Stepping Out of the Boat

Here I am with Fred! This picture was meant to be on the previous post, but the uploading wasn't working. Fred, my stuffed bear that my grandmother made me a loooooong time ago, arrived in the package from my mom. I waas glad to see him - you know - a piece of home.


And now for today - WHAT A DAY!! (We feel that way after every day.)

This morning, I (Claire) wasted an entire prep period wandering around the school, a sweaty mess, trying to find a place to work that had air conditioning. I was locked out of one office area (and couldn't find the person who had the key to it) and the only other office area's airconditioning wasn't working. Every classroom is full practically every minute of every day, so I just sweat like a pig lugging around my huge bag with all my supplies, folders, papers to grade, and other materials. How I long for the days of working in a temperature controlled empty classroom that has all my stuff on shelves and in drawers!! I'll never take prep periods in the US for granted again!

After school today, we had yet another adventure. We needed to somehow send the part of our paychecks that we want to save back to the USA since it is practically illegal for us to have a bank account in $US, and since the mail absolutely does not work, we have to use a courier service. Courier services are a completely unnecessary entity in the USA because the mail works. Basically, we pay a small fee for some private company to take our mail to Miami, FL, by plane and drop it in the US mail. For one letter containing a couple checks, it cost $74 pesos (about $2.50 US). So mom- in about 2 weeks, expect the checks in the mail!

By the time we were finished with all that, it was about 4:30, at which time we thought we would go over to the cell phone company and quickly and simply sign up to get a cell phone. When are we going to learn?!? Nothing is quick and simple here!! Let me start from the beginning:

We decided to go with this French/Dominican company called "Orange" becuase it's very reasonable and because we can call places in the US for the same amount as we can call locally - a minute used is a minute used whether it's a call to the US or the DR. So, when we walked into the huge Orange headquarters, a lady at a reception desk took our name and entered our passport number into the computer. Then the madness began.

We were told to go back to "customer service," which was really a gigantic room resembling an airport waiting area with various computer stations located randomly around. It was full of people waiting. Here is their system: after you give your name to the lady out front, you go sit down and wait for them to call your name. It sounds simple enough, right? Here are the complications: the room was so loud and echoed so badly that no one could hear when their names were being called, not to mention that only three of the thirty employees actually said people's names loud enough for people ten feet away to hear. Add to that that Spanish speakers have trouble pronouncing our names.

After we finally got to talk to some one (we missed our name when it was called - big surprise) we tried to choose a phone from a list they gave us only to find out that they didn't really have half of the phones on the list. After MUCH ado, we finally, an hour and a half later, walked out of the place with a phone. All the directions are in Spanish, but we'll manage. Here's John with the phone and the bag it came in. I asked him to put a shirt on since he's not wearing a shirt in almost all the pictures we have of him, so he briefly laid the shirt on top of his chest instead of putting it on. It's so hot here!

By the way - incoming phone calls cost us nothing - so call us!! Here's our cell number: 1-829-868-2613

After we were finally done at the cell phone place, we went out to dinner with all the other foriegn teachers at this Mexican Grill called Spicey's. It was yummy. Almost anything would have tasted good since we had walked so far and waited so long for dinner.



This picture is of last night. We had a guacamole party on the roof. It's the coolest place to go at dusk and after. The avacados here cost about 12 pesos, which is about 50 cents US. They are different than the ones at home in that they are very smooth on the outside. When they get ripe, the skin doesn't get darker, they just get soft. Also, the pit in the center is HUGE, but the avacados themsleves are also much bigger. The guac was good, but on one makes it like my Dad!

Here, almost everything is backwards. This includes weekend activities vs. week night activities. For example, last weekend, we stayed in all weekend. Now, during the week nights, people ask us to go out and do things. Strange.

Tonight after school, we (along with Sonya and Becky) had to go get our pictures taken for our health insurance cards because here, they check your identity by looking at the picture on the card rather than checking other identification (another example of backwards thinking). So, we ended up walking to the store to get the pictures taken, and Holly asked us to come over to this other Canadian guy's house to meet him. We ended up going over there and staying for quite a while. The guy's name is Roger, but here he pronounces his name "Royer" because the "g" in Spanish often makes the "h" sound. He seemed nice and fun-loving, although every foriegn person we've met here has a love for partying that we neither share or desire.

