Clases y Dia de la Virgen de la Altagracia

Well hola a todos! Greetings from my third week in the DR!
Today's post I'm gonna dedicate to my experience in school. I am currently attending the Pontificia Universidad Catolica Madre y Maestra (that's a mouthful ain't it?). It's the first private, Catholic, and coeducational university in the DR. All that sounds really important doesn't and official, doesn't it? It's private, which means the tuition is expensive, which here in the Rep. Dom. means around $3000/year. Ha!  A likely tale...thought a bit about sticking around for the next year, but then I realized that Romance Languages probably doesn't exist here. Damn shame! Wouldn't mind not having more student loans to worry about...
I'm taking five classes, one of which is Caribbean dance. Yes, I am actually taking a dance class and learning how to dance if you can believe it. Right now we are learning bachata, and my profe is this short 50-year-old man who's got MAD SKILLS. My favorite class was probably last week when I had to be in front of the class in a group of four to dance the whole routine, with the security guards leaning in the windows, watching and pointing. Just kidding...that wasn't my favorite class. But I'm learning something either way :) There are three guys in my class and probably twelve or thirteen girls...lucky dudes! We have to take turns dancing with them, and now I'm a firm believer in the saying that white people can't dance. For real, though. But the good news is I've been able to use my skills in class to actually go out and dance with real people in real dancing clubs! I've got merengue down pretty well, still workin on the bachata. Dominicans are all about merengue and bachata, so I gotta learn. I've seen a little salsa too, but let's be real...I'm not on that level yet.
Apart from my dance class, I also take Culture and Society of the Hispanic Caribbean, Dominican Reality, Dominican Literature, and English as a Second Language (which is a teacher training course). So basically I'm learning all about the DR and randomly taking an English class. I've really enjoyed my Culture and Society class. We talk a lot about what it means to be Caribbean, and since I'm the only American and I'm from the cornfields of the Midwest where islands and oceans don't exist, I don't have a whole lot to add to the conversation. Today the profe happened to ask what was going on in the world in 1916, and I said, "LA PRIMERA GUERRA MUNDIAL!!!" (WWI). I was so happy to know an answer to a question that I nearly fell out of my chair answering it. I think I may have gotten some strange looks, but that's ok. Got my participation point! The teacher almost patted me on the back, saying "very good, Anna...". Felt like a happy third grader who just dominated her solo on the recorder in music class. Since there are only 5 people in the class (myself included), we are each placed in a group of...one. Shocking, I know. We each had to answer a question in the form of a presentation, and mine was "What does the Caribbean mean for foreigners?" Well, I thought about people's reactions back home when I said I would be living in the DR for four months. "Wow...a four month vacation!" "Life is gonna be so hard on the beach, isn't it?" "Is there internet down there?" "They speak French, right?" Needless to say, I feel like many Americans don't really know a lot about the Dominican Republic, despite the fact that there are over a million Dominicans living in the US and it's only a two hour flight from Miami. Not that it frustrates me or surprises me in the slightest. So for my presentation I presented two foreign viewpoints of what the Caribbean means. I first talked about the vacation aspect, the white sand beaches, the ocean, the beautiful weather and palm trees. When we think about the Caribbean, of course this is the first image that comes to mind. Cruises, vacations, resorts. But the reality of the situation is that this is not the reality that I'm living, nor is it the reality of the majority of Dominican people. Dominicans work, Dominicans study, Dominicans go out just like we do. Most have a life that has nothing to do with the beach or tourists. And this is the reality that I've been trying to capture while being here. The other lado I presented in my presentation was that of mission work and poverty. I know many Americans who have come to the DR to do mission work and work with poor kids and in clinics and orphanages. While I think this is good work and I certainly think it's useful and thoughtful, I feel as though it also provides an image of the DR and the Caribbean that isn't entirely accurate. Of course there is poverty, of course there is starvation. But not everyone in the Caribbean lives like that. I think that's another image that Americans have of the Caribbean, that the citizens are all dirt poor and have nothing but the tourists and mission workers to come help them and boost their economy. I told this to my class, and they agreed with me in that the reality of most Dominican people is something somewhere in between the beaches and the slums. I think my classmates appreciated my honesty in what Americans truly think about this country and region, and what I once thought as well. Well, needless to say my mind has changed a lot over the course of only three weeks. I think it has to do with the fact that my stay, while temporary, requires me to get out of my comfort zone and to try to blend into society (I say try because it's hard to do with my blond hair and blue eyes ;)), which is something that I think tourists and mission workers don't have to necessarily do, per say. Not to say that my experience is any better or more meaningful, but I think it presents a side of the story that most people don't get from being here for other purposes.
