DR: Arrival

1/21/12:

The day before I left was a busy one filled with meeting friends for final goodbyes, orientation, and last minute preparations. Our group all got dinner together with our professors and I came back to the apartment for a little pow-wow with my beloved roomies. Jessie and I got into her bed around 1 am but I lay there awake for a while, not believing that I’d be on my way to the DR in a few hours.  I was so anxious and excited. Felt like Christmas Eve as a kid. Jessie won roomie of the year award when she got up at 5:45 to take me to campus- whatta gal. We loaded up our two vans and headed to the Charlotte airport. It was so foggy our plane got delayed about an hour. With my notorious airplane luck, I got seated next to this young retired couple. It was clear they’d started their vacation in the airport and were insistent that they buy me a bloody mary despite the flight attendant telling them I was not of age. They introduced themselves as “Ima Slutzsky” and “Dick Senormous”. There was a group of 14 of them and she stood up and pointed out her friends Will Ujackmehoff, Harry Butt and Sugar Lumps. It was too much. When she heard I’d be studying there for three months and working in some poorer communities she became very concerned and made me vow to always have a buddy, saying “I don’t want to read about the blonde girl from Virginia Tech who got brutally murdered in some slum town.” Then the flight attendant found out I was a runner and talked to me for forever- apparently he was fifth in the national triathlon in 1980 and had so much motivational coaching advice to share. So much. Our three hour flight came to an end and it was amazing to look out the window and see all the green foliage. It is a beautiful country. After final reminders to be safe and yes, hugs goodbye from good pals Ima and Dick, I got off the plane. It was warm! We were greeted by a private shuttle and a woman that took us through all the VIP lines. The airport is awesome- it’s the largest privately owned airport in the world and the busiest in the Caribbean. It is all open air so birds fly around and there are trees in the building. There were little bands playing music and dancing as we passed by. I loved it. We got our baggage in no time and were bused to the Research Center. Driving here is pretty crazy- everyone goes so fast and there is a lot of honking and yells out the window.  And drinking and driving is legal. The research center is so cool. It is on a nature reserve so the grounds are beautifully kept. We drove up the long drive and were greeted by our bright red, green and blue home. I got assigned to a room with Shannon, who is awesome. Actually, everyone is awesome. We all talked about how relieved we were that everyone is so chill and easy going. We had a little orientation with Ben, who will kind of be our go-to person while we are here and is the most relaxed and funny guy ever. I am going to try to figure out a way to steal his job over these next few months. He lives here and gets his meals and board free and coordinates all of our trips as well as sustainable development projects at the Foundacion Ecologica and all over Punta Cana. He is currently working on this clean sewage and sanitation project that sounds awesome. We then met Katie, a recent graduate from UCLA who is the head marine biologist of the coral reef rehabilitation project we’re working on. Afterwards, we all walked to the beach. I was so excited to see the ocean. We all couldn’t believe we were here and that we were in 26 degree rainy weather just this morning. Shannon described it pretty well when she said we’d found the greatest loophole to college. We headed back to La Tortuguita for dinner of rice, beef, and this delicious vegetable dish. It is the employee cafeteria so we got to socialize and practice our Spanish with the workers, most of whom are cleaning ladies, repairmen, gardeners, waiters, or security guards. Afterwards we headed back to the dorm and talked with Miguelito, our security guard and the cutest, oldest man I've ever met. I absolutely loved him but it also made me question the Foundation's hiring criteria for security guards. 

Airport

View of the Foundation grounds from my window

Bedroom

Rhinoceros Iguana

Beach!

