week 4
My fourth week in school is over and the time has flown by so fast. It feels like just a couple of days ago that I was in Altos de Chavón enjoying last weekend.
This week we started preparing performances for Christmas. Seems a bit early, I know, but 10-12 weeks isn’t actually that long. Every class is expected to perform a Christmas-related song or poem for their parents on the night of 14 December.
Both my Sexto classes will be singing a carol or two. Septimos wanted to do a dance but didn’t think the song was “cool” enough (they’ve got a point, to be fair). Unfortunately for them the song has to have a Christmassy theme to it. Octavos and Primeros want to do a play. I will probably do a nativity play with Octavo and A Christmas Carol by Dickens with Primero. Segundos will probably sing. However, motivating a bunch of 16 year olds is far from easy and getting them to sing is even harder – especially Christmas carols, in a foreign language, infront of eachother, then infornt of their parents. It’s a good thing I have 12 weeks…
I think all of this is a wonderful idea and I really hope it doesn’t all end in tears. I’m particularly looking forward to the plays which should be a lot of fun to organise, rehearse, choreograph and, ultimately, perform (not to mention time consuming and bloody hard work!).
I just hope, what with all this, that I have time to write and correct thier exams.
altos de chavón
On Saturday I enjoyed my first proper night out since my arrival here a month ago. We went to Altos de Chavón, which is a small village - near Casa de Campo (that huge resort down the road from where I live) – modelled on 16th century Italian architecture. It really is incredible and next time I go there I’ll be sure to take a camera. It was built by a ridiculously rich American bloke for his daughter in 1976. There are a number of bars, a swimming pool, and plenty of tourists. Altos de Chavón is so named due to the River Chavón running beneath it (and what a spectacular view it is).
I had a great night with Christelle, her mates, and my flat mates (who, henceforth, I shall refer to as ¨the girls¨). Luckily for us some of her friends spoke English and French. However, I also had a chance to practise my Spanish – although practicing when under the influence is really not ideal (then again, it does rid you of any inhibitions, so making mistakes doesn’t seem so important).
Stayed out till about 3 and got a lift back to La Romana where I ate a chicken burger at an all-night food stand in the street. Tasted delicious while in a state halfway between drunk and tipsy, but it probably wasn’t actually that good. I was told I shouldn’t watch them prepare it so you can imagine the sort of food I’m talking about. I can honestly say though, that it was much tastier and much healthier than a doner kebab.
On a different note, Marie-Christine joined us yesterday which means we are finally four in the flat and, perhaps more importantly, we finally have a French teacher!! She seems like a nice girl; quite giggly and likes to joke around. She is Sarah’s best friend’s sister, and also from Canada. Clearly I’m soon going to overdose on Canadians (and girls, for that matter). I am just hoping upon hope that their menstrual cycles don’t catch up with each other.
lightning fuse, power cut
Not having electricity is an uncommon and quite surreal experience in Europe (with the exception of Certaldo, Tuscany where generators are primitive and even broadband internet is unheard of).
Our complete dependence on electricity means that when a power cut comes our way we are truly helpless. No light. No computer. No TV. No phone. No oven. No microwave. Nothing. You sit around twiddling your thumbs just hoping that you’ll be able to get back to your book, finish cooking dinner, catch the end of Eastenders, whatever flicks your switch (no pun intended).
In the D.R. the power goes out every night and stays off until 7 or 8 the following morning. It is ironic that I chose to bring up this subject up right now as we just had a power outage shortly after I started writing this post. My heart sank as my monitor went black leaving my post forever lost in cyber space (or so I thought). Luckily, clever old WordPress saves your posts every few minutes as you type so I was able to recover the beginning of this one. The only reason I’m back online so quickly is thanks to the very big and rather loud generator they set up shortly after it happened. Back at the apartment, however, I’m not so lucky. (1) I don’t have internet, (2) I don’t have a generator that I can wheel onto to the scene everytime a power cut swings my way.
We usually only get the odd outage during the day but at night it’s like clockwork. You can pretty much count the minutes until it happens and, as a result, plan around it. For example, I know that I can’t do any bed-side reading after about 11 O’ clock and that during the week the water pressure will be nothing more than a few pathetic trickles per minute when I take a shower in the morning. It is also not a good idea to rely too heavily on the fridge as milk and other easily-decaying goods are bound to go off after a week or so of constant power cuts. I am also sure that one day I will open the freezer only to get completely soaked by its no-longer-frozen contents.
This morning the power was still off at 11 and I couldn’t even flush the loo. Anyway, I’m getting pretty used to all this and see it as part of the Dominican experience. It really is interesting to live in a land so much more primitive (in so many ways) than what I’m accustomed to. And having said that, I’m also extremely lucky to have supermarkets, cyber cafes and a nice apartment at my disposal. It certainly is a land of many contrasts.
