La Bandera

So taking classes and living in a different country is a little easier than I expected it to be, but that could just be because I had such low expectations. Here is a rundown of a typical day in Jarabacoa. I wake up and take a cold shower. The icy water was hard to get used to, but it’s so hot here sometimes that I’m grateful for it. The water in the shower is not the same water you drink, so I brush my teeth using a bottle of Dasani. Next I go eat breakfast, which is always ready and waiting for me on the dining table (which, in my house is outside, which is pretty cool, actually). Since I’m a lazy bum and don’t like to wake up too terribly early, I scarf down the food and rush off to class with the other chums in my neighborhood. My host mom has figured out that I wake up pretty late, so some days she makes me something I can take to go called a pastelito, it’s similar to a Hot Pocket, but homemade. School is pretty chill, and every day we go home for lunch. Actually the whole town goes home for lunch. When I get in we have some version on La Bandera, a Dominican favorite comprised of rice, beans, meat, and a salad. And then we have water and homemade juices (they’re great!) Sometimes we have potatoes or spaghetti, but there is ALWAYS rice on the table. Just as I get sleepy from my food coma, its time to return to school for the second half (which is strange here, because there are so many kids here and so few schools, kids only go to schools half days). The second half of school is like the first, but harder to stay awake and alert, and thus, feels longer. After class is done for the day, sometimes I go stroll about town with the other Americanas, but we inevitably get tired of being hissed at by tigueres and getting kissy faces from the motoconchos, that we eventually go back to our homes. Sometimes I visit other families in the barrio, but usually I’m so pooped that I just do my homework or read while I wait for dinner. I like to sit on the patio in the rocking chairs (which everyone in this town has, literally, everyone) and usually I’m joined by someone else from my host family (actually I’m writing this on the patio, in a rocking chair). After dinner, I chit chat with my family, practicing my Spanish, getting to know the strangers with whom I am now living with and who are now my new temporary family.

Speaking of family, I have an update. They’re awesome (but not quite as awesome as my real family).

It’s been quite the adjustment becoming a big sister, I must admit. Some of us took our younger sibs out for pizza one night, and it was really fun. We all walked together and got to meet each other’s siblings and it was a great bonding experience. We finally got to see all the faces that went with the stories (some terrible) we were hearing in class. Getting to the pizzeria was fine, and it was even fine managing a swarm of excited children over a makeshift dining table for 20. We even held out through eleven year old boys spotting a famous ex-Dodger baseball player. Getting our pizza was a bit of a struggle, and even more so when our waiter said we ordered extra pizzas (I’m still not sure why they didn’t send the English-speaking waiter to the table with 10 gringos, struggling to interpret the menu). The walk back was quite the adventure, however. So when we left the restaurant, we saw that next door was a bakery, and of course us over-fed Americans could not resist our genetic sweet-teeth and had to get dessert. Of course you cannot get dessert without sharing the experience with the little big eyed niños (well I didn’t get dessert, and thus, neither did my little bro and sis, but they were ok with it; I did, after all, just by them dinner).
Big mistake! The sugar went straight to their heads and they were running through the street, stopping at bus stops pretending to be beggars, it was loco. The girls were chill, just waking with linked arms in two age appropriate groups, it was actually really adorable, but I cannot say the same for the little brothers of the group. For one thing, they’re already wild some of them. They had to touch everything they passed, they were yelling in the street, and my little 7 year old brother, the littlest of them all, just had to copy everything he saw. It was so stressful to get them back home. All of us were thinking, at one point or another, “all we wanted to do was take the kiddies out for a nice treat and get them home safely. My host mom is going to kill me and then kick me out if something happens. Oh my gosh, I’m going to be homeless!” It was so scary. People here already don’t use sidewalks, and cars don’t like to stay on their side of the road, or go the speed limit, so we’re worried enough about our own lives sometimes, let alone the lives of these wild little monkeys our Dominican parents let us in charge of. At one point the boys were in the street with a tree branch provoking a stray dog. Yep, this is real life. I eventually grabbed the hand of my little brother and made him walk with me, away from the other hooligans, because I was not about to take the heat for what some knuckle headed little boy decided to do because he thought it would be funny. Shout out to Jayonne, Jessica and Jonathan, I totally respect you for being able to handle being a big sib, because I was stressed out.