Let the drenching begin!

Today is June 1st, the start of Hurricane Season. And, like clockwork, the rains have begun.  Actually, it's more like the Rains have begun, cause it's not like it didn't rain a ton in May. The land is already saturated with water and there's been threats of flooding in some areas of the country...but that was just May weather. That wasn't hurricane season.  Oh no, hurricane seasons means that the Rains have arrived. 

In honor of the start of Hurricane Season, ONAMET (the DR weather service) announced that starting today there would be 4 straight days of rain...and I don't just mean rain, I mean Rain. - like 4 inches of water in a single deluge, per day, type Rain.  The streets of Santo Domingo never could handle that amount of water, and now it seems like many parts of the country won't be able to either.  At least in Santo Domingo, the water only floods the streets for as long as it takes to roll down the hill to the ocean. Well, that is unless you live in one of the shantytown barrios...then you might wash down to the river with the water, instead of watching it pass you by in your car.

Today's downpour started about 40 minutes before I had to leave work (and ended about 40 minutes after I left work...which made for great traffic). The embassy and USAID are on a slight incline, so when it rains, the entire street in front of work floods, typically overflowing the 6-8in deep gutter and creating its own stream down the sidewalk (as well as in the street).  This means that in order to walk from USAID to the Embassy, you must walk directly through (not cross, but heading "upstream") a good few inches of fast moving water. The intersection is always flooded, which means stepping through 3-5 inches of standing or rushing water, and dodging traffic at the same time.  I can pretty much say that today was the last time I will wear long pants until the Rainy season is over. It;s skirts, dresses, and havaniana flip flops from now until November. Everything else will be perpetually soaked. At least I've learned my lesson from last year, and have a few different umbrellas strategically stashed in various locations. 

Now if only my car had a snorkel...

Liz vs. Wild - rematch

the Wild wins.   ouch!

Well, the month of no Mondays has ended and February brought work back with a vengeance. BUT, I did get in a fabulous 4-day weekend of fun with my SDQ friends, Nicki and Robert, and my visiting friends, Jesse and Oana.  It was a blissful weekend that began with lemon-ricotta pancakes (my own recipe) and freshly made fruit juice...and ended with me not quite able to sit down without wincing (but full of a weird sense of accomplishment) - in between?  beautiful beaches, fresh lobster-on-the-grill lunches, bocci with the new set (no more coconut bocci for us!), a drink called Honey Lips, humpback whales, and some of the freshest, yummiest fish I have ever eaten!...oh yeah, and a 50ft. cliff-jump into the ocean.

The five of us went to Las Galeras, Samana for the weekend. It's on the tip of the Samana peninsula, and still largely untouched by the tourism industry.  There are amazing beaches there, some which you can only access by boat, and the area is the winter home/nursery for humpback whales. In Las Galeras, there is also the best restaurant on the island.  At the little cliff-top restaurant and camping ground called, El Cabito, you should really call a day ahead to make a reservation. Why, you ask? if this place is so off the beaten track...well, it's because they want to know ahead of time how many people and when you plan to come - that way they can go fishing for your fresh fish (or lobster) in anticipation of your arrival.  When we got there, they presented us with 5 whole dorados (mahi mahi), which were definitely alive that morning, and asked us how we preferred to have them cooked.  The restaurant is open-air with a thatched roof, and literally sits overhanging/overlooking the cliff.  50ft below you can see the serene, turquoise waters of the mar caribe hitting the cliff face (on rougher days, best not sit next to the railing. the awesome splash might get high enough to get you wet).

There is an overhang on the cliff next to the restaurant where you can jump off from (on calm days only). At one time, there was a ladder underneath to climb out again...but a storm took it away and the owner, John, hasn't had time to build a new one yet.  Luckily, a short (10min) swim around the "corner" takes you to a low, flat rock where it's relatively easy to get out of the ocean.  So, you guessed it - challenge of the day?  jump off the cliff and don't chicken out.  (we chose to do this before lunch, so we wouldn't waste a good meal).  I went first, since I was the birthday girl (and the crazy one who's idea it was in the first place). Jesse followed, then Robert.  I leaped without fear, and screamed as the "oh my god, my stomach is in my throat" feeling hit me...but I noticed that my form was a little off as I got closer to the water. I was sure to keep my arms in, to prevent a nasty bruise, but I felt like I was leaning too far back and risked a back-smacker (and from 50ft, well you can imagine!)...So, I tried to upright myself a bit, and nearly succeeded, except that my legs were scissored and I was leaning to the right, just a bit... 

smack. SPLASH!!!  "Holy SH*T!!  hahaha I made it!! (oh man, that's gonna leave a mark)  "Come on, Jesse!!! keep your arms in!"  (2 down, 1 to go).  YOU CAN DO IT, ROB!!!.  YES!! excellent form! (3 down, all alive...let's swim to shore)  What a rush!  After a good swim and some scrambling on the rocks to get out, the three of us stood there, staring at each other wide-eyed.  "you ok?" "yeah" "oh my god, we did it!" "yeah!" ...now how do we find the restaurant again? let's go eat!  

It didn't take long for my bruise(s) to show up.  They were indeed the ugliest ones I've ever had...but they only lasted a couple of weeks.  I've conquered that cliff...no need to do it again.  Sore as I might have been afterwards, though, it was totally worth it.  What a great birthday! (made great more by the friends I had with me than the cliff, by the way)  Our lunch at El Cabito was so fabulous, and place so serene, that we stayed there through dinner (and a second meal) and on into the night - dancing, drinking, taking photos, and dancing some more. 

At the end of it all, I was sad to have to take Jesse and Oana to the airport.  Too bad they couldn't just stay here for longer (like forever, maybe?)...As for the 3 of us, well, we'll find ourselves back in Las Galeras soon enough. After all, there are more beaches to explore, we haven't dived there yet, and then there are the whales....

For right now, though, February is Carnaval here in the DR.  I hear it's a party every weekend - but watch out! cause the be-deviled, costumed parade participants have large inflated rubber bladders stuck on sticks, which they use to hit you in the ass if you get in their way (or even if you don't). I've got to watch my behind - no more bruises!!