After that, we (along with Sonya and Becky) decided to go out for dinner at a little corner cafe - and it is like a real cafe - because it was too late to cook dinner. The cafe is called L'Orangerie Cafe, and it was GOOD! I had some sort of fish with avacado sauce and real mashed potatoes. John had chicken fajitas. We're definitely going back someitme! Since we were out so late, we're not going to be doing any work tonight. :)

We had a faculty meeting after school today, and John's entire meeting was in Spanish. He hopes they didn't say anything important.

The elementary and secondary meetings were separate, and the funnies thing about the secondary meeting is that people were arguing about how the bell is three minutes too early by the end of the day. HA!! Not a single clock in the school is right - and many of these people didn't have watches on. I wonder how they could tell the bell is off when no two clocks in the school say the same thing at the same moment. HA!!

One thing today went right: we got a package from home. It was sent by FedEx, and it had the leftover luggage that we couldn't bring with us due to the embargo. Thanks mom!!!

John got some much needed clothes, and I got to see Fred again!

Although you probably can't tell from the picture here, these are our dirty eggs. I wanted to put this picture up yesterday, but Blogger wouldn't let me upload any pictures.

We're wondering when we'll wake up in the morning and not dread going to school. It certainly wasn't today - but by the time we actually get to school and get going, things are fine. Today was a busy day.

Last night at about 10:00, I (Claire) realized that I had lost our little zip drive somewhere - and I royally freaked out. A sleepless night later (I'm exaggerating slightly), to make a long story short, I successfully located our zip drive with the help of Jorge (pronounced horehay), the slightly quirky tech guy at school who speaks no English. Thank God!!! John's summer reading tests for this week were on it and nowhere else. Disaster averted.

It's the second week of school - and still no text books. They are apparently still stuck in customs gathering dust - or mold. Here, I think it's more likely that they are gathering mold since the air is so wet. I can't imagine anything gathering actual dust - maybe grime, a mix of the water in the air and what would be dust if it weren't so wet. Speaking of wet, we survived Hurricane Ernesto with no other wounds but a little boredom. We couldn't go out for most of the weekend.

So - to the dirty eggs. We learned something today: The chicken farmers in the USA - or some other person who handles eggs on their way from the bottom of the chicken to the grocery store - wipes all the dirt and chicken-house remnants off of the eggs before they go into the little styrophome things.

Needless to say, the eggs here are all-natural! No egg cleaning for the Dominicans - no sir - they want the little pieces of dirt and grime that came from the chicken farm to stay on their eggs. Today was our first time to buy eggs because we were a little nervous about walking back from the store with twenty bags full of groceries. We didn't want them to get smashed. So, today, after we went to the bank, which I'll address in a moment, we went to a new grocery store and got a few things, eggs being one of those things.

The bank... Finally, since we've been here for three weeks on the nose, we have a Dominican bank account. Holly, a weathered veteran here in Santo Domingo, took all five of the foriegn teachers to El Banco Popular today to establish our bank accounts because pay day is tomorrow. Everything here is last minute. So, we now have our very first (and probably only) bank account in Dominican Pesos. It's nearly impossible for us to open an account here in US dollars - something about the possibility of off-shore money laundering.

After the bank and the grocery, I cooked one of my favorite meals (Butter Curry Chicken with Apples and Raisins) for John, Becky, and Sonya, and we sat and ate and enjoyed. We also discussed the fact that the things we used to think about and do at home seem like some other lifetime - some dream that has evaporated as the rude alarm clock sounds in the dark. Aside from the topic of conversation and the fact that we were getting bitten by mosquitoes the whole time, we almost felt normal.

In all honesty, we're starting to get used to things that we never thought we would: the heat, sleeping on a bed made for one person, mosquito nets, cold showers, etc. I think, little by little, things are getting easier.