Hike through las lagunas

1/22/12:
This morning I woke up around 8:00 and went for a nice run. I turned right down the drive and when I the road ended, I spotted a little dirt path. It was blocked off but I decided to go around the little barrier. It was worth it. I love all the plants here. Some of the leaves are half the size of me. I was looking so intently at everything that I barely realized I had been running for almost 20 minutes and needed to turn around to get back in time. I came back and stretched and talked to some of the Haitian gardeners. They are definitely more timid around tourists than the Dominicans and spoke Creole, which reminded me of Sierra Leone and put a big smile on my face. I took a much needed and very cold shower (no hot water here) and got some breakfast before we all headed downstairs for a tour with Ben. He introduced us to the two Peace Corps reps here- Sabine and Nate. Nate is a health volunteer and spends most of his time teaching sex ed. Sabine is working on a large-scale water sanitation project for the town of Veron. Veron is a very poor community outside of Punta Cana. Many of the people who live there are migrant workers that try to find temporary jobs in the tourist industry here. In the DR, you can only get represented in government if you have over 50,000 people, and since Vero has no infrastructure whatsoever, they were not able to get an approved census  or government representation until last year.  Basically, the town is extremely impoverished and the average person has a third grade education there- just a few miles down the road. Both Nate and Sabine are so passionate about their work  and asked if we would be willing to volunteer on some of their projects in addition to our work at the school and free clinic. A dream come true- I can't wait to get started! Ben gave us a quick history of the DR and Punta Cana- it was very interesting but also revealed how many compicated issues there are in the area. Then we all went on a tour of the Foundacion Ecologica grounds. I had no idea how huge the place was! First Ben took us to the bee colonies. He talked about how the honey comes in different shades and flavors based on what time of year it is. It is best this time of year and is an almost white color. So sweet. Rubio takes care of all of them and Ben says he doesn’t wear any protective gear, he just reaches in and grabs fistfuls of bees. The guy is a legend. Next, we walked to the worm composting buildings. Ben said that there was a huge trash problem in the Dominican Republic. All the trash was getting dumped in the streets and burned or eventually made it to the ocean, and since the DR depends on their beaches for their economy, they realized that something needed to change. They thought about giving scrap food to pig farms, but pigs poop a lot, you need a lot of land and it would stink. There is also field composting, but again, you need a lot of land, specific temperature settings and it really stinks. Last they had worms. No one believed it would work so they did an experimental worm composting plant at the foundation. It worked so well they built a second bulding twice the size. Basically, all food scraps are dumped in this building and the worms eat it. Worms can eat their body weight each day and generate 2 things- poop and pee. While they only weigh a gram, there a hundreds upon hundreds of worms eating this trash and pooping it out, making giant mounds of nutrient packed soil that doesn’t even smell bad. So sustainable, so awesome. After playing with some worms we walked through organic garden after organic garden. We are able to just walk outside, find a gardner, and buy anything that grows there- eggplants, cucumbers, bananas, lettuce, squash, all for a couple of bucks. No one believed Rubio could make banana trees grow in Punta Cana soil, but there are two huge gardens of them. We also learned that a banana branch cannot grow more than one banana plant. Once the bananas are harvested, you have to cut it down all the way to the base so it can grow again. We also walked over to the Rhinoceros Iguana colony. They look like mini triceratops dinosaurs and are going endangered so they are trying to repopulate the species. They eat their babies so they release them and said that they get a lot of calls about iguanas on the golf course in the Spring. I felt like my jaw was open the whole tour- I cannot believe how beautiful everything is and that this is where I live! This is my backyard! After the tour Ben talked to us about our two extracurricular science projects. One is to help release two endangered hawk species that are indigenous to the Dominican Republic. The hawks are very tranquil and look very similar to another species, so hunters often accidentally kill them. We will be assisting some of the scientists in collecting data on their populations and releasing others back into the wild. Our other project is Elkhorn and Staghorn reef rehabilitation. The Caribbean has the most damaged reefs in the world, and of the Caribbean islands, the Dominican Republic has the ones that are the worst off. After lunch, we went to the beach! I was way too excited. It is paradise. I still can’t believe it’s January. The day was perfect- 82 with a little breeze. We swam around and then had our first meeting with the scuba divers. Mark, the head instructor is this sarcastic British guy with a great sense of humor. His assistant, Adelle, is also British and is only a few years older than us and Paul is this goofy Canadian dude. I love them. We are starting our lessons tomorrow! After signing up, we hiked out to the freshwater lagoons. They were so beautiful- the water was crystal clear and we all climbed out on this tree and jumped into the water. We stumbled into these people who I assumed were Spanish. Trying to practice, we started a little conversation when they stared at us and said “We’re from Russia.” Oops. We finished the hike through all the lagoons, had another hour of beach time, and came back in time for dinner at Franco’s. After dinner, we had our first Cultura class with Nancy Lopez, our Dominican Spanish professor. She reminds me of Gloria from Modern Family. She is so hilarious, expressive, and full of life. I adore her and she had me in tears I was laughing so hard at one point. She bought us all a round of Presidentes and taught us our first lesson: how to drink in the Dominican Republic. It was actually really helpful- she talked about parties and how she and everyone else grew up drinking at 12, so no one here gets drunk like in the US. It’s all about enjoying yourself and being social, not getting out of control. She talked to us about safety at parties and interacting with men here, as the culture is much more touchy and forward. She pinched her fingers together and said “If you give dem dis much, they take THIS much”, moving her hands wide apart. She said that women here must be very assertive and are the ones to invite the men to approach them- not the other way around. Therefore, if we approach a man, that means we are very interested in them.  She told us to keep space when dancing, as “Dance is a vertical interaction of a horizontal desire.” She kills me. Then we all went to the hotel’s club for some dancing lessons. Nancy taught us all how to salsa and "move our hips like the Dominicans". Christian is an amazing dancer and he taught me how to dance with a partner and do all these cool spins and stuff. After dinner we walked back to our dorm. We looked up and gasped at how beautiful the stars are here. The sky is so clear and the stars are so bright. It was breathtaking and it dawned on me how thankful I am to be in this amazing place.