Liz vs. Wild...

Liz wins! (admit it, you're surprised...)

Continuing to take advantage of my month of no Mondays....this past weekend was packed with Liz vs. the Wild -type activities (and now I have Monday to recoup!)  I did two day trips with friends this weekend and they couldn't have been more different...

Saturday: Diving trip to Bayahibe with some friends/colleagues from the Embassy
This was a 2 dive excursion that friends organized, with an early (7am eek!) start from the capital.  Leaving SDQ at 7am on a Saturday might mean a tame Friday night, but it also means a peaceful and dominican driver-less trip along the coast.  We got to Bayahibe by 9am and were on the catamaran, ready to dive by 10:30. 

The first dive was a relatively shallow reef dive, relatively ho hum...except that we saw quite a few creatures - moray eels, sting rays, lobster, lion fish, stone fish, etc.  It was pleasant and easy...and a 100x better than the last dive we did in Punta Cana in December! (a horror of a dive with a current that exhausted and a guide that lost us)  The second dive of the day, though....wow!  We went to a shallow shipwreck just off the coast from the resorts. In its "glory days" (this was no Titanic), the boat had been a ferry that took tourists to Catalina Island for the day. At 35m long, it was too big for its shallow mooring and was washed against the reef during a storm and subsequently sank, about a year and a half ago.  Looking at the ship underwater, though, you would have thought it had been there for far longer.  Salt water and currents are not so kind to metal...

The wreck was not safe to go into, but we were able to do a few laps around it to satisfy curiosity.  Parts of the railings and side laid in contorted pieces along the bottom of the sea and you could watch the schools of fish dart in and out of the glass-less windows of the ship. The color of water and the ship, with the errant beams of sunlight that streamed down was breath-taking. Inside the front section, we could see the remains of a hammock, still suspended from the ceiling of the ship...making for an eery image of what had once been... 

The shipwreck made me get excited about diving all over again. Now I want to continue on to the advanced certification, so that I can do more wreck dives as well as night dives, which I hear are amazing!

Sunday:  Saltos de Aguas Blancas (waterfall) and a nice mountain hike
Getting up early for a second day in a row on the weekend was totally worth it with the day that my friend Robert and I had in the mountains of this country.  We grabbed our coffee to-go mugs and headed out of SDQ before 9am on Sunday, with the Constanza valley and the Valle Nuevo national park on our To Do list.  We stopped at Miguelina's bakery in Bonao, then started the winding ascent to Constanza.  It's only a 50km drive, but takes at least an hour to do with the switchbacks and the narrow 2 lane highway.  It's a beautiful drive, though, and we had a full view of the Bonao valley after only 15min of driving.

Constanza is considered the breadbasket of the DR and its residents remind you of that fact with all the fresh fruits, vegetables and flowers they sell on the side of the highway.  Now we're in strawberry season. yum!  We stopped a few times during the day to get strawberries during our trip.  After we got to Constanza, we took the route headed south toward San Jose de Ocoa, which passes through the Valle Nuevo park and passed the Aguas Blancas falls.  The road was touted as being so horrible you needed a tough 4WD vehicle to get by.  Well, I guess Rob's Xterra was tough enough, cause we did just fine.  (we were hoping for a little more mud to give the 4WD an actual workout...) About 45 min into our semi-off-road trip, we reached the waterfalls. 

The waterfalls had a nice little viewing platform at the bottom of the falls, and then there was a rather rough, straight-up-the-hillside hike you could do to get to the top.  Most of the Dominicans we saw stayed on the platform.  Rob and I headed straight for the top.  It was not exactly an easy climb to get up to the top of the 135m waterfall, but it was totally worth it!  The view of the Constanza valley below and the rest of the mountain range in the distance was remarkeable...and totally made us forget that we were actually in the middle of the Caribbean (definitely reminded us both of Colorado).  After resting for a bit and eating our lunch, we decided that the view from the actual top of the mountain must be even better...so we should climb up to it to see. The total lack of any path was a minor detail and we set off to blaze our own. Aside from some scrapes (I look like I lost a fight against a cat), we made it to the top unscathed and in only 20min.  The view was amazing!   I don't know how high we actually were, but the mountains in that area reach up to 2600+ meters above sea level.  Not too shabby for a Sunday afternoon. 

Just after remarking on how there was an awesome absence of insects during our adventure, we ran into a tarantula on our descent.  That's right, a tarantula...reality check, we are in the tropics. To be fair, I probably startled him more than he us...especially since I nearly stepped on him.  We were a bit more vigilant for the rest of the descent, however.  I couldn't leave the waterfall without going for a dip...so I took a plunge into one of the pools above the falls on our way out. The water was FREEZING! but oh so refreshing!  And we were the only ones there.  What a fabulous day!  By 3pm we had to get going so that we would avoid the most treacherous of the roads at night.  The return trip was pleasantly uneventful, and we were back in our homes, happy and exhausted by 7pm. 

Next week Liz vs. Wild continues as I take my friends Jesse and Oana (along with friends from SDQ) for a weekend visit to Las Galeras (Samana peninsula).  On the To Do list - cliff jumping, whale watching, yoga, beaches and maybe a lobster dinner....stay tuned
Man vs. Wild, DR

What a difference a bacteria makes...

It's been about 4 months since the first cholera cases started to appear in the Dominican Republic. So much has changed as a result...

When the outbreak of cholera began in Haiti, Dominican health authorities (and my office as well as the CDC) knew that it was just a matter of time before the bacteria found its way over to our side of the island.  The plan was "prepare, prepare, prepare" - for prevention, as well as for diagnosis and treatment to prevent a full-fledged outbreak.  I think is safe to say, mission accomplished.  Whereas in Haiti the cholera outbreak has affected hundreds of thousands and killed over 3,000, there have been only 100s of cases in the DR and no fatalities.  The Dominican government (with the help of international groups) did a great job of educating Dominicans and of expressing the importance of hygiene, prevention and seeking medical attention at the first sign of symptoms. 