Currently, John is watching Monday night football - but it's in Spanish. To me, it sounds very similar to how it sounds in English - a bunch of jargon. It's the same to me either way, but John seems to think that much has been lost since he can't understand any of the announcing or the data charts they put up on the screen. Lucky for John, though, Sunday night football is still in English with good ole John Madden and Al Michaels (he told me the names to type lest you think I've become a football fan).

Our weekend plans have been foiled. We've spent the entire weekend in our apartment because there is a hurricane passing us by right now. It's not hitting Santo Domingo full force, but ithas been raining fairly hard for two days straight.

We had planned to go out and explore another part of the city this weekend, but as it turned out, the only thing we made it out for yesterday was Chinese take-out - and we got wet. Our friend Becky went with us, and she ended up carrying our dinner back home under her rain jacket. We then watched a movie while eating Dominican Chinese food, which, I must say tastes different that Chinese food from Bloomington. We miss our favorite Chinese buffet on west 3rd.

It's amazing how differently we view a rainy day now. When you have to walk everywhere you go, rain sure puts a damper on things. Pun intended.

Some of our friends who have lived here for two years said that sometimes when it rains, they put on their swimming suits and go out in the rain on the roof. John thought he would try. Surprisingly, John found that the rain here is very cold. He was yelling at me, "Just take the picture!! Just take the picture! It's cold out here and the construction workders are all looking at me!" Maybe we'll try it again sometime when it's warmer out.

Right now, it's raining so hard that it's hard to hear the TV over the rain sounds. Who knows how long this will last ... everything in here is damp because it's been raining so hard for so long.

It's like the Fates here have declared war on us. "How dare you," they're saying to us, "plan to wash every Wednesday?!? You can't plan on doing something at a certain time and then actually do it!"

Needless to say, we did not finish the wash today, but it wasn't for lack of water. We didn't have electricity until 6:30 this evening.

This morning, when we woke up, we still didn't have water. But, a half hour after we got up, it magically turned back on. First thing at school, since I (Claire) didn't have a class, I went to talk to the lady who is in charge of helping us out with the apartments. She was outraged at the fact that we were without water since our landlord had told her that it was taken care of. I also told her about our landlord's strange behavior and lack of phone numbers. After she tried a few numbers, she eventually got a hold of him. He said he didn't have water either and that he was home and didn't know why we couldn't reach him...... something fishy is going on here. In the end, they called a plumber. Who knows if he came today or not, but we think it is being taken care of. We're going to try to be more prepared just in case it happens again.

Finally, here are some pictures of the beach we went to last Saturday. While living here, it is imperitive that we do fun things on the weekends. Who knows what is in store for this weekend! The beach we went to is called Boca Chica. You can see it on Google Earth if you look along the southern coast of the island. If you look closely, you can see a reef a little way out from the shore. We swam - or walked- out to it and John found lots of intresting sea animals.

On the left is Yvonne who has been incredibly helpful and kind to us since we've been here. She and her family (husband and two daughters) took us all to the beach.


There is a kid standing on the big pole in the ocean - we thought that was interesting.

See the videos and pictures link for more beach photos.

We currently have no running water in our apartment. If we turn the faucet on - open her up all the way - it may make a gurgling noise, but the floodgates remain closed: no water. We haven't had water all day excluding one half hour around 4:00 during which time we started a load of wash: BAD IDEA!! We now have a load of sopping wet, soapy towels sitting in the washing machine in our bathtub. We might as well leave it there, though because we're not going to be using the tub for a shower.

This might not be so bad if we could get get a hold of our landlord, but, very mysteriously, both telephone numbers (home and cell) that he gave us have either been disconnected or no one with his name lives there. We've talked to him on his cell phone many times, but today we heard only a recorded message. It is now disconnected. When we called his home phone, I got to talk to a lady in Spanish who said, among many other things I didn't understand, that the only Enrique she knows works at the bank. Hmmm..... Also, Becky, one of the other teachers who lives on our floor and is experiencing the same problems we are, saw Enrique hiding behind the building up against the wall when she walked by. She said it looked like he was trying to make sure she didnt' see him, and when she went to say hi, he was gone. We've tried knocking on his door and calling his numbers multiple times, but nothing works. John thinks this is not a coincidence. I also failed to mention that the other apartment on our floor, the one that is huge and really nice inside, has water. We asked some one there for help, he went up on the roof, came back down, and shrugged. We said thanks, but nothing changed.

