Week 6

Great Egret during our Natura Park day trip 

Rubio and I

Finally certified!

This week has flown by. It is good to be back home without a trip to prepare for- things are more relaxed, but we have much more free time to fill our days with good things. Some highlights from this week:

1.     Bird watching. Monday was our first day in Tropical Orinthology with Professor Jerry Via, the head of the CCER program here and the Dean of the College of Science. I adore him and his partner Bill, but I am not as big of a fan of bird watching. The entire group warned him the first day that I am not a morning person and they have all become trained in not talking to me for the first 20 minutes I am awake. Because our class starts at 6:30 am. Not my prime time. We then walk around for about 2 hours looking at birds. Some of them are cool, like the bee hummingbird, which is a hummingbird the size of a bumble bee. And some are pretty colors. Most, however, are various shades of brown. We then have six hours worth of lecture throughout the day. That is a lot of talking about birds.

2.    There were two holidays last week! Last Saturday was Independence Day. Dominicans are very patriotic people. Friday was the Festival of Saint Brugal. Basically everyone wears red clown noses and drinks Brugal rum in celebration. Also a good time. We went clubbing at Imagine, which is in a cave! 

3.     We had our last ocean dive and finally got scuba certified this week! 

4.     Now that we are home for three weeks, I’ve started a teaching assistantship with Nate the Peace Corps Rep. Nate the Peace Corps Rep is really nice, went to UC Berkley, is going to medical school at Stanford after his term, and looks like a Ralph Lauren model. All the girls hearts sank when Ben asked him how his girl friend was doing. Needless to say, I’ve enjoyed helping him teach Sex Education classes in Veron at Las Manantiales. It’s funny, for some reason Dominicans think that all Americans are related in some way. I’ve been asked if I am Nate’s wife, girlfriend, sister, and yes, daughter. I’ve really enjoyed teaching the kids and playing AIDS dodge ball during break. They are wonderful and so funny.

5.    My money was stolen during the first field trip so I am now broke. I’m over it, but mentioned to Ben that I was sad that I could no longer buy gifts to bring home to my family and friends. He said he had an idea. Bee keeping. I could earn jars of organic, naturally made honey if I logged a certain amount of hours working in the bee colonies. Bees and I have a rough history, but I agreed. Worst-case scenario it would make a funny story. Shannon, my ever-faithful roommate wanted to join in, so we set out in our first week with the bees. Rubio, the bee man, is a crazy person and I love how much he loves his job. Except if you talk to him while he’s driving he stops looking at the road because he is looking directly at you and Shannon and I hold hands because we think we’re going to die. He goes into the hives wearing just a tshirt and jeans and can open the top of the bee case and take fistfuls of bees in his hands. Rubio explained the whole process in really fast Spanish so my knowledge of bee keeping is limited to what I could pick out, but from what I could see bees are pretty amazing. Rubio lets us eat some of the honeycomb, which is incredible. The first time I didn’t realize you were only supposed to chew on the wax and I swallowed it. They still haven’t stopped teasing me. He has two workers, Popapilla and Daniel. Daniel, like my other Daniel, is also from Haiti and I absolutely love him. 

Also, if anyone is interested in Dominican/Haitian relations, check out this website and short documentary: http://cronkite.asu.edu/buffett/dr/index.html