Now, 4 months later, authorities have figured out the origin of the bacteria in the DR - the rivers that run along the border between the countries, which are now forbidden for swimming, fishing, washing, etc.  (The same rivers/area where I swam when I visited the border in September!).  The presence of cholera in the country, as far as I understand the situation, is now being "down graded" to an endemic issue instead of a potential outbreak...meaning that we will continue to see cases appear here and there in the hospitals, but we should be out of the danger of seeing what happened in Haiti (unless an outbreak starts).

So, it would appear that the DR got away largely unscathed, right? much ado about nothing in the end....except that the emergence of cholera in the DR has opened wide other wounds that had seemed to be on the mend.  I'm talking about the Haitians. There is a long, complicated history with respect to the Dominican-Haitian relationship...too long to really go into here. Let's just say there is no trust and no love lost between the two.  After the earthquake, though, things had started to change. The DR did an incredible job with their response to the quake, and they've pretty much had an open door policy with respect to Haitians.  Now, though, as we pass the first anniversary and with the presence of cholera, the discrimination against Haitians is back in full effect. Haitians are being  blamed for the crime in communities, and for bringing cholera to this side of the island.  Community groups in the Santiago area have recently mobilized to kick out the Haitians in their neighborhoods (some recent arrivals, others long time residents).  In the middle of the cholera scare, Haitians were purportedly banned from getting on public buses in some parts of the country!  Now the government is rounding up hundreds of illegal Haitians and deporting them back to Haiti. 

I'm not suggesting that the DR continue to have an open door immigration policy, or that all Haitians are innocent of wrong doing in this country...but it is a shame to see how quickly the country can regress out of fear.  I think we're seeing that in many places these days....

Back from Hiatus...

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly time flies here...especially when we are supposed to be on island time! It's been well over a month since the last time I wrote, and my only excuse is that I was traveling for part of that time. As for the rest, well...I guess saying I'll do it "mañana"  means that 6 weeks can fly by before anything is accomplished. (and judging by what I've seen from work in this country, that is definitely the truth)

Anyway, I am back and vowing to be better with the writing. I won't call it my new year's resolution, though, because that will pretty much ensure that I never do it again. I guess to re-start the blog, I should do a bit of a recap.  What has been going on for the past 6 weeks?...

(in no particular order)
1. successful office retreat  results in yours truly designated as the lead on donor coordination, knowledge management, as well as named as the gender expert (all exciting responsibilities! but I still cringe at the idea of being considered "expert" of anything!)

2. Two week  vacation through Argentina with 2 friends from SIPA. The first time I've been back in nearly 5 years. Highlights include: driving 3000km in a week (with me being the only one who could drive manual), horseback riding in the foothills of the Andes, wine tasting bike tours (w/o any crashes!), beach time/Christmas with the Marti family and all of my little nieces and nephews, 48hr whirlwind tour of Chaco, new years eve in Buenos Aires (dancing til 7am and narrowly escaping injury from firecrackers)

3. January - the month of no Mondays!  Work respects Dominican holidays and American holidays...that means 3 Mondays as feriado (work holiday) and 1 Friday as well.  Not too shabby

4. Embassy bowling league starts.  My team just might be the team to beat and I never would have thought just how much fun an adult bowling league could be.  yikes

Where did October go?

I've been in the DR for 5 months now, and it seems like far longer. I guess that's what happens when you lose entire months, I like just did. Honestly, I have no idea where October went; I must have blinked and missed it.

It's been well over a month since the last time I wrote. A lot has happened - too much to write about in one post. Let's see...there was my first return trip to the States (work) and then the 2nd one in quick succession (again, work), the Marine Ball (fun!), and the cholera outbreak (not so fun), and Thanksgiving with a real Butterball turkey (and the best stuffing EVER)...yep, I've been busy.

I also just had another typical Dominican experience today. My friend Nicki took me to get my first blowout at a beauty salon. It's really just a wash and dry, but here curly hair is considered "pelo malo" and straight hair is "pelo bueno", so the hair salon is weekly maintenance for 99% of the women here.  It felt great to have someone wash my hair and massage my scalp, it felt slightly less great to have my scalp seared by a very hot hairdryer as my hair was nearly pulled out of my head with a round brush.  I have to admit though, that it looked amazing afterward and I would totally do it again.  I still love my curls, though, and the thought of returning to the salon 3x week so that I can have straight hair is simply ridiculous to me. Maybe just every now and again...

Hangin' at the Carwash, yeah

Recap of a very Dominican week:
1. Esperanza - el musical (based on the lyrics of Juan Luis Guerra) Some friends and I went to see the opening night of this musical at the national theater. Going to the theater here is a big deal. People get dressed up to the nines and all the photogs come out to shoot for the society pages (yep, I've made it in at least once...) Last time we went to see a Dominican musical, well, we laughed the whole time...This time around, MUCH BETTER! The plot was pretty terrible, but SO Dominican - the obsession with getting a visa to the States, the central (daily) role of the Gomero (the tire guy), and the constant beat of bachata and merengue...  It's hard to say that it was a good musical, but it was great singing and great entertainment - good enough for me!

2. My new empleada - Maria. I finally managed to get myself an empleada to come clean once a week. She came for the first time yesterday, and boy did she have her work cut out for her.  She arrived at 7am, before I left for work, and she was still working away (with the help of her sister) when I came back at1:30. I think Maria and her sister cleaned every single surface of this apartment. They stayed until nearly 4pm!  As ecstatic as I am to have my place be spotless, this is going to take some getting used to.  They put away everything that was still in boxes from my move - great!, but now I don't know where anything is. And they washed, folded and put away the laundry...into whatever drawers they could find room (again, no clue now where things are...). I also got a lesson on which type of mop to buy so that I get the best shine (apparently I get a C in mop purchasing). I don't really need to see myself in my floor, but now I can.  thanks Maria

3. The Carwash Discoteque.  Last night I went out with a bunch of friends for dinner, drinks and dancing. Best place to go dancing in Santo Domingo (so far) - the carwash.  That's right. The carwash.  Carwashes here turn into dance halls at night on the weekends. Logical, right? - big open spaces, lots of dance floor, not stuffy....some even more enterprising carwashes still wash cars when the dance party has started (and they employ buxom, scantily clad women to do the washing). Alas, the carwash we went to last night was dancing only...