So - as it stands, we have a bunch of soapy, sopping wet towels, a washing machine full of towels in the tub, no way to wash dishes or take a shower, and no way to flush the toilet. This stinks - in many more ways than one - figuratively and literally.

We're good with the bare necessities, but we're not okay with less than that, which is what we're currently living on, not to mention that we've been sweating all day long and have no way to take a shower. We desperately hope that the water elves come to turn our water back on in the middle of the night.

What a long day!! Today was the last day before the students are coming, and it was a very long and frustrating day. When we signed on here, we thought we signed on with a school that was at least normal on the organizational scale and high on the academic scale. Since we've arrived, we've found that all the expectations are very high, but reality is a different story. We don't want to be overly negative, but we do want to give a true representation of what's going on.

As it stands, school starts tomorrow, and neither John nor I have the text books for at least one of our classes. We are expected to have all this planning done - an amazing amount of detailed planning - but we cannot teach our plans because our textbooks are stuck in customs. Because of some vague shipment of questionable backpacks, the Dominican government is holding all school supplies. We also don't have our plan books yet, or our grade books, so we can't write down the plans in the book which we are supposed to show to our supervisors before each week. We are supposed to keep all our "supplies" and teacher's editions in cabinets in the classrooms, but we have not been issued keys to the cabinets. All our stuff is just sitting out in the rooms, which everyone seems to think makes them targets for theft.

John says, "They need to get their heads out of their butts. They want us to have a detailed yearly plan, and have our extremely detailed quarterly (nine weeks) plans for each subject done by Friday, and have our classrooms decorated even though we don't have tape to hang things, and they want to have four hours of meetings each day, and they start an hour late every day which means we waste an hour waiting around for them to get it together, and the electricity shuts off at three every day, so we can't stay late." He had to take a few breaths in the middle saying all that to remain calm. He also says that if this were our only impression of teaching, we would want an immediate carreer change: McDonald's would be better.

Hopefully when the ball gets rolling in school, all the expectations that drastically differ from reality will slowly sink to the back of everyone's minds. In spite of all the expectations and the lack of resources, the administration and all of the teachers have been nothing but kind and reassuring to us. It strikes me that they must be used to all this. Perhaps they feel no need to actually meet the expectations. Where we're from, if the principal says, "Have it on my desk by Monday," we are provided the resources to really have "it" on his or her desk by Monday, and we do it! I find that it's harder to really care about things here becuase things are so uncertain and unpredictable. Everyone here talks like things will happen when and how they are expected to, but nothing ever goes as planned - not even close.

School aside, though, we had a wonderful time at the beach on Saturday. We wondered how many of our co-workers in Indiana were enjoying the teal blue waters of the Caribbean on their days off. We'll put many more pictures up of our beach trip and blog it more in detail when we have more time.

It's going to take some getting used to - we are very spoiled! Here at St. Michael's, the resources are quite limited. We'll get by, for sure, but we'll need to get used to the lack of space and stuff. Here are some pictures of John's classroom. Claire doesn't have a classroom, so later on, when she figures out where she is teaching, we'll put some pictures up of her rooms, too.




John's room is serving as the home base for me (Claire) and the other foreign teachers because his air conditioning works and he has desks. This is Claire working in John's room.






This is the academic office. We have to sign in here every morning and also request any supplies we need from this office. There is paperwork for everything. You have to fill out a form to request a pencil - no kidding.






Here is John working in his room. In order to keep things stuck to the walls, you have to use an insane amount of packing tape. It's so humid that things fall off the walls left and right.

This is the view out of John's door. His room is on the second floor and Claire's rooms are on the third floor. Here, they have to build up by adding more floors - not out by adding more buildings. They don't have much more space to build anything new.