Off to lunch, providing the power’s back on at the flat. Oh great, it’s just started pouring with rain (more on the crazy weather soon).
Post title inspired by and stolen from the song Scatterbrain by Radiohead.
the girls
Follow the link for a pic of Sarah and Jennifer, the two Canadians I live with. We’re in the pizzeria down the road from the apartment.
week 3: progress report
Week 3 and I’ve been dishing out punishments like Straciatelli in an Italian ice cream parlour. It’s not that I enjoy it, they just never listen.. I would like to take this opprtunity to apologise to any of my ex-teachers who might be reading for every time I disrupted your classes. You’ll probably be pleased to hear that I’m getting a taste of my own medicine.
That said, I may have been a nuisance at times but I was a bloody angel compared to some of these guys! Last Thursday a boy kicked a girl in class and she retaliated by drop-kicking (I mean throwing) her pencil case at him. They both saw the headmaster and he got suspended for two days. And as if that wasn’t enough, on Friday one boy hit another boy in class right infront of me. 500 lines each. Ooof!
On a different note, I’ve recovered from my bout of flu. Nothing that a bit of cough mixture, a few Dafalgans, Vicks, flu tablets and a week without air-co couldn’t cure. Am sleeping much better as a result, too.
Looks like we’ve found a replacement French teacher but won’t know for sure until she touches down this weekend. She’s a friend of Sarah’s from Canada called Marie-Christine and she seems very keen. Fortunately/Unfortunately (depending on how you look at it) I’ll be living with three girls. Staying optimistic and hoping for the best. Don’t want to become a girl, you know. Also don’t want to adopt a Canadian accent, particularly not in French.
I’ve decided that I’m going to buy a bike so I can ride to school. At the moment it’s a twenty minute walk or 100 pesos in a taxi (strangely enough, 1 peso is exactly equal to 1 Belgian franc as you divide both by 40 to get the equivalent in Euros - this saves me a lot of time converting as I instantly know the value of anything). And as a result I’ve realised that the taxi’s a rip-off. They sell some nice bikes in the local supermarket but these are far too expensive and beyond my needs. 21 gears, suspension, metallic finish, etc. At the end of the month I’ll be having a look in another shop where I’m told I’ll find one cheaper. I enquired about second hand bikes but to no avail.
Keep meaning to post some photos but keep forgetting to take any. I actually have a few with me but they’re just boring sunsets, beach shots, blah blah blah. No people I’m afraid (EDIT: there are a couple of people actually). Promise I’ll take some more soon.
The usual address (bookmark it to save me some copying and pasting): http://www.flickr.com/photos/20275307@N00/
wanted: french teacher
Today we found out that Vivien (our 24 year old [ex]recruit from France) won’t be joinng us after all. He was meant to arrive on Saturday but after being told by the Dominican embassy in France, and then again at the airport, that he didn’t have the right papers in the right languages and that a one-way ticket would land him in prison (or something along those lines), he decided it was probably best if he didn’t come at all. And poor old Philippe drove all the way to the airport to pick him up on Saturday only to find that he wasn’t there.
The guy just spent the last month upgrading his passport to come here and then announces at literally the last minute that, in fact, it’s probably not such a good idea after all. Philippe had him on the phone today and tried to explain that 99% of foreigners in this country don’t have papers and get away with it (that’s to say that 99% don’t have papers and 100% get away with it), but to no avail. The bloke even suggested that the whole thing was a scam. This was the last straw for my headmaster – who, I might add, is too kind for his own good – so he told him not to bother coming if that’s what he thought, and hung up on him.
Dear oh dear. Philippe really hasn’t had much luck what with all the missed flights, delayed connections, missed connections, multiple trips to multiple airports, etc. All of us new recruits have experienced at least one of these problems (if not all of them) and it has only made life harder for our hosts. And to make matters worse, they now have to find a new French teacher who can make it here as soon as possible (preferably by next Monday). Parents are starting to ask why their kids haven’t started French lessons and, as you can imagine, this isn’t good for business or the school’s reputation.
If any of you lot are interested and feel like quitting uni to become a French teacher in the Caribbean, raise your hand now. I’m serious about that (although the quitting uni part probably isn’t such a good idea).
For those of you who don’t know, my email while I’m here is: daniel.lucas2006 AT hotmail DOT com (Use correct formatting, obviously. I am just trying to avoid being seen by any prying spambots in the vicinity).
You can reach me on MSN at the usual Spymac address (this does NOT work for email).
clases de español
So far I’ve had two Spanish lessons. Was thinking about writing this post in Spanish but that’s probably a bad idea. It’s going ok so far. Generally I understand when people talk to me, providing they speak at a reasonable speed and not like your average Spanish machine gun. When it comes to speaking I still improvise quite a lot and tend to add an A or an O to the end of the equivalent word in French. This helps sometimes but when it doesn’t I’m truly stuck and usually have to resort to miming and gesticulating frantically.