There's my Dominican week for you.  Next DR experience I'll have to try will be the Dominican blow-out.  For now, I'll let you ponder what that might possibly be. :)

Border Trip

Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to take a work trip out to the border region. The purpose was simply to learn more about the geography of the region and the many challenges it faces economically and politically. It was a grueling 3 days of meetings, new information, tours, welcome meals, and bone-jarring drives down back country "roads". I can't wait to go back!

Our team was inter-agency, so we all brought different perspectives, priorities and understandings of what we saw and heard during the trip.  Hopefully we will be able to build on this successful excursion and continue to work together and learn from each other.

In the border town of Jimani, I learned about immigration issues and the effort to stop the crossing of contraband into the country (drugs, weapons, etc. etc). The customs house is a small building in a constant din of nearly chaos. Outside, merchants sell whatever, travelers wait for their documents to be checked, and military from all different agencies mill around with shot guns. The actual border looks something like a big iron gate that stretches across the causeway (which is being washed out from flooding, but that's another story). On international market days, Haitians line up with their faces and bodies pressed against the gate, like cattle waiting to be let into the food lot.  Market days mean an extra 3-4,000 people milling around the customs house area, trying to make a buck however they can.

the children of batey #41

bags of carbón wait to be taken across the lake to mainland Haiti for sale

While in Jimani, a colleague and I went to the site of the field hospital they used in the aftermath of the earthquake. It was impressive to see as it was empty, even more impressive to imagine the hundreds of doctors, thousands of patients, helicopters taking off, etc.  The new caretaker of the facility, a man from Tennessee, told us that he also worked with a few of the charcoal (carbon) bateys located along the border. He was kind enough to escort us over to one of them, located in a narrow strip of Haitian territory that was surrounded by the DR and the shores of Lake Saumatre. There we met with Pastor Jean, a Haitian pastor who would travel weekly to this lonely strip of land by boat, from his side of the lake in Fond Parisien. Life in these bateys was stark - little vegetation, no sewage, houses made of sticks and mud, and little children running around buck naked and barefoot with the pigs and goats.  The main source of income for these people is the charcoal trade. This means they venture up into the mountainsides of the DR to cut down trees and make charcoal. They sell this charcoal across the lake in Haiti as a household fuel source.  The mountains all along the border are littered with smoking fires from this practice.

Moving on from Jimani, in the nearby town of La Descubierta, we met with an older American couple who run a medical clinic for the region (they also do the same in Kenya and divide their time between the two countries).  Their clinic is small, but they are always taking on volunteer medical teams to come and help out.  The main medical issues they deal with are hypertension, diabetes, and cervical cancer (there is a very high rate of HPV in the DR). There is a lack of education on how to manage diabetes, so as with many other parts of the world, the incidence of the disease is increasing and people don't know what to do with themselves to stay healthy with it.  Also, post earthquake, the couple has seen an influx of Haitians moving in on the outskirts of the town. As this new population begins to use the medical services, the doctors are finding out that the children are not vaccinated for most things, including polio.  They need to do a vaccination campaign before it turns into a health problem, or these people move on to another place.

the border region of DR and Haiti. smoke on the mountains are charcoal fires

On our way to another province, our little group stopped at Lake Enriquillo to check out the iguanas. They have two types that live in the park area, and the animals are so accustomed to people feeding them that they run around without fear, totally ignoring us (except when they ran at us looking for food). (They also have crocodiles in the lake, which, luckily for us, are not so eager to be around people.) The lake is an interesting place environmentally. It's a salt lake, though its salinity has dropped from 90% to 60% in the last 3 years. The lakes on both sides of the border have been rising steadily over the past 3 years, causing serious flooding issues for the region. Though the cause is not known for sure, the experts seem to think it's due to seismic or geological activity that is increasing the amount of water that enters and stays in the lake from underground sources (which would explain the decrease in salinity).

One of the more interesting parts of our trip for me was when we went to the border area called Macasia to see a development project being developed by the military. The general in charge of the project, an agronomist, is designed a self-sustaining, eco-friendly rural agricultural settlement for military families along the border. His inspiration is somewhat kibbutz, somewhat Israeli settlement, but his goal is to develop more of a permanent physical presence of Dominicans along the border - but to do it in a way that is environmentally and economically sustainable. Only the pilot settlement is anywhere near completion, but the plan is to have 18 such settlements along the border with Haiti.  The community has a greenhouse and a nursery for fruit-bearing trees (a source of food and income plus a way to reforest the border area), a rabbit farm and a tilapia farm.  There is a free medical clinic on site, available for use by the Haitians who live across the border (which in this area is just a river). And the general has recently acquired 2 school buses to help the kids in the area get to school. Right now the closest school only goes to 4th grade, and the children typically have to walk 10-20 km to get to class. The general's community includes plans to build a new school that is closer for the children and will go up to 8th grade.

I could go on and on about this project and about the other meetings we had and things we saw, but this has already been a long post.  As you can imagine, there is a lot going on here..and I'm only talking about one little section of the country. 

Seabather's Eruption

Sounds pretty nasty, right?  Well, it is - I've managed to find out first hand.

This is the part of the Cabarete story that I didn't tell before...now it warrants its own post.  Our last night in Cabarete, I thought it would be fun to go for a night swim. I was right, it was lots of fun...except for the bites/stings that we kept feeling every now and again.  Whatever was biting/stinging us, it was only millimeters big, and in the black of the water, we definitely couldn't see anything.  I thought the were bug bites, and though annoying for sure, waved them off as a nuisance, no more. 

The next day, though, as we drove back from Cabarete, I noticed that a rash was starting to form on my shoulders and a little on my forehead.  It didn't itch at first, and I wondered what had managed to irritate my sensitive skin.  By Monday evening, the rash was worse - red and slowly creeping down my back. Luckily, one of my guests is a nurse, and she suggested benadryl and some topical hydro-cortisone cream.  I promptedly headed to the nearest pharmacy to stock up.  Fast forward through a week of regularly smothering myself in hydro-cortisone and calamine lotion, it is now 7 days later and the rash is far worse.  My back now looks like I slept in a patch of poison ivy (and it feels like it too),  my face is swollen and red, and I have pinkeye (apparently, also a symptom of this allergic reaction).  The itch and the pain and the swelling have put me to bed today, feeling rather ill, and seriously considering a trip to the emergency clinic for a dose of whatever they can give me to make it go away.   what luck I have, right?

