dominican journal

I am now midway through my week of holiday. It has been a welcome change not to have to get up early or do anything in particular with my days, although I did have to go to school yesterday morning for exam preparation.

Exams start in early December and must be ready by next Monday. I have now written all five exams but have not finished my final copies. I would have done this a long time ago if only I could do them on the computer but alas, this is not allowed. The school insists on hand-writing the exams using caligraphy. This is essentially cursive writing with added squiggles and twiddles to make it look all the more beautiful. However, it is painstakingly slow and difficult to perfect. And you can well imagine, my hand is very likely to drop off or cramp permanently after 30 pages of that. To make matters worse, if I make a single mistake on one page I am obliged to start the whole page again. “Use an ink-eraser,” I hear you yelling from behind your sreens. Unfortunately I can’t because I have to write in non-erasable black ink to make the photocopier’s life easier, tut tut. Where does making my life easier come in to this? Apparently it doesn’t.

Looking on the bright side, all this should do wonders for my handwriting which, for the moment, is something of a disaster. I need to get them all done by Monday but haven’t started yet because I have yet to complete my crashcourse in caligraphy which consists of writing the whole alphabet repeatedly in uppercase and lowercase (until by some stroke of luck I get gangrene and my hand actually does drop off, hence getting me out of writing exams). I joke, of course. I’ll let you all know how that goes next week.

Last Saturday I went to the Iberostar hotel in Bayahibe with Christelle and co. and spent the day tanning on the beach and by the pool. The five star hotel was all-inclusive and that meant I was free to eat and drink as much as I wanted all day long without paying a penny. I didn’t, however, abuse this, which I now regret. Philippe and family went down there to spend the weekend with his mother and sister who came to visit. I was kindly invited for the day at the last minute after my bosses finally found out that something was going on with their English teacher and their daughter. It is the first time I mention this here because I didn’t really want to advertise the fact that I was going out with her without their prior consent.

More updates soon, I promise. I know I haven’t been very regular recently but I will make more of an effort to get my big lazy bum down to the cyber cafe more often. I really enjoy writing this blog and I wouldn’t want any of you to lose interest.