After work on Friday, we and the girls walked about 8 -10 blocks to the Hagen Daas cafe on Lincoln Ave. It is one of the first things we have eaten that really tasted good and familiar. We decided it would be a good Friday afternoon tradition, although it was a little expensive. Becky is in the center, Sonya is on the right, Claire is on the left, and John is taking the picture.

To see more pictures of St. Michael's, click on "Pictures and Short Videos" on the side bar.

Here are some pictures that we took from one of the places we were at last night.

There were all sorts of dances that the waiters and the waitress preformed. Our favorite was the dance that was on the bottle.

OH MY GOODNES!! We had the surprise of a lifetime last night. We had just finished dinner around 7:00 and were getting ready to blog two days worth of stuff when there was a knock on our door...

Apparently, in the DR, it's perfectly normal to show up at some one's house completely unannounced to ask them to go out with you. The person at the door was Alberlco Rolanco (everyone at school calls him El Pana) and he said, "Hey, guys, you wanna go out with us?" He had stopped to see if we wanted to go out to the Colonial Zone with him - or so he said...

As it turned out, we ended up going with the other foriegn teachers and El Pana to three different bars, one of which was in the Colonial Zone. It was a great time, and the first real "fun" we've had here. Too bad it was on a school night.

So, Pana drove us around the city in his SUV, and first we stopped at a place called Adrian Tropical, which is a place right on the coast. We sat outside and watched an enormous storm out on the ocean - the lightning was beautiful. Everyone had a beer - we tried the national beer, El Presidente. I (Claire) am still trying to like beer.

Then, we went to the Colonial Zone, but everything was closed because it was night time. We sat outside at another bar right by the very first church ever built on the island of Hispanola. Christopher Columbus and his crew built it. During the day, you can go inside as long as you aren't wearing shorts.

Pana told us all about himself and all things Dominican. We learned about the best rum in the Dominican: Brugal. It's 37.5% alcohol. The motto of Brugal rum is that the night a man drinks Brugal, he will either fight or make love. Perhaps something was lost in the translation, though, because Pana seemed to think it was really funny.

By this time, it was about 10:00 pm, and I was thinking I'd sure like to get home since the next day was a school day. As we were winding down in the Colonial Zone, Pana said, "Now, I'm gonna take you to a place where you will see a lady dancing on a bottle."

Off we went to El Conuco, a restaraunt/bar in another part of the city. There, we really did see a lady dancing on a bottle. It was amazing and fun. We also had our first attempt at dancing the Merengue - not too successful. We have a picture of the bottle lady dancing, but we're having trouble uploading pictures some of the time.

We stayed at El Conuco until midnight, and I was just about ready to die (I'm not a late night person) when Pana said, "Well, the only thing left for us to do tonight is to go back to Adrian Tropcial and have some Sancocho!" Sancocho is a traditional Dominican stew made with beef and pork, plantains, yuca, and lots of garlic. It was certianly good, and by that time we were hungry again. So, we didn't get home until 1:30 am. It was a very late night especially for a school night, but it was very fun to see some traditional local places and experience the local flavor. Needless to say, we had a busy day today, it's 9:00 pm, and I can't stop yawning.

After we were done enjoying our visit to the coast it was time to head home. I don't think either of us really wanted to leave but we knew that if we stayed there any longer that ment we would have to be walking home during the hottest part of the day. As you can imagine we try and avoid that at all costs. After taking Lincoln south to the coast we decided to head north on Chruchill that we would could see what this street had to offer. After walking about 5 blocks we came to this glorified median that runs east and west between Lincoln and Churchill.
The first picture was our first look down the meadian towards a large clock tower. If you notice you will also see some hut looking type buildings in front of the clock. As we were walking we came to find at there were many little bars and hangout type places between where we are in the first picture and the clock in the background. Unfortunatly the day we were there was a national holiday so all the bars were closed and as you can see there were hardly any people here.
There were also some artistic sculptures along the way. Here is a picture of Claire standing next to....... we still aren't sure what the heck that was. Finally after a 5 or 10 minute walk we arrived at the clock tower. It was much larger once we walked up on it than either of us orignially thought.
To give you an idea of how tall the tower was to the right is a picture of me standing at the base of the clock. There was one more "creative representation" that caught our eye along the way which we thought would be nice to share with everyone. I will let each of you make what you want of it.