So, now that you have a rather ugly, vivid picture of a "seabather's eruption", you are probably wondering what it actually is that I managed to get messed up with.  Well, let me tell you.   Seabather's eruption is a highly pruritic (itchy) reaction to the stings of baby thimble jellyfish.  Apparently, I have a hypersensitive reaction to thimble jellyfish toxins.  The babies have nematocysts that fire (sting) at the slightest provocation - like a change in osmotic pressure (like letting the sea water dry on your skin, or rinsing off with freshwater), and even after the little bastard babies are dead, if their nematocysts are still on your skin, you can cause them to sting you posthumously - like by rubbing yourself dry with a towel.  I was probably stung by an entire swarm of the little buggers, repeatedly, and I never even registered it at the time.  So now, apparently I have to let this run it's course for at least 10-12 days...and pray to Neptune that this never happens again. 

SO, there you have it. To make a long story short - Liz got attacked by baby jellyfish last weekend and now she looks and feels like  _______.  I'll just have to add "seabather's eruption" to the growing list of random things that have happened to me over the years.  You'll have to admit, you are not the least bit surprised by this story, are you?

My first visitors!

...and other things that made me happy in the last week....

As if expecting my first visitors weren't exciting enough, last week I also received my HHE (household effects) shipment - nearly 2 months to the day after I packed up and left DC.  I finally have my stuff, and it's AMAZING how good that makes me feel.  It's not that I was missing individual things, per say (with the exception of my art supplies and my mattress), but it's the oddly comforting familiarity that I am so excited to have back. Now I have even more white walls to hang pictures on and consider painting - let the interior decorating begin!

The day after my place was re-populated by huge brown moving boxes, I went to the airport to get my first guests.  My friend Leah (from grad school) and two of her friends were coming for the week, with only one thing on their mind - the BEACH! I hadn't been in a whopping 2 weeks either, so it was on my mind as well. We headed to the little town of Cabarete on the North coast, famous for its kite and wind surfing (and, ahem, its kite and wind surfers).  Cabarete is totally different from Las Terrenas, and while I wouldn't say it reaches the same level of paradise, I loved it all the same.  The vibe is young and laid-back, rasta and hippie and FUN...and we were sure to soak up as much of that as we could. All the restaurants and the bars open up onto the beach, which is where everyone hangs out from dusk until nearly dawn. They even had an international music festival the Saturday night we were there (it was pretty much all reggae, but on the beach...who needs more?)

I checked out the kite schools while we roamed the beach, since learning to kite and wind surf are on my DR bucket list, but it looked like too much of an investment for this trip.  You need to go through a course to really learn, and it can cost a few hundred bucks.  Looks like I'll just have to go back some other weekend, with that as the only item on my agenda. Even if I didn't get to go kite surfing, it was enough for me to be lazy on the beach for 3 days. Being with friends who are here visiting made it so much more like a vacation (very much welcomed) than when my DR friends and I go.  funny how that works...

 Now my friends have gone - back to their lives and work and the US - and I am back at work, with a very busy-looking fall ahead of me.  There's lots to look forward to, though, so I hope it doesn't all come too quickly.  and now I also wonder, who is going to be the next to come to Chez Liz?

Big events from the weekend

1. I stayed in Santo Domingo (yay! first time in a month I stayed put)

2. I bought new tires for my diva of a jeepeta (yay! and ouch!) and found out that the list of work that needs to be done to make my diva safe to drive is ever-growing. ugh.

3. Friends Nicki and Patrick turned 26 and 28 respectively. congrats, guys! (a moment to fondly remember the stupid things I did at those ages...., which I might have repeated this weekend in their honor). I made them a Canadian flag ice cream cake. yum!

4. I had brunch! (how little you realize this is actually a big event)

5. I got certified as an open water diver - passed the final exam with a 94%


and, perhaps coolest of all, my little Broski, JT, climbed Mt. Fuji!!!  - ok, so that has absolutely nothing to do with me, but I am completely jealous that he has such a cool accomplishment crossed off his bucket list, and at only 26 years old! what an overachiever.  I'll have to go climb a mountain now to catch up...and will definitely hope that he includes me in any plans to climb the next one.  J, what do you say we do Mt. Kilimanjaro together? - maybe in 2013? or you could come here and do Pico Duarte with me.  That's the highest peak in the Caribbean (probably not so great as Fuji....)


JT has some video of his adventures, if you'd care to watch...by now maybe you've guessed that this kinda stuff runs in the family.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C01IdCPvD2M

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26sjoxza-HQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4qSy47NDWY



 

 

that's my brother!

Last off, Leah and friends arrive in a little over a week. yay! my first guests to the island!

My country 'tis of thee...

sweet land of bigotry?  of thee I ...cringe?

Those of you who know me well and have read this blog might have realized how little I discuss work, or at least, the vagueness of my references to it. I do that to maintain the separation of my professional duties and representation and my personal opinion.  Today I'm going to blur the lines just a bit, because, man, I have got to vent.

First of all, WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING ON UP THERE?!!  I leave the country and you (collectively, and probably not the people who read this) go apesh*t conservative and close-minded on me.  Seriously. WTF? When I left, there was Arizona, tea partiers and Sarah Palin (and Fox News, but I won't go there). Now, there's this 14th Amendment BS AND the Park51 madness.  I'm ashamed of you (again, the collective, and here I'm going directly for anyone who has the nerve to protect their own religious freedom and no one elses.). 

