Well folks, its April.  Its almost the middle of April actually, and its been quite a long time since I last posted.

My sister came a couple weeks ago, and it was wonderful to see her and show her around my Dominican life.  I took her to a couple of my classes, and she was a big hit with the little brother.  When she arrived at the airport, she had stuffy sinuses and looked like winter, but we soon fixed that with a couple trips to the beach.  On Thursday we went to the southwest part of the country, to Las Dunas (the dunes), which were amazing and deserted.  They were about the size of the dunes in Michigan if you have ever been there, but without the forest behind them, so at first it looked like we were hiking through the desert.  It was an amazing site to reach the crest of the dune and find the Caribbean ocean and the beach, totally vacant of people or any signs of them, and to look out the other direction and see the mountains.

Semana Santa, which is the holy week before Easter, was like our Spring Break in the United Sates.  Me and a friend went up to the Peninsula Samaná, a beautifully green mountainous area in the northeast side of the country.  We hiked through tropical forest to abandoned beaches, opened coconuts that had fallen from the trees and drank the milk, and other magical things like that.  Our friend Dena came and we went to Playa Rincón, which is 3 km. of continuous beach, with a beautiful view of the mountains looming up to the north.  We stayed in an apartment sort of place and cooked our own meals, which was very fun and a nice break from the Doña’s food.

The second half of Semana Santa I went with my host family to Santiago, where the entire extended family of my host mom lives.  We passed the hours “tranquilo” as they call it, talking and eating habichuelas con dulce, which is a drink kind of like hot chocolate except its made with beans, with sweetened condensed milk, cinnamon, and raisins.

Its getting into crunch time as far as school goes:  all of my classes were fairly light on the workload throughout the semester, but they all have end-of-semester projects which are a lot of work.  So this may be my second to last blog post before I go back to the US.

On Friday we went with the program on an excursion to the Haitian border and to see the border market culture.  It was a very interesting experience.  Basically, the border opens during Fridays for the market and other trading, and people can pass through the two countries without getting stopped during that day.  There was a small river separating the two countries, and on the Haitian side a UNICEF tent was set up.  Supplies have been going to Haiti in great amounts since the earthquake, but a lot of goods that are sold in the DR are also passed through Haiti because Haiti does not have any taxes on electronics or home appliances like the DR does.

A couple weeks ago I accidentally ran into the President of the DR in the hotel where the gym I go to is.  Elections for congress are happening in May, so there are politically rallies and politician advertisements all over the place.  I walked into the hotel and saw a bunch of camera people and the National Police, and then a few hours later a entourage came through with the president in the middle of them.

Well, that’s all I can think of for now.  I am more comfortable than ever now with my life here, but I can feel the transition of moving back to the US looming, and I find myself thinking about summer in Portland often.  I was thinking the other day that after this semester is over, I will know this city of Santo Domingo more than any other city in the world, save Chicago.  Isn’t that an interesting thought?

I hope you are all well.

Love,
Jonah

A list of recent happenings, in no particular order:

1. My sister is coming on Saturday!  She is staying a week, because she has spring break from her prestigious private college in the capital city of Minnesota.
2. My little brother is playing a handheld Tetris game right now.  He is holding it upside down, but has no idea how to play anyway.
3. I just had a tuna fish sandwich for dinner, and am about to go bowling with friends.
4. There was a student strike at La UASD (the big university) today, so no classes there.  These strikes happen frequently.
5. The last two weekends have both been Carnival events.  Last weekend was a big parade down the Malecòn (the waterfront, like Lake Shore Drive) of Santo Domingo.  There were lots of costumes, including some very not-PC ones of Spaniards beating black slaves.  There were the traditional costumes to, of people dressed in colorful baggy suits with masks with horns, carrying whips and/or inflated things attached to string to hit people with.
6. The weekend before that we went to the famous Carnival in La Vega, which is a smaller town in the interior.  This Carnival was crazier – more drunkenness, more people trying to hit you with inflated pig bladders, but otherwise the same as the one in Santo Domingo.
7. I went to Santiago, the second largest city in the DR, with my friend and explored the city, hung out with a Dominican family that my friend is close to.
8. Went to San Pedro de Marcorìs, a port town in the southeast.  Explored.  Bought French fries and shared them with a homeless boy.
9. My host dad thinks that all of the recent earthquakes have been happening because we are extracting oil and mining the earth, and when you take things out of the earth, bad things happen.
10. Got a haircut, bought some new clothes.

