holidays, exams and a little romance to go
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.
las terrenas
Last week I was kindly invited to Las Terrenas by Philippe and Marie-France to join them and their girls for the weekend . Las Terrenas is a small town on the north coast of the D.R. about 250km east of Puerto Plata and 100km or so north of the capital. The north of the D.R. borders with the Atlantic Ocean and not the Caribbean Sea, as in the south.
We set off on Thursday after school and made a long weekend of it. The original plan was to leave on Friday but it’s a long drive so we left a day earlier. I was a bit surpised that they gave me Friday off school but didn’t complain, of course. Don’t think my pupils were that bothered either.
As it was already late afternoon/early evening by the time we left, we made the trip in two stages. It is a couple hours drive to the capital where we spent the night in a five-star hotel (very swanky!!). The hotel was very spacious and luxurious, and I spent the night with Christelle and Pauline playing video games in my room. Mostly we played Mario Karts (one of the greatest games ever invented, IMHO) but I lost interest and nearly commited suicide when the girls started playing the most pointless game ever invented. First off, it was a Pokemon game… You’d think that’s reason enough to jump off the balcony, right? Wait until you here what the point of the game is. You essentially just float around a 3-D environment with a virtual camera taking snaps of other pokemons. This must be done with speed and accuracy due to how fast things fly past the camera. At the end, you have a look through your photos and delete the ones you don’t like. Yep, that’s all there is to it. Whoever designed and took the time to write this so-called “game” obviously needs urgent psychiatric assistance – and a quick look at the definition of the word game in the dictionary. To my astonishment, the girls seemed to be having the time of their lives. I seem to have gone off on a bit of a tangent but felt it necessary given the utter crapness of the game. I also promised myself I’d mention it on the blog (in fact, there is a photo of Christelle playing it on my Flickr page – well, there will be when I get round to it).
Back to reality. We woke up early on Friday morning, had breakfast and set off to Las Terrenas. It was a very long and uncomfortable drive through fields, mountains and dirt tracks (thankfully, the Warots have a 4×4). The impressive scenerey took my mind off just how terrible the roads were and I was able to soak up views of sugar cane fields, awesome mountain ranges and the Atlantic Ocean, though only with my eyes and not the camera. I’m not very good with the whole taking photos at opportune moments thing.
We arrived in time for a late but delicious lunch in a restaurant owned by a French guy. By the looks of it their chef was also French, which probably explains why the food was so good. As a matter of fact, all the food over there was excellent. I haven’t eaten as well as I did this weekend for a while. We went out for every meal except breakfast and I enjoyed every morsel. Las Terrenas is home to a relatively large French-speaking community (I’m convinced that there’s a correlation between that and the delicious food).
We stayed in a cosey apartment across the road from the beach, in which I was spoiled with a double bed and my very own bathroom. The whole complex had the air of a hotel but was in fact a bunch of self-catering apartments with a reception, swimming pool and restaurant.
Aside from stuffing my face and enjoying the comfort of the apartment, I played a lot of cards with Christelle and Pauline, swam in the pool, swam in the ocean (which made a nice change from the Caribbean Sea), went snorkelling briefly (very cool!), played pool, went to bed late (Christelle’s fault for keeping me up all night chatting). In a nutshell, I had a wonderful and relaxing time. It was great to visit somewhere new, get to know my hosts a little better and have a long weekend. They really do spoil me.
This morning we left at 7am. I was knackered and slept a couple of hours in the car. This shaved a little time off the journey and the rest of the trip back seemed to fly by much faster than it did on the way there. We got back just after 1pm – at which point I should have had lunch – and I came here straight away to tell you lot about it. It’s now 4.30pm and I’m famished.
I have some photos but I’ll post them another day. Hasta la vista!
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.
to burn or not to burn
Jennifer and I went to the beach at Bayahibe today and I came back with legs like boiled lobsters. I’m hoping that they’re not so burnt they’ll peel, but that’s probably just wishful thinking on my part. In any case my arms and chest are nicely toasted and my face is somewhere in between (not literally). And yes, I was wearing sun cream. Factor 50, I’ll have you know. Didn’t make a blind bit of difference though, especially in the early afternoon sun.
Met a couple of my students on the beach and had my first proper conversation in Spanish. To be honest it was more an Anglo-Franco-Hispanico conversation as it was with a student of mine who knows next to no English and very little French. As a result, I was doing my best in Spanish while she struggled to understand and did her best to help me with the occasional word here and there. In any case, I was pretty chuffed with myself and it has boosted my confidence a little for my Spanish lessons which start on Monday.
On an unrelated note, I noticed that I haven’t yet mentioned something about this country, and that is the way people drive. One word: ridiculous! People overtake whenever and wherever. Traffic lights are nearly always red for everyone which means negotiating junctions is tricky (to say the least) and an absolute nightmare on main roads when there’s lots of traffic. Honking your horn in the city is not only legal, it’s a way of life. What’s more, little kids stand in the middle of the road selling top-up cards for mobiles and cleaning windscreens, which causes everyone, and in paticular moto conchos, to slalom round them. The other day I saw a little kid get knocked over by a scooter and no one batted an eyelid. It really is unbelievable. Luckily the kid was fine and he just got up and got out of the way while the guy on the scooter gave him an apologetic glance and rode off (with a very distressed looking passenger on the back). If you consider the same scenario in Europe you can imagine that heads would turn, the police would be called, insurance policies called into question, etc. I was truly shocked by that but at the same time not in the least bit surprised.
Anyway, tomorrow we’re back off to the beach when we go to pick up Sarah from Punta Cana, east of La Romana. Apparently the beaches there are even more spectacular than those at Bayahibe so I’m looking forward to that. Must take it easy though as I don’t want to self combust, catch sun stroke, or die of skin cancer.