Now after seeing a statue such as this, one must ask himself "does it get any better than this?" Let me just tell you the fun was yet to come. While we were walking home after leaving this little area we noticed that the sun was starting to get hotter even though it wasn't even noon yet. We also noticed that, even though we were wearing shorts and t-shirts, we were beginning to sweat completly though our clothes. I know this seems normal, but I mean, come on, it is the Caribbean in August. What do we expect, right? Well, we also noticed that everyone that we walked by was wearing long pants and most long sleeve shirts, and they were not sweating a bit. So not really needing another reason to stick out like sore thumbs, picture two white people completly soaked to the bone walking down a major road in a capital city. Let me just say that we had our fair share of glances the rest of the way home. Now for the icing on the cake. We were about 15 blocks away from our apartment when the sky opened up and unleashed a huge downpour. At this point we were so hot and our clothes were completly wet anyway, we just decided to keep on walking. Rain here is somethig that we are still trying to figure out. One minute the sky looks clear and nice and the next BOOM downpour. Then five minutes later nice blue sky again. For the rest of the walk home we didn't feel so bad because now we weren't the only weirdos walking down the street with wet clothes.

Claire and I have been working very hard with school things, workshops, getting our apartment liveable, walking to the grocery store, ect. So we were really glad to find out that August 16 is a Dominican Holiday which ment that we had the day off. We decided to make the most of this day and take a walk to the coast. We are about 2 miles from the coast but it is a straight shot down either Abraham Lincoln Ave or Winston Chruchill Ave, which are two main streets that we live between. Wanting to beat the heat we woke up a little early, had breakfast, put on our sunscreen and away we went. It took us a little under an hour to walk but we both agreed it was worth it. Not only did we get to see the coast but it also gave us a chance to familize ourselves a little more with the restuants and other shops around us. All along the coast there are little "cafe" type places where you can sit down and get a bite to eat or something to drink. In the two pictures above I a sitting at a little table where Claire and I sat and watched the ocean for awhile while enjoying a Coke.
This last picture pretty much sums up what it is like along the coast of Santo Domingo. The sun is shining, the water is an amazing blue color, the shore is a bit rocky but there are many nice places to sit and take it all in.

The screens that I am hanging were actually custom made by the lady that lived in the apartment before we did. She tried to contact us over the summer to see if we were interested in buying them from her. Unfortunately for us we were out of town and were unable to get ahold of her. So we thought that we would have to have screens of our own made and hung up in our apartment to combat the mosquito problem caused by the mango tree located outside of our apartment. However upon arriving I spoke to the landlord and it turns out that the lady was unable to sell them and he was holding them in a storage room here in our building for her. So as you can see we were able to get them and hang them in our living room and kitchen. It has been a tremendous help keeping the mosquitos bites to a minimum.

Here is picture of Claire on our way to lunch last Sunday. This is the view from the front door of our apartment building

Walking to the Multicentro we had walked by a little pastry shop called La Baguet, pictured here, and we thought that this would be a good place to try for lunch. Luckily for us the owner of the shop spoke English and we were able to ask about the different types of thing he had in his shop. There were a variety of sweets such as cakes, doughnuts, flan, and candies. He also has pastelitos which are little pastries filled with different types of meat or cheese. We wanted to try a variety of things so we got two of each of the pastelitoes and a couple different sweet things.

Here are the things that we got for lunch. Simply looking at the plate I am still not sure what was in each pastry but I do know that some were meat, turkey, ham, cheese, and cream cheese. After we sampled each one we came to the conclusion that we enjoyed the turkey pastries the best. I am sure that these will become a regular treat for us.

This is our new red couch that was so graceously given to us by our neighbors and co-workers. Their apartment is much nicer than ours with a balcony and really nice furniture. Our furniture, while very festive-looking, was made out of iron, and when we sat on it, we would feel the iron bars through the cushions under our botttoms. Not comfortable! So, our friends gave us their red two-seater couch and kept their full sized couch. It was very kind of them, and we are very pleased.