That’s all for now.  I must be off.  I hope you, the reader, are doing well.

Love,

Jonah

Sorry folks, I know it’s been a while since I’ve written.  As always, a lot has happened.  I’m not going to try and recount all of it, just some highlights and things I remember.

The month of February is famous in the Dominican Republic because it is the month of Carnival, a festival that is celebrated every Sunday in February and culminates on Independence Day, which is the 27th.  This weekend is the big weekend, so some friends and I are going to a town called La Vega, which is supposed to have the biggest parade and festival.  It should be a good time.

Last weekend we had an excursion with the CIEE program, we went to a national park that was beautiful.  We stayed in a hotel out in the middle of nowhere, that looked very much like Rivendell from Lord of The Rings.  Parts of it were built into a cliff face, and they diverted water from a nearby stream to make these semi-natural swimming pools running through the place.  Needless to say it was magical.  We saw three caves during the weekend, and some ancient cave paintings drawn by the Tainos, the native people of the island.  The area surrounding our hotel was dotted with bright green rice bogs, which led into the national park.  The park is on the edge of the Bay of Samaná, so a lot of the park is mangrove swamps.  One day, we went whale watching, something very popular because these whales come to the bay every year to make babies, so there are lots of whales and you get to see them jump and things like that.  A lot of people got sick on the boats, although I didn’t.  I did, however, step on a sea urchin while I was swimming afterwards, which sent hedgehog-like spikes into the bottom of my foot.  Not fun.

A couple of weekends ago, I went to see a band called Aventura in the Olympic Stadium here in Santo Domingo.   Just for some background, Aventura is a bachata group of four Dominicans who now live in New York.  They are world famous and are treated like national heroes here.  They are largely responsible for bringing Bachata to the international music scene, and also to the middle and upper classes in the DR.  (More background:  the two most popular types of music here are Merengue and Bachata, Bachata is usually seen as “lower class” music, but Avenura has changed that.)  They have been around for a very long time and have gone through a couple lead singers, the most current of which is named Romeo.  Their most recent album was ominously called “The Last.”

So, this concert was a momentous occasion for the band, as a homecoming and because it may have been their “Last” concert, at least with Romeo.  It seemed as though half of Santo Domingo was there, and, without other words to express it, it was fun.

Also at the beginning of this month, I finally finalized my class schedule.  I’m taking five classes, here’s a bit about each one:

• At Instituto Bonó (the jesuit seminary), I’m taking Latin American Social History, which is taught by a profesor of Pomona College who is on a fulbright.  The class is taught in Spanish but two other languages can frequently be heard among the students: English (among us Americans), and Kreyol (The french-like language that our Haitian friends speak).  The non-American students all live together and know each other very well, so the class is loud and high-energy.  It’s a lot of fun.
• At La UASD (Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo), which boasts that it is the oldest University in the New World and has 160,000 (yes, that many) undergrad students, I’m taking Music History I.  It’s taught by a lively woman from Cuba, and there is no textbook, no tests and no assignments. We are given a musical period each class to look up information on and then discuss.  The discussions get surprisingly boisterous and heated.  The class and the University are definitely more of an experience than anything else.  Most of the things we discuss in class come straight from Wikipedia.  The University has no official list of me being enrolled in the class, just a piece of paper my professor signed.
• At FLACSO/CIEE, our home institution that is a small building three blocks from my house, I am taking a Spanish class with a hilarious man name Felix.
• Also at FLACSO (which stands for Facultad Latinoamericana de las Ciencias Sociales), I’m taking Processes of Migration in the Caribbean, which is a fascinating subject taught by a less-than-fascinating woman who is a lawyer from Argentina.
• Finally, I’m doing an internship which counts for credit.  Also, the people doing the internship meet once a week for “class” where we discuss our internships and human development in the DR and fun things like that.  I’m doing my internship at a place called ALEPH, which is a planning and consulting agency aimed at human development.  Right now, I’m working on a revision to a document of UNDAF, which the United Nations Development Assistance Framework.  Basically, 10 UN agencies are working together with the Dominican government to develop the country.