 I did not join choose to go on my current career path 8 years ago because as much as I loved my country, I did not want to be associated its government.  Now that I am, I'm finding it a bit harder to represent its people.  That makes me incredibly sad. And it makes my job a bit more challenging, thank you very much. Among many other things,  I am supposed to be helping hundreds of thousands of people who have been denied citizenship and respect for their basic human rights due to the color of their skin (their religion and their culture)...and what argument can I possibly make to influence the government or the people of this country from where I stand as an American?  How do I promote tolerance, liberty, respect for diversity and human rights when the country I represent has fallen so far from its own ideals?  I sound like a hypocrite. I hate hypocrites.  So, I guess I'm asking y'all to do me a favor...can you please, for the love of all that is decent in this world, get your heads out of your arses and start acting like the country that we claim to be?  Thank you. 

Peter Beinart's Daily Beast Blog (a great read, and partly responsible for getting me riled up and on my soap box this morning): 
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-08-17/ground-zero-mosque-controversy-america-has-disgraced-itself/

La Romana - Bayahibe

This past weekend was a 3-day holiday weekend for us here in the DR, since today (8/16) the country celebrated their Restoration Day ( something like a "We want to be independent from Spain now day).   My friends and I took this opportunity to spend a(nother) weekend at the beach, getting our scuba course finished up. Nicki, Robert and I spent the greater part of the weekend on or under water in the south east part of the country - La Romana-Bayahibe.  Since it was a holiday weekend (and Alejandro Sanz was playing a concert nearby), we had a heck of a time finding a hotel, and ended up staying at some little budget place on a road to the pueblo's playa....in what seemed like the middle of a sugar cane field.  The hotel was clean, though, and fairly quite, and at $26/night...well, you can't really complain.

We did 3 dives off the coast of Bayahibe, which is full of coral reefs and recreated shipwrecks.  Each dive of ours was for approximately 40mins at a depth of 40ft (average over the 3 dives). The visibility this weekend was AMAZING (see the photo - which is taken from the internet, but exactly what my weekend looked like).  I'm obsessed with the color of the water here. It goes from looking bright turquoise from the surface to being the most stunning cerulean when you are below.  There were bits of sea plants floating around, with tiny, nearly invisible jellyfish appearing out of nowhere (these ones don't sting). It reminded of a scene from Avatar - so beautiful!  I found huge conch shells (left them) and the biggest sand dollar I have ever seen (took it, since it was already dead).  Now that all we need to do is the final exam, I am ready to  move on to the next step - getting enough experience for night diving, shipwrecks and maybe caverns as well.

One nice this about this island is that in our circles, most people tend to know each other.  Our scuba guy, Mark, sent us to a guy he taught years ago, who now has a dive shop in Bayahibe. Turns out the guy, John, was at La Isabela with me last month, and knows the IU people whom I wrote about. In fact, some of the cannons and the anchor that we dove around this weekend were discovered then placed there by the IU crew.  John was kind enough to offer to give us discounts any time we come back to Bayahibe. I'm sure we'll be taking him up on that offer.

La Romana-Bayahibe was such a different vibe from Samana in so many ways. For one, It is much more of an obvious vacation spot. When we were on the dive boats, I could hear the activities director from the resort calling out things to do on the loudspeaker (flashback to Dirty Dancing, anyone?)  The little town of Bayahibe feeds off of the tour buses that shuttle the foreigners from their resort to the dive center and the marina-front restaurants (owned by foreigners) and souvenir shacks. Another difference - there isn't all that much public beach. The all-inclusive hotels and other exclusive resort/living compounds that have taken over the coast do not let the non-paying public onto their beaches - even though technically, the beaches are all public land and cannot be owned. The hotels pay security guards to patrol the perimeter and keep people out.  It can be rather frustrating to see the color barrier that exists between the nice, clean white-sand beaches with their foreign tourists, and the small, garbage-strewn public beaches, full of Dominicans. Every time a little kid's ball crossed the line from public to "private", we saw the guards spring into action.  We end up being torn between the principle of the matter, and wanting a reasonably clean and nice place to hang out. Today we split the difference - scuba diving with the tourists, then hanging out on the public beach.

It was a nice weekend, full of good food and good people. And, lucky me, now I get a short work week!

A post on Community

...where Liz shows her vulnerability (this won't last very long)

Those of you who have known me for a long time have pretty much always known me to be the wanderer...the independent spirit...the whatever else you want to add.  As a little kid, I was apparently the reason that my parents had to put locks on the doors and a fence around the backyard - because at the blink of an eye they'd have to ask, "Where's Bethie?"  (there she goes, crawling through the hedges into the neighbor's yard...)  When everyone else talked about going off to college at high school graduation, I talked about moving to Argentina for a year.  I spent as much of my college years abroad as I did at Lehigh...enough for my roommates, in their so very PC way, to call me a FOB (I choose to embrace that moniker, ladies, thank you :)... So I guess it came as no surprise to anyone, least of all myself, that I chose to live a life of an expatriot (side bar - why do they call them expatriots anyway? because in my experience, those of us who live abroad and see our country from the inside and the outside, end up being even more patriotic - in the true sense of the word - than those who stay within the borders)

What did come as a surprise to me, after my 6 or so weeks here, settling into my new life, is how hard it has actually been for me.  I've had a few pensive, up-and-down moments (this is me talking, so keep it in perspective), and I've been trying to figure out what is so different this time around.  Adjusting as far as life here goes, has been a piece of cake. It's not the work and it's not the DR.  I've realized that it's what I've left behind. All the other times that I took off for one of my adventures, I left like I wasn't leaving anything behind. I mean, sure, I was leaving family and friends, but...well, I knew they would always be there for me to come back to (and they still are, and I love them dearly for that).  The independent and self-sufficient me is fine with that.  I realized, though, that whenever I left before, I always left feeling like I was the odd-ball/outsider anyway...like "we" all knew I was going to go off and do "my thing"...and that wherever I was going, perhaps I would find "my kind" there.  I found "my kind" a bit more in Peace Corps, and a lot more in grad school...then came DC.