John rigged up the shower so that we can wash the soap off ourselves in less than a half hour. There is no water pressure here - and no hot water. John cut the bottom out of a bottle and shoved it onto the nozzle so that the water comes out far enough from the wall to hit us. Hoorah!








This is how we watch movies: in our room with the AC on, but it's so loud we have to turn our laptop volume all the way up and and turn the speakers all the way up. We bought some popcorn to cook on the stove, and we have the mosquito net to make sure we don't get bitten.












Here's Claire hanging the laundry on the roof.

The information about our apartment said that we would have a washing machine, and naturally, I pictured the thing that you all have in your laundry rooms. My mistake.

The thing in the bathtub to the left is our "washing machine." It does run on electricity, and it washes and spins our clothes, but not without a ton of work. It sits in a little corner in our apartment, and that's where we thought we would use it until, thank goodness, a friend who also teaches at St. Michael's came over and told us that our washer drains out the bottom using gravity. You have to fill it with water using bucket loads and then when it is done washing, you drain it out the bottom into the tub. If we hadn't known to move it, we would have made a very very large mess. So, here are the steps to doing laundry here:
1. Sort all clothes into machine washable and delicate. (All delicate clothing needs to be washed by hand because the machine is rough.
2. Carry the heavy washer from its corner into the bathroom.
3. Lift the washer into the tub.
4. Using approx. four large bucket loads, fill the left side of the washer with water.
5. Add soap.
6. Add clothing.
7. Set the wash timer (we used 12 minutes).
8. Drain washer.
9. Repeat step #4.
10. Add fabric softener.
11. Set the wash timer for the rinse (6 minutes).
12. Drain washer.
13. Put 1/4 of the load into the spin cycle area.
14. Spin 3 minutes.
15. Remove clothing and prepare to hang dry.
16. Repeat steps #13-15 until finished.
17. Start the second load by repeating all steps beginning with #4.
18. Take the finished load up to the roof to hang on the line to dry.
19. When all washing is finished, remove washer from tub.
20. Thoroughly clean the tub.
21. Hand wash all delicate clothing.

It took us 3 hours to do what I would consider two small loads. Wow. We figure most of our clothing won't be worth bringing home with us after a year or two since we sweat so much and we don't know how clean things are really going to get.

We'll put a picture of us on the roof up on another post. We're having trouble uploading the pictures.

On Saturday, we decided to venture out to try to find some of the places we had heard about from other teachers here. We wanted to find the Acropolis, the mall that is nearest to us. It's on the same street as the MultiCentro, but farther south. So, it was very hot, and we set out to find the airconditioned mall. Above is a picture of the inside of the Acropolis. It has four floors of very expensive teenager-clothing stores. Neither John or I could imagine ever buying anything there, but it sure was nice to walk around and look at stuff in the airconditioning.

We found the food court on the third floor, and there, to our great surprise, we found Pizza Hut. We each got a personal pan pizza, breadsticks, and a drink for about $7 total, which we didn't think was too steep. In the Acropolis, there is also a TGI Friday's and an Outback Steakhouse. We plan on going there for a date someday to see a movie and have a nice meal out. We'll save that for when we're feeling the most homesick.



Here (to the right) is the outside of our apartment building. We were just coming back from the Acropolis, and a stop at the Multicentro to get some food. In order to get into our building, you have to unlock the gate John is standing by and then the glass door behind him. We feel pretty safe here - the iron gates and bars help.






This is the door to our apartment. Each apartment door has an iron gate in front of it. We bought a padlock for our iron gate, but it's too fat to fit through the holes it needs to fit through. Our actual door is wooden and has a dead bolt, a door knob lock, and a sliding lock for when we're inside. The stairs to the left lead right up to the roof - the light coming from up there is sunlight.