Well, time is speeding by here.  I’m sitting in my apartment right now, sweating through my shirt.  It is time to go to bed.  Hopefully, you all are doing well.  My little brother has just finished his homework, and is proceding to seek out ants on the bathroom floor and kill them with the back of a colored pencil.

Cheers,

Jonah

This post is going to be a little different than the previous three, in which I recounted all the things I was doing during the month or so now that I have been in this country.  Now, however I would like to spill what’s on my mind concerning studying abroad in general.

First off, this is my first time studying abroad in another country.  Which means that coming into this, I had a well-defined set of beliefs and ideas about what this experience was going to be like before I got here, none of which were based on a past experience.  My ideas about study abroad were influenced largely by my Lewis & Clark friend’s and how they related their experiences, what my professors said the DR was going to be like, and what I had gathered from traveling in Central America for a month.

The amazingly funny and painfully truthful blog “Stuff White People Like” lists “Study Abroad” as #72 in the long list of things that characterize a young white urban liberal’s existence.  And coming from a largely white college where 60% of the undergrad students study abroad at some point in their college careers, I knew that coming into this I was not attempting anything unique in the least.  Encouragingly, half of the American students in my study abroad group label themselves as something other than white, although I will venture a guess that statistically study abroad in general is primarily a upper-middle class white experience.  Regardless, study abroad is, on the surface, a chance to experience another culture, maybe learn another language; underneath it is seen as your chance to party and go crazy.

There are two sides then to the large silver coin that is the study abroad experience.  One side is a sincere desire to experience and learn from another culture, to widen one’s own perspective and worldview.  This side might even see studying abroad as a chance to use one’s skills for the betterment of a developing nation, to do a little work fighting poverty or hunger or homelessness.  At the very least it is a sincere desire to study in a different setting with new challenges, a chance to build one’s own character and to test one’s own moral fiber.

The other side of the coin can be summed up by the title of a great Onion News article: Semester Abroad Spent Drinking with Other American Students.  Especially in a country such as the DR, where beach/resort tourism abounds and the drinking age is 18, it is hard not to be swept up in that euphoria.  Being in a foreign country, away from your regular friends, far away from family, away from your home institution, gives you the sense that you can do whatever you want: your actions seem to be without consequences, and even the consequences adhere to a convenient rule of What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas.

Here then, is a short list of the things I’ve learned so far during my short stay in the DR:

1. First off, it is important to step back and think, why am I doing this?  Simply questioning your own motives and talking about what it means to study abroad is a great first step.
2. Studying abroad is in and of itself a seemingly “simulated” or “fake” experience.  You are living in a foreign country, but with an assistance network behind you that no new immigrant has.  You have a family, but they are not actually your family, just for the next for months.
3. Its OK to hang out with Americans.  Its OK to speak English.  At the beginning of the trip, I found myself often not wanting to hang out with my fellow American students, wanting only to speak Spanish.   But then I realized that connecting with these people was just as much an eye-opening and learning experience as connecting with Dominicans.  Besides, wanting to only hang out with Dominicans and only speak Spanish is perpetuating the false idea that you are actually assimilating into some kind of Dominican identity for 4 months.  Just think, if you were a Polish immigrant coming to Chicago, you would want to connect with the people who you could communicate and relate to the most:  other people who spoke Polish and were culturally like you.  There’s nothing wrong in wanting to connect with people like you while you are abroad or anyplace else.
4. If you are coming to study abroad in a developing nation and looking to “help” in any sort of way, make sure you take a step back first and question your motives.  Read Ivan Illich’s speech To Hell with Good Intentions.  Remember that an under-skilled college student is not exactly the type of person to solve that nation’s problems.

