to station someone at the entrance of the alley with a bullhorn--that's much more how people roll here.

Jess painting all the faces at Etnomix

Why, no sir, we do not have hamburgers. But, can I interest you in a small cup of cherry cough syrup flavored gelatin with rum?

Thanks to Jess the fluent and incredible social butterfly, we made some actual Dominican friends! We spent last weekend working at a festival on the beach selling cookies and Jello shots all in the name of fundraising for the school. It was supposed to be an "Ethnic" sharing festival and our booth was the good 'ol US of A. Represent! And what is more American than chocolate chip cookies and rum jello shots? Nothing, that's what.Unfortunately, it didn't catch on because all people wanted were hamburgers and hotdogs. Anyway, long story short, our booth was not the hit we hoped it would be, but we did make friends with the lovely gay Dominican guy (not an easy thing to find around here, btw) working at the Mexico booth next door and his very, very tall Amazonian friend (known to everyone in town as "La Grande"). They were horrified to find out that we had never been to the waterfall at El Limon, which is nearby and is a big tourist draw in Samana, and kindly offered to take us.

So, the following Monday, Columbus Day, which Jess had off from school to celebrate the glory and the majesty of el senor Colon (in truth, it was a day off to recuperate from Etnomix with the excuse that it was sort of kind of an actual holiday, though a reprehensible one as we all are aware) we hopped aboard two vespas and raced off to the waterfall. Most visitors to el Limon ride horseback up the trail to the falls, but we decided to hike instead because, you know, we're Oregonian and that's how we do...and more importantly, it was free that way (except for the 200 pesos we paid to the little boy who offered to guide us up the trail and who the minute we stepped onto the trail reached into his pocket, pulled out a small radio, and cranked up the bachata music...so much for a peaceful nature hike!). So over the mucky muck trail, across the same river twice, and up the slippery rock path we went. When we got to the top we were rewarded with a beautiful view of the falls and the green hills surrounding them. And we met a hungry, hungry kitten who spurned the only food we had to offer--leftover chocolate chip cookies from Etnomix. Down what seemed like a thousand steps we went, and, finally we were at the falls!

We're so happy to be alive after our helmetless Vespa ride! And, please God let this clean-seeming water really be clean.

We've had many other adventures that are worth recounting, but this post is already too long by our modern short attention span standards, so I'll save those for another day. We remain Safe, Sound and Very, Very Sweaty.