All you teachers who are reading this blog - heed these words!!!! Appreciate the supplies you have at school no matter how meager they are! After today, Edgewood Junior High's supply closet is looking pretty good.
John is pictured here holding the standard supply issue for teachers at St. Michael's. We each received them today at school wrapped in a black and clear striped plastic bag - taped shut. The contents of the bag follow:
one box of chalk
one legal pad
one roll of masking tape
three cheap-o pens (black, blue, red)
We never knew how good we had it in B-town. We also found out today that I (Claire) do not have a classroom, but I have to travel between different classrooms, none of which are my own, to teach my classes. That was quite a disappointment for me, but I'll have to learn to live with it. John has his own classroom, so depending on our schedules, I may spend what prep time I have in his classroom.

Today, we also found out that we have a TON of work to do. Teachers in the USA have it so easy!! We have to make a curriculum map of our whole year before school even starts, and then we have to make very specific "Unit Plans" (in a particular complicated format) to cover all the time in the first quarter. Then, we have to turn in weekly lesson plans to the head of our department. WOW!!! We're going to be working our tails off.


Our biggest adventure today consisted of trying to get another jug of water. We were almost out of water today, and we decided we needed to figure out how to get more since the weekend is on its way and we'll be on our own. This picture to the right was taken just after we successfully ordered a jug of water over the phone in Spanish, directed it to be delivered to our apartment, paid for it, etc. It sounds like such an easy process, but let me tell you that talking on the phone in another language is NOT EASY!! It's especially difficult when the person on the other end is asking questions rapid fire in Spanish. That's when all my Spanish vocabulary must exit my brain through my ears post haste. We didn't have any idea if it would actually arrive because after I hung up the phone, thinking I had ordered successfully, the guy from the store called back and started the rapid fire questioning. I think he didn't know what street I was referring to - so I said our street name and then I think I said that it is near St. Michael's School. Then, the guy on the other end promptly hung up on me. Ten minutes later, there was a guy knocking on the door.
One jug costs 50 pesos (about $1.50 US), but we only had 1000 peso bills. That's the reason I'm holding money in the picture. That's our change. It was not easy to get. The guy who delivered the water was very nice, and I think he was trying to teach us how to live here. He gave me the change and asked me to count it, showing me that I should always count change when it's handed to me. He asked me how much it was, and that's when all my knowlege of numbers above 30 in Spanish exited through my ears. I had no idea how to say nine hundred and fifty. We ended up laughing a lot, he taught me how to say it, and I now know that I need a quick review on numbers. By the end of the ordeal, we found out that the water guy knew the teacher (Mike) who used to live in the apartment next door to us, and we informed him that Mike had gone and been replaced by two "muchachas de los Estados Unidos" (two girls from the US) which is not entirely true, but I didn't know how to say Canada in Spanish. I hope we see the water guy next time we order water. He was very personable.


This is a picture of our nightly visitor who likes to sit on the ceiling while we try to relax by doing "normal" things like watching TV and playing cards. We wonder what would happen if he lost his grip and landed on our heads.

PS Mom Roth, we found a Swiss Fondu restaraunt here in Santo Domingo, and it's close by! We'll have to give it a try.

If you know me very well, you probably are aware of the fact that hot drinks like coffee and tea are one of the many simple pleasures that I enjoy. I might even go as far as to say that a cup of Twinnings Lady Grey Tea can turn any bad day around. When we left Indiana, I was sure that owning a tea set would have to be a dream I would need to reserve for another time and place in my life, but much to my surprise, when we arrived, in the cupboard, I found a very cute tea set. Even the smell of tea makes me feel at home. I just have to close my eyes and pretend I'm not drenched in sweat, and then it feels like home for just a few seconds. The cupboard is so high that I can't really see all the cups and saucers, but I'm guessing it includes tea service for eight.




Speaking of the cupboard height, we'd like to mention that the ceiling here is very high. So high, in fact, that John cannot reach the top storage areas in the bedrooms. This wouldn't be a problem at all if we had a step stool, but alas, we don't.

The high ceilings have presented another problem, too. Here's the story. Before we left Bloomington, we needed to spend a $30 gift card at Pier One. So, we went in and looked around until we found this very cute and practical mosquito net. We were very excited to put it up until we realized that the ceilings are so high that if we attach it up there, the net won't even touch our bed. We're working on that one. Post a comment if you have any ideas. Keep in mind that we have absolutely no tools. We don't even have a pair of scissors.