Well, those are my thoughts and feelings so far; they will most likely change as February turns into March, March into April, and April into May.  Let me know what you think in the comments.  ¡Que tengan buen fin de semana!

Love,
Jonah

Well, this Monday marked the third full week that I’ve been on this island.  Again, many things have happened since my last blog post.  I’ll try to recount some of them.

Last Thursday was a Catholic holiday, and this Monday was a National holiday, so the whole country effectively had a five day weekend this weekend.  Our study abroad office closed, and everyone planned trips to different parts of the island.  Some friends and I went up to the north coast to a little tourist town called Cabarete.  It is not touristy in the normal sense, but it is a an international famous spot for Kite Surfing, a water sport of which I was not acquainted with before I arrived in Cabarete and saw nearly 300 kites flying above the beach.  Kite surfing is exactly what it sounds like: you hold onto a big kite, attach your feet to a smallish surfboard, and skid across the waves.  It was a lot of fun to watch, because people do tricks where they jump in the air like 10 feet and seem like they are about to be taken away by the wind, but I never tried it.

We stayed in a cheap hotel for all four nights, and mostly hung out on the beach, swam, and explored.  One day however, we had an adventure that merits a couple paragraphs for itself:

I had read in my travel guide that one of the fun things to do in this area was to go see waterfalls.  One waterfall in particular, Las Cascadas de Damajagua, was actually a set of 27 waterfalls, all connected, that you could hike up and then jump down.  With a rough idea of where these waterfalls were and no idea what the experience would actually be like, four of us grabbed a guaguita (a small public van) west.  Another guaguita took us to a small town and then another dropped us off in the middle of nowhere when we asked where the “cascadas” were.  The conductor pointed down a dirt road as the van pulled away.

Imagine, at this point in the story, that the scenary looks like something you might have seen in a Vietnam War movie; or, if you have ever been to Southeast Asia, like that.  Tall grasses, mountains surrounding you, heat, humidy.  We walked down the dirt road for a while until we came upon the visitor center for the waterfalls.  After paying 10 US dollars and changing into our bathing suits, we were given life vests and helmets, and told to follow a guide named Felix across a rickety bridge and into the middle of nowhere.  We waded across a river and hiked on flat ground for a while, wading through what seemed like the same two streams over and over again as they crisscrossed over our path.  Finally, we came to a beatiful pool of blue sparkling water and a small waterfall.  Until this point, I was under the impression that we were going to hike up alongside the stream and the waterfalls, like on the rocks alongside.  But then our guide asked if we were ready and dove into the pool.  As we jumped in after and started swimming, my friend Alex turned around and said “This is so cool!” which began a series of realizations on our part that eventual lead us to the conclusion that this was the most amazing experience we have had yet in this country, and one of the coolest things any of us have every done period.

So now let me explain to you what this was actually like:  You swim upstream, against the current of a small river that is cutting deep but narrow canyons in the hillside.  Sometimes, you climb right up through the water.  Sometimes there are wooden ladders.  Sometimes you hoist yourself up using ropes.  Many times the guide had to pull us up because the current is so fierce that it dares to pull you under.  One of the reasons why it was so awesome and exhilarting, on the way up especially, was that it is something that would never be allowed in the US.  First off, it’s HARD.  It’s way harder than your average high ropes course.  Second, the safety procautions if this existed in the US would be 100 times more.  This is one of those things they would make you sign multiple waivers on, letting them know your family wouldn’t sue if you DIED climbing up waterfalls.  Third, it was exhilariting partly because they DIDN’T tell us what we were getting into until they were yelling at us to grab onto this rock or step into this gushing stream of water or hoist ourselves up by this rope.

After getting to the top of 12 waterfalls (we would’ve had to pay more to do all 27), we began the jumping down process.  We didn’t actually jump down 12, because some of the waterfalls had pools below that were too shallow.  It was really scary but AMAZING, the highest jump we did was like 20 feet.  There were also two natural slides that we slid down, where they told you to sit here and fold your arms in and lean forward, the water shoots you down and plunges you under the water.

