day 34
Feeling a little lonely and bored in La Romana, Sophie’s boyfriend, Martin, decided to take me on a little trip over the weekend. We went to La Vega, a four hour drive from where I live to meet his friends and family. La Vega (not to be confused with Las Vegas) is a small city situated in the heart of the country. (NOTE: La Vega is both a city and a province, as is La Romana. In each case I am referring to the cities – and obviously they are each located in their respective provinces.)
Despite the fact that we were nearly killed on our way when Martin (in typical Dominican fashion) swerved violently to avoid a huge obstacle in the middle of the road at 140 km/h, the drive there was an enjoyable one. I got to know Martin a little better as we chatted about this and that and “oohed” and “aahed” at the contents of each other’s iPods. To my delight I found out he’s a fan of Guns n Roses which for a man who also likes Beyonce and 50 Cent surprised me somewhat.
We arrived late on Friday evening, stopped by his mother’s to say hello and immediately hit the town to meet his friends. We watched a local band play and drank God knows how many beers as I did my best to socialise. It’s always a bit awkward when you find yourself amongst a group of very close friends and you don’t know anybody, but they were all very friendly and after a couple of hours and many more beers I felt more at home than I have since I got here. Martin even plucked up the courage to sing a couple of songs with the band as I sneakily filmed from the wings, knowing full well it was perfect blog material.
Shortly after this eye-watering performance it started to rain so we headed indoors for a few more drinks and said our good byes (needless to say they love drinking in this country – must be weather or something). We slept the night at Martin’s mother’s house to avoid spending money in a hotel but – and he had warned me – there would be no hot water in the morning. I’ve never had such a cold shower in my life. It can’t have lasted more than 20 seconds, I joke not.
The following day we did a little shopping and booked a night in an air-conditioned hotel with hot water and free Wi-Fi. Before long the sun was setting and it was time to hit the town again. This time we went to a quiet little bar where things got a bit dull. We decided to go to Santiago, a city about 25 km away. We pigged out on some much needed KFC and looked for a pool hall. There were two that Martin knew of but one was full and the other was shut. “Bollocks,” we thought as we headed back to La Vega and instead went to a small club where men were expected to pay an entrance fee, which we somehow managed to avoid (I hope they didn’t confuse us for women!). In any case, any money I saved at the door was soon spent on a couple of Vodka Red Bulls and yet more beer. Dear oh dear, I thought I’d left my blow-all-your-money-and-drink-as-much-as-you-can days behind me.
All in all it was a fun weekend in which I got to practice my Spanish outside the classroom and got to know some interesting people.
lunar eclipse
Keep your eyes peeled for Saturday’s lunar eclipse (3 March). The event, in which the moon will turn a reddish colour, is expected to be very impressive according to the BBC News website (Full article available here). Luckily for most of you readers (those on the European continent), it will take place at night. I will experience it during late afternoon/evening. I’ll be posting my photos, please send me yours.
The eclipse will be visible from the following places. I’m not sure what the difference is between “fully visible” and “totality visible”. If you know, do comment.
Expect an update tomorrow.
UPDATE:
It was much too cloudy here to see the eclipse properly. I did see a faint reddish glow for a second or two followed by shimmers of light behind the cloudy night’s sky but nothing more. It’s a shame as I’d been looking for ward to taking some photos. Anyway, the BBC got a picture.
Lunar Eclipse 2007, courtesy of BBC News
More impressive photos of the eclipse can be found here.
cough, splutter and mutter a few words…
Today I was supposed to join Christelle and family on a boating excursion to a nearby island. Unfortunately I wasn’t feeling my best and spent the day in bed. As a result, I didn’t get anything productive done and I’m still feeling a bit under the weather. That said, the weather here is as good as it gets for a February afternoon.
Meanwhile, Christelle’s godparents have joined me in the apartment during their two week stay in the country. They arrived last week and will be leaving on 6 March.
I have been enjoying the luxuries of having an internet connection at home. This is only my second post since the installation because I’ve been spending so long reacquainting myself with the wonders of high-speed surfing, what with downloading the latest episodes of 24, Prison Break, Lost, and so on.
Lately I’ve been doing some interesting activities in the classroom; interviews, getting the kids to teach a lesson and surveys. I dare say most of them enjoyed it compared to your average lesson.
It’s time again to think about exam preparation and that dreaded calligraphy!! Exams aren’t for a few months but from what I understand they must be submitted by April to be checked, copied and bound.
I’ve had a nasty cough for the past couple of weeks which doesn’t seem to want to go away. Must get something for it when I’m feeling up to the challenge.
Back in January I promised you all a photo of that plane I was on that got a rabbit stuck in one of its engines. Here it is.
The infamous plane that was brought down by a rabbit, of all things holy.
Note: I’ve just updated the blogroll down the left side of this page with a few links to a couple of blogs and other pages of interest.
homecoming
It’s Sunday and I’ve spent a relaxing weekend helping Christelle study for exams and indulging in a little reading. I’m back on Bryson and enjoying it immensely. Down Under recounts his adventures in Australia and is very funny yet informative, as per usual with Bryson. His books and style of writing have definitely influenced and inspired me in the writing of this blog. I’m waiting for his next book about the Caribbean and, in particular, the D.R. entitled Se Fue La Luz.
Enough of my lame jokes. Tomorrow I start my last week of school before flying back to not-so-sunny Belgium on Friday. BBC World Weather forecasts very respectable day-time temperatures in La Romana of 30 degrees Centigrade throughout the week while dropping to a rather chillier 7 or 8 degrees in Brussels on the day of my return – and that’s during the day. At night it will drop to an unbearable 2 degrees! And don’t even get me started on snow; I’ve pretty much forgotten what that is.
As you can well imagine, I am having second thoughts about coming back to Belgium. I am already capable of catching a cold in a room air-conditioned at 20 degrees so I expect I’ll freeze through upon arrival and spend two weeks thawing in the washroom where temperatures are on par with the Dominican outdoors… at night… in winter. Nah, even that’s an overstatement. I’ll need putting in the microwave on de-frost. I think you get the idea.
My flight leaves at 9am on Friday morning but because of the time difference, the ridiculous number of connections I have to catch, the absolute certainty that at least one of my flights will be delayed and the fact that I land in Paris and have to catch a Thalys to Brussels from there, I will only be arriving on Saturday afternoon (morning if I’m lucky).
I start my journey back on Thursday afternoon. It just so happens that that is Pauline’s birthday and the Warot’s will be driving to the capital to celebrate. They have kindly allowed me to hitch a lift and join in the celebration. We’ll be staying in a hotel for the night and they’ll see me off in the morning.
From Santo Domingo I fly to the Puerto Rican capital, San Juan (if I’m not mistaken). From there I fly to New York where I (hopefully) catch my connecting flight to Paris CDG. It’s going to be a long day and if it’s anything like the journey over here in September, you’ll be sure to read about it here.
So, providing I actually get back and remember to dress like an eskimo, I should be able to go out and see you all. Hope you’re as excited as I am. Don’t let me forget the ones I won’t be seeing, namely the British side of my family including my Dad. Am very sorry I won’t get to see you this time round but will certainly be paying you all a visit over the summer, even if that seems like a long way off at the moment.
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!