It can also be quite embarrasing when I think I’ve understood a word and in fact I haven’t. The perfect example was in class yesterday when I thought the word “fregar” had something to do with getting cold or freezing. It’s actually a verb meaning ”to clean” (do the washing up). My teacher had a bit of a chuckle at that one.
In class – which consists of 45 mins over lunch, four times a week – I’ve been revising the tenses, which suddenly seem so much more logical and so much less complicated. I am finally aware of the differences between the indicative, the indefinite and the subjunctive (sounds much more complicated than it actually is). It has also dawned on me that all the tenses have relatively similar forms. The endings are also very similar and once you know the first person, you can pretty much guess the rest.
My teacher tells me that people over here tend to speak very grammatically incorrectly. This isn’t exactly good news for me as I’ll be learning one thing and hearing another. I must say that I’d noticed people like to drop the S on the second person singular, for example. Anyway, not a big deal, me thinks. There are other small differences from “real” Spanish such as the way they pronounce CI and CE. Again, no biggy.
Apart from that, not much to report. English classes are going well on the whole. I have found the ultimate punishment: lines. Give a kid one hundred lines and he’ll shut up for the rest of the lesson. Not an uncommon punishment in this school as I often find students writing lines for other teachers in my lesson. I’m not surprised, of course, as I would probably have carried out a punishment like that in my third lanuage Spanish class when I was in school.
Ahora, me voy. Hasta mañana.
knew i’d forgotten to mention something..
I finally know my full address but it won’t be much use to you as this country (or at least this part of it) doesn’t have any postmen. That explains why I don’t have a letterbox either. Weird? I thought so, too. The only way to send me anything is to FedEx it to the local supermarket, Jumbo. So, in the end, it’s probably not worth bothering.
On the other hand, I can send post but have also been advised to FedEx it as sending anything the normal way can, quite literally, take months. I was going to write a postcard to my grandmother in France (who doesn’t have a computer and probably wouldn’t know what one was if it hit her in the face) but was told that I should make sure to wish her a happy Christmas, birthday and Easter, just in case!
When we went to Cuba a few years ago I seem to remember sending a postcard to my mum which arrived after I’d returned to Belgium. If that’s any indication of how slow the postal service is over here, screw it.
this and that
First off, I want to thank those of you who emailed me with your kind words and questions. It is good to hear from you all as I do feel very far away and “out of the loop” on your lives. Whenever I’m on MSN its the middle of the night for you lot so there’s never anyone to talk to.
To answer Cathy’s questions:
Yes, I do teach them English. No, I can’t speak Spanish to them (not that I’m not able to but rather that I’m not supposed to). And yes, there is a beach but it’s not that close. It takes half an hour and costs 40 pesos (1 euro) on a “Gua Gua” – local term for the minibus that takes you. As for Spanish fluency, not sure how fast that will happen but I certainly hope to improve wildely over the next few months.
Yesterday I mentioned that Sarah had joined us. Unfortunately she had to go back to Canada today for reasons I’d rather not mention on this very public blog out of respect for her and her family. However, she should be coming back within a week or so.
I still have a cold which is starting to annoy me; not sleeping very well as a result. Am sure I have many other things to say but can’t think of them at the moment. It will all come flooding back as soon as I leave the cyber cafe, of course. In any case, this place was meant to close at 9pm and it’s now twenty past. Better go.
from hot to cold to hot to cold to ill (yes, you read that right, ILL!)
Would you believe it? I have a freaking cold! You would think that in a country like this air conditioning is something of a blessing. Au contraire, my friends. I’ve been walking in and out of cold classrooms and cars into the hot weather for two weeks straight, and now I have a cold. Isn’t that just brillsville-on-sea. It’s not making me feel too rotten but I do feel pretty silly coughing, sneezing and sniffling in the stifling heat. Makes me look very foreign and tourist-like (and just when I thought my newly aquired tan was helping me to blend in). Not to worry, I should get over it pretty quickly as my body begins to adapt to this tropical madness.
On a positive note, I’m not that burnt after all. My face, arms and chest are going a nice golden brown while my thighs – although still lobster-like – don’t appear to be peeling. What a relief!
Sarah arrived yesterday, bringing us to 3 people in the apartment. She seems very nice and cheerful. More on my flat mates when they’ve all arrived and I get round to taking some photos. We are now waiting for Vivien (24 year old bloke from France) who has spent the last month or so waiting for the French authorities to issue him a biometric passport. If only he were British. I went to the embassy on the Monday before I left and they had my passport ready by Friday, on the grounds that it was an emergency. Either that, or the lady behind the counter had a thing for me. Probably the former.
Really must go now. Here are some pictures of Philippe and Marie France’s daughters, one of whom is a student of mine.