Throughout this whole thing, we were swimming through canyons that are almost like caves, little sections of it had overhangings and the whole thing was just beautiful.

After the whole thing was over, we walked out to the road, tired and soggy.  A guagua never came for us, so we ended up hitchhiking part of the way home.

Well, that’s the big exciting things that happened.  Today I started working at my internship, where I’m doing some really fascinating work with a U.N. plan for developing the D.R.’s society and govenment.  More on that later.  I start classes at two more Universities on Monday.  Now, to organize my life.

Love,
Jonah

So it seems like I’ve been here for months already, so much has happened in these first few weeks!  Some highlights:

•  Our group went to a baseball game on Friday, called play de beisból, which was very fun.  People are into baseball here like nothing else: this morning I was taking a bus to school and the driver, conductor, and many of the passengers were having a heated argument about last night’s game.
• The Dominican empanada is my new favorite food.  Its very very deep fried, and filled with your choice of chicken, cheese, and vegetables.
• I bought a guitar!  My host dad came with me so that they wouldn’t rip me off.  Its a classical acoustic guitar, and I have spent many an hour out on my balcony, playing and watching the traffic go by below.  Also, I met this guy in my apartment complex who also plays.  He’s 35 and lives with his parents and loves classic rock, so we are working on renditions of Sweet Child of Mine and Santana songs, among others.  It’s really interesting to hear him sing in English, because he knows the lyrics perfectly and has the inflection of the words perfect, he just couldn’t tell you what he’s saying.
•  As you’ve heard, the Earthquake in Haiti has definitely had a huge effect here.  The night of the earthquake everyone in Santo Domingo stayed indoors watching TV: we were on a tsunami warning, and I live two blocks from the ocean, so I’m glad that didn’t happen.  On Saturday I went to one of my universities (Bonó, the Jesuit seminary), and helped load truck fulls of food and medical supplies off to Haiti.  I have met a couple Haitians in my classes, and its been very humbling to talk with them and get to know them.
• On Sunday I hung out with my family, and we visited my mom’s extended family in the suburbs of Santo Domingo.  We basically ate all day and sat around and talked about the earthquake:  It is a huge topic of debate here, as the DR has a very tough relationship with Haiti.  There are many Dominicans that think we should help our Haitian neighbors, but there are also many Dominicans who do not believe we should help them.  The main argument that Dominicans make against Haitians is the same one many Americans make about Mexican immigrants: that Haitians are taking all the jobs and lowering the average wage of Dominicans.
• I am going to be doing an internship here with a consulting organization called ALEPH.  I will be working on a revision to plan between the United Nations and the Dominican government, using my computer and web skills along the way.  I’m really excited to learn a lot of new web and computer vocab in Spanish.

Hi everyone,

As you may know, a level 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti, and it is estimated that one in three Haitians have been affected. Although the Dominican Republic did not experience any structural damage, I have met many people here who have close friends and family that were in Haiti during the earthquake. For example, I am taking a class with some Haitian students, none of whom have heard from their families as all communication with Haiti is down. Besides that, one class I was thinking about taking has been cancelled indefinitely, as the professor´s wife is currently in the hospital, after a building collapsed on her in Haiti during the earthquake.

Fortunately, the building I was in felt little more than a bump, and most of the students in our program were not effected aside from some dizziness.

The 31 students in my study abroad program are currently brainstorming on ways that we can get to Haiti and help the relief effort with our human power. In the meantime, we are using our monetary power to help in the relief effort. We have decided to reach out to family and friends and each raise $200, which would raise $6,200 if everyone met that goal. I just donated $25 to the Clinton Foundation Relief Fund, where 96% of the donated funds go to direct relief. Here are some links for relief. I apperciate all of your help.

Partners in Health (Starting with donations of $10)
https://pih.org

Clinton Foundation (Starting with donations of $25)https://re.clintonfoundation.org/SSLPage.aspx?pid=3869

Love,
Jonah