In DC I found a community again.  To be more exact, I found several communities to be a part of.  There was my yoga studio and my meditation group, my soccer teams, my old friends, SIPA friends, and new friends as well. They all blended together and overlapped to form a comfortable support system, that I never realized how much I needed...until I left it all behind.  In DC I knew who to go to for what - who to talk to about a problem, who to go have crazy fun with, who to be contemplative with, who gave the best hugs (which I am in serious want of right now)...I know these people still exist, and that network is still there for me...but it's not the same from thousands of miles away.  So, as I slowly go about creating a new community for myself here....I guess I just want to say I love you and I miss you, my DC community.  Take care of yourselves...and keep in touch


---end of sappy, vulnerable post :-)   ---

I'm on a boat...

Ok, so I didn't quite get to live out some music video this weekend...but things have a way of working out for the best.  The plan was, (through a friend of a friend of a friend) to go spend the day at Casa de Campo (playground of the uber rich and famous, like Jay Z), hanging out on some guy's yacht.  But a message Friday night that started with "Dude, boat dude is being sketchy..." changed the plans just a bit.  Plan B - head out in that direction anyway, call through the list of other contacts who have boats, and hitch a ride to another island for the day. 

Mission accomplished.  By the time we got to the port at La Romana, we found a guy who would take us to la Isla Catalina. He met us at the docks 15 minutes after we called, and became our water taxi for the day. (Ok, the boat was more like a dinghy with an outboard motor...but it was fun and cheap.)  Catalina island is gorgeous! Soft white sand, no houses (no fresh water, actually), beautiful cerulean waters and not that many people.  There's also great diving there (but we saved that for another time). 

Today, my scuba group had its first open water ocean dive.  It was so awesome!!  I can't wait to do it again!  We went out to about a depth of 9.5m (approx. 30ft), and swum around in the corral reef for 40minutes.  I saw tons of colorful fish, including a lion fish and a barracuda. We'll be doing the rest of our certification dives next weekend, and then we graduate.  yay! 

After our dive, we had lunch at a place called the Boat House, next to the dive center on the beach. The place has the best BBQ in the DR (so they say, and we think they may be right). It's run by this guy who is originally from Atlanta, GA. So we had authentic southern BBQ (ribs and chicken), corn on the cob, and cold presidentes - yum! Go hungry, leave happy...

So, yet another nice weekend down here. I'm racking up the DR experiences left and right, but I'm ready to start slowing down now (just a little...). One of these weekends I should consider sleep as my primary activity...it's just hard to stay inside, when there is so much going on around you - and in such beautiful weather too!

The yoga changes, but the Namaste stays the same...

From the moment I got to the top floor of Colegio Bebecue (think BBQ) this evening, I could feel my heart lift.  People were starting to arrive, taking off their flip flops at the door, and getting ready to unroll their mats. As the regulars shared hugs and hellos with each other, a tall, lanky tanned man came over to greet me - a kiss and a hug and a warm "welcome to class."

I settled down onto my mat and took it all in.  This was exactly what I needed, and precisely what I had been so desperately missing in the past 5 weeks.  Eyes closed and in a supine twist, the last thing I noticed before I started to zone out was that the open air room surrounded by trees, in combination with soft background music of birds chirping, made me feel like I was in some tropical tree house. And then I let it all go, closed my eyes, and followed directions given in a soft-spoken Spanish. 

The yoga itself was, shall we say, a bit unorthodox - at least compared to my previous experiences - but that didn't matter. I won't be going for the sake of perfecting my handstand.  I was content enough to be in a yoga community again, blissing out in meditative movement for 90 minutes. And for less than $10, I've paid for a month unlimited (it's only 2x/wk...but who cares)...

So, gracias Sr. Victor, for reminding me to respirar - lento y profundo - and NAMASTE.

Las Terrenas, Samaná Peninsula

How in a world of 6 billion+ people this little corner can be a peaceful and secluded paradise is beyond me...but I'm hoping its the necessity of 4WD and a car snorkel that helps keep it that way.

My weekend trip to Las Terrenas marked my first weekend overnight in the DR - the first of, well, however many weekends I have left in this country...since I now fully intend to escape every possible weekend.  A handful of friends and I left right after work on Friday, and made it to the beach by the afternoon.  We found a nice little hotel with apartment villas, and it cost us maybe $40/person/night.  We stocked our little fridges with presidentes and cuba libres and settled back to celebrate our friend Robert's birthday in paradise. (I have a feeling that I might find a new paradise each week, so be forewarned of my further over-use and abuse of that word...)

Saturday we went to a beach called Cosón. It's only 5km farther down "the road" from where we were in Las Terrenas, but without an SUV, you would be SOL.  I got to christen my newly acquired set of wheels (a well-used and worn in 1998 Mercedes Benz ML320 - jeepeta) by testing their off-road capabilities.  Not too shabby for either of us (me driving, my car surviving...).  We got to Cosón after maybe 20 minutes of serious bumps, but it was well worth it.  The only thing at playa cosón, besides white sand and turquoise waters, is a fish shack that counts on its menu a short assortment of items - fish, conch, shrimp, or lobster - take your pick and they make it fresh.  We spent the day playing bocce with coconuts and drinking ice-cold presidentes. 

Saturday night we ventured out to another beach, slightly closer than Cosón, but on far worse roads...(i.e. totally submerged)..at the end of the road to Playa Bonita is a little hotel called Atlantis, run by some 'French Hippies".  They have a fabulous al fresco restaurant, where they make everything themselves - including the ice cream!  We only stayed there long enough the celebrate a birthday dinner, but I think we all made private promises (to ourselves) to return soon and often.  At night you could see all the stars in the sky, and hear the waves lapping just a few meters away. 

Seeing the glorious natural resources and potential of this island can leave one slightly conflicted...like our support for the tourism clusters.  I applaud their effort to help develop the communities outside of the all inclusive hotels that form their own colonies along the coast. I certainly champion their efforts to protect the environment and further conservation in the country...but if their success means that our little sleepy haven of Las Terrenas becomes overrun with spring breakers - well, selfishly I'd have to say no thank you.  Go back to the all inclusive and leave the rest of us to the hidden jewels. The economic divide in these communities, though, is huge.  Something like 8% of the (small) population of Las Terrenas is French.  They drive around the little streets in ATVs and own gorgeous beach front villas.  On the flooded road to Playa Cosón, however, half-naked little boys run around in bare feet, peeing just off the side of the road. Their families fit maybe 6 people into a small shack, made of clap board and tin roofs (rusted!).  It's no wonder who would lose big if a hurricane hits...and I have to wonder which group the government would be more interested in - the tourists and their $$ or the fishermen and their shacks.