Well, ignoring my little rant back there, I do have a funny story to tell that has nothing to do with class or my university! So the other day my host mom asks me to go out and buy her some ripe plantains at the corner store. So I say sure and she gives me the money to go buy them. I go and ask the store lady whose name I still have trouble pronouncing for some ripe plantains. Dominican names are weird, by the way. Sometimes I really wonder where they came from, because a lot of them sure aren't Spanish. There are some funny Youtube videos about the origin of Dominican names. Anyway, so then she shows me where the bananas are, and they looked quite small to me. And of course, the delivery boy named Santos with the angel eyes starts picking them out for me, smiling the whole time. Literally, I could have walked away with ripe anything and not been paying attention. So I pay for them and go home to a laughing host mami. "Anna, you brought me guineos, not platanos!" Apparently, I had brought home bananas instead of plantains. I'm from Iowa, it's not like I know the difference! So then she had to call and ask Angel Eyes to deliver her the right kind because the gringa doesn't know the difference between the two. Embarrassing much? Nah...
I have to say, Monday was probably the most interesting and weird day of my stay in the DR. It was a holiday to celebrate el Dia de la Virgen de la Altagracia, one of the many Catholic Dominican holidays. My host mom told us that we were going to go to the campo, so I was pretty excited because I love to go to the campo. We first went to the house of my abuelos paternos, who had come from Spain and started a coffee plantation. They had huge tracks of land and a beautiful house, and when my papi was a kid they had over 300 workers working on the harvest of the beans. I got to see where they roasted and did all of the manufacturing, which now is an old barn but I there is still machinery from the old times. The old plantation is no longer in use because the damn Taiwanese people took over the market. Not sure how that happened exactly but I guess it did. Then we went to a funeral of a brother of my host mom's sister-in-law (I think.) It was quite sad, and it wasn't exactly the time or place to meet people and make friends. Katie and I felt like it wasn't exactly our place to be there, since we didn't know this man or anyone else at the funeral for that matter. I wasn't aware that we were going to the funeral, so of course that day I decided to wear my one bright orange shirt. Classic Anna. Stood out like a sore thumb. After sleeping in the car for a bit, we went to the house of my host mom's aunt. And this is where it got...interesting. Katie and I were sitting outside, awkward as ever, when from inside all the women of the family began to chant this song, in voices that I didn't know were possible or could sound so...undesirable. It sounded kind of like a chorus of roosters, and they started repeating the same song over and over. My host brother smiled at me because he saw that I was trying to refrain from laughing. I asked him if we should go inside, and he gave me the look of death and said, "NOOOO!" I think that was the moment when I burst out laughing. Then our tio came over to us and said, let's get out of here. I have never been more grateful in my entire life. He took us to the river where the young people were, and we had some fried fish. He was very impressed by the fact that I knew how to milk a cow, as he had cows in the campo. It was a nice opportunity to bond with new family members. He proceeded to make fun of the singing women, and I immediately felt more comfortable. On our way back, he started listening to rap music on the radio and dancing. Funny guy...was so grateful to him for saving us from the Altagracia. It was an experience, though.
Gotta go to my ESL class but next time I'll write more! Enjoy!
Anna