Arrival was a bit shaky since my luggage was not on the plane and I didn't get it until 3 days later (luckily they dropped it off at Joan's house). So there wasn't the cheesy greeting of us seeing each other and running into a big hug, it was more like me turning the corner with a pissed off look on my face and Joanie knowing that something happened. But it all worked out in the end.
The first night we stayed in Santo Domingo at a youth hostel near the Peace Corps headquarters. The first order of business was to get me some clothes. I bought a shirt and some underwear, just the essentials. The brand name of the underwear was "Sexyman" so I knew I had to get that one. We then did a good amount of walking around the city and grabbed a bite to eat at a restaurant. I had some really good shrimp and rice with the Dominican beer of choice, Presidente. Then took a cab back to the hostel and called it a night.
The next day we were still trying to figure out the luggage situation, but we weren't having much luck since it was Easter Sunday and it seemed like basically no one was working. Since we couldn't get through we decided to go to the supermarket for some food. Along the way I noticed that the streets were real dirty (her site isn't nearly as bad) and there were huge holes in the middle of the sidewalk that seemed to go down six feet and were mostly filled with trash. I was being very careful walking around these but Joan hardly seemed to notice and just kind of walked around them while still talking to me. Definitely something that she has gotten used to.
Since we were in the city she wanted to take advantage of the Chinese restaurant since there isn't anything like it near her site. It was probably the sweetest Chinese food I have had but still pretty good, it just seemed odd seeing a bunch of Dominicans cooking 'Chinese food'. Then we were off to her site for the 4 hour bus ride.
Along the way is a really cool looking tree that Joan made sure to point out.
Then we were at her site and I met her friend Reylandi while we were walking to her house. It was raining pretty heavily so not many people were out we went over to meet one of her neighbors who made us some unbelievable cherry juice. I was shocked to see that the kids in the house were playing a PS2, definitely not something I was expecting.
The heavy rain on the tin roof was very loud yet also peaceful that first night in her house.
I then got the chance to visit the beach in her town. It was only a 5-10 minute walk when it was just Joan and I but the times we had a Dominican with us they turned it into a 20-25 minute walk. I guess they just aren't in the same rush as we were. The Dominican part of the beach was very nice and the white object you can see in the water is an over turned refrigerator/boat.
Later that night we went to a big dance a little down the beach and had a little bit to drink. It was a blast with everyone dancing and listening to the music. We had some rum with coconut water, which was surprisingly good. I normally don't like rum too much but it was a very good mix and the coconuts were coming down straight from the trees around us!
The next few days I just sort of followed Joan around the town as she did her normal day to day business. Basically walk around and talk to people. This was a little difficult for me since I can barely say anything outside of "Hola" and "Si", although I picked up on a little bit as the week went on.
Everyone in the town was incredibly nice and clearly like Joanie. One of the old men said (through Joan's translation of course), "The world loves Joan".
Also throughout the week I quickly learned about all of the 'other things' that live in peoples houses down there. Back home if Joanie saw any sort of bug, especially spiders, she would scream. Here it is a completely different story, most of the times she would k
ill the bug before I even knew it was there.Here you can see the victim, the assailant and the weapon. Luckily I only saw two cockroaches during the week and this was one of them.
There were other creatures that were harmless and good to have around since they would eat some of the other bugs like mosquitoes.
At first when I got there I wondered why none of the Dominicans wore shorts even though it was 80+ and humid every day I was there, but after walking around in shorts for two days and counting 52 bug bites on my left leg alone it suddenly made sense to me and I tried wearing pants more for the rest of the week.
After walking around the town for a few days we went to a touristy town a few hours away. It was interesting getting there and back. We had to take Gua-Guas, which is basically just a truck or a van that drives a certain route. The thing is, they will fit as many people in the vehicles as they possibly can. On the way back we were in the equivalent of a Volkswagen Van and there were 19 people including the driver in the van. The route we were on was also a very steep mountain path, so I was a bit nervous for a bit.
Transportation aside, it was well worth the trip. The beaches were amazing.
There was a rope swing hanging from one of the palm trees that Joanie had to take advantage of.
I also happened to be there for her birthday, Friday the 13th!!! Normally Dominicans don't really do much for birthdays, apparently they don't even like to have them regardless of their age but they did get a cake for Joanie and we went out.
We went to the club near her house, the gave us free rum and cokes when we got in there. There was our group and another group in there so we left, but they told us to take the free drinks with us so we took our drinks into the cab to go to another bar in the town nearby and we walked into the bar with our own drinks from the previous bar without any problem. I just couldn't stop thinking about how there was absolutely no way that could ever happen in the states.
We went to a few places and had a blast, at one of the bars they made an announcement that for the next 2 minutes every beer was 1 peso. The exchange rate is about 33 pesos= $1, so that is about a 3 cent beer. Oh ya.
That was my last night and we left early in the morning to take the long bus ride to the airport and time for me to go home. I had a blast and cant wait to go back again, hopefully they will have the new highway finished so it will cut the bus ride from the airport from 3.5-4 hours to about 1.5 hours.
Joan´s Brother,
Marc