Events and Day-trips - they call it work

This week might have been the longest one that I've had so far, and that's mostly because of how much I managed to pack into it.  Tuesday I went to the launch of a new partner of ours, the Consorcio Dominicano de Competividad Turistica (CDCT) - I think it sounds better in Spanish.  They are the product of the different tourism clusters that we work with. So, I met about 50 people on Tuesday night, all with something or other to do with the tourism industry here. Not too shabby for a work night.  I think my favorite new acquaintance is this older gentlemen who runs The Nature Conservancy (his day job) and is one of the main singers in the Cuban salsa band that plays every Sunday at the Rinconcito in the Colonial Zone - one of my absolute favorite cultural events. (If you come to visit, I'll take you there.)

On Wednesday I took our summer hire out with me on a day long site visit. We went to be the representatives at a workshop run by Plan International on the Role of Journalism in Disaster Risk Reduction and Response.  It was an incredibly long day (like 12hrs clocked on the job), but rather interesting to see the press here.  They are very passive, in my impression. There is very little in the way of investigative journalism, and since so many of the major papers are tied to business interests, they are very reluctant to cover controversial topics or get too critical.  The press that attended this workshop learned more about their role and responsibility as community members and as a crucial part of any national emergency response effort. They seemed to really be pleased with the workshop - I hope that was genuine interest and not the fact that we fed them breakfast and lunch.  (The role of food in ensuring attendance sound familiar to you SIPA folk?)

Tonight I had my first set of dinner guests over.  I made a variety of Indian dishes, which turned out not too shabby for not having recipes or any prior experience (not that I would have relied on either one). My scuba group came over for our theory session. I was so happy to have a dinner party again :)  just like old times...

Tomorrow I am off to the beach for the weekend with a handful of friends. Since I finally got my car today (a fabulously old school '98 Mercedes Benz Jeepeta), I will be getting to take it for it's first road trip - at least under my ownership.  It's going to be an awesome trip to a place called Las Terrenas, and since I have had an incredibly busy, long week...I am totally ready to collapse in the sand.

Road trip!

When I woke up yesterday morning, I thought I would be spending the day in a not-so-very-clean pool, having a scuba lesson. I was bummed to find out that our instructor was sick - no class! so what on earth was I going to do all day?  I didn't want to stay at home all day.  Luckily, neither did a friend of mine. We deliberated for maybe 15 minutes over which direction to head toward - mountains or beach - and 30 minutes later, we were off.

Since we are going to the beach next weekend with friends, we decided to head toward the mountains. We read about a small town named Constanza, nestled in a valley between the island's cordilleras (the Caribbean Alps, as they call them). Constanza has one of the sustainable tourism clusters that we work with, and they have loads to offer in the way of outdoor activties - plenty of waterfalls, hiking, mountain biking, rafting, etc. all in the region.  We had a map of the country, and a general sense of the direction...the rest we left up to the wind.

The drive was absolutely beautiful! After we got outside of Santo Domingo (it's own challenge, for sure), no one was on the roads, and they were so nice and clean. This country is insanely green right now. We took the major highway toward the northwest, then turned off onto one of the mountain roads, leading through a pass to Constanza.  The grade was steep and the switchbacks were hairpin, but I think the most dangerous thing about the trip was the constant urge to crane your head to the side to see the view!  We just had to stop a few times for pictures. 

Getting to Constanza took a bit longer than we had estimated, so we only had enough time to get lunch and look around before it was time to head back...but now we know where to go for a weekend's worth of outdoor mountain fun.  All in all, it was a gloriously serenely, fresh, cool (only 65 degrees up there!), lush day. It leaves me with only one conclusion - impromptu road trips might just be the best thing ever.

NOAA, You're a Real Buzz-kill

I would absolutely love the rainy season here...if I never had to leave my apartment. Waking up every morning to see the sunrise, and the daily storm roll in from the ocean, has been beautiful. Unfortunately, after it happens for a week straight ...when it means flooded streets (and flooded apartments), slippery sidewalks, soaked feet, and not a cab to be found in all of Sto. Domingo...well, let's just say the novelty wears off.

Friday I was tempted to just call in sick. It was to be a half-day for me anyway, and all I had planned was to attend the emergency action committee's briefing on our hurricane plan.  - reason enough to abandon my flooded laundry room in favor of work. By 10am, though, we received early dismissal due to the rains (except for those attending the meeting, of course).

I learned several very nerdy things in that EAC meeting. For starters, the average hurricane season (June 1-Nov 30, officially) produces approx. up to 11 named storms, with maybe up to 3-5 of those reaching full hurricane status.  This year, NOAA had been predicting an especially 'long and active' season.  That prediction has since turned into:  14-23 named storms, with 7-14 becoming full blown hurricanes.  Apparently La Niña is at it again, raising temperatures in the Atlantic Basin and ready to wreak havoc while she's at it. The peak of the season is August - October, with the ultimate hurricane-making day falling on September 10th. (who knew you could predict such a thing?!) Not to be outdone by NOAA's numbers, our disaster relief people reminded us that it only takes a tropical storm to cause severe damage. A tropical storm that hit Gonaive, Haiti in 2004 killed 3,000 people. Yesterday's rain put Sto. Domingo in the red alert category for flash floods and mudslides. (Don't worry, from my perch on the 8th floor of a very nice apt bldg, I am no where near a flood or mudslide). And Tropical Storm Bonnie?  That's only #2 of the season - 12 to 21 left to go...

So, NOAA, thanks for the buzz kill.  Your sobering predictions have me crossing all fingers and toes that we won't have another natural disaster strike this island this year.  BUT, as I left the meeting yesterday, ready for the worst, I was greeted by blue skies and city streets already sizzling from the Caribbean sun...so here's to a glimmer of hope that the predictions of weathermen don't come true