Stepping Out of the Boat

We have decided that since our time in the Dominican has come to an end it would only be fitting to put this blog to rest as well. However, because of popular demand we will continue to blog on our new site:

www.johnandclaireroth1.blogspot.com

So please bookmark our new blog in your favorite as this will be the new site that we will be posting to.
Thank you.

Well we have made it home. Our last few days in the Dominican were filled with goodbyes and on last times.

First of all I just want to let everyone know that the 6th grade graduation went off without any major disasters. Other than there being no electricity to the building when we got there and the fact that instead of Pomp and Circumstance they started to play the American national anthem as the students were walking down the isle there weren't any problems. I was able to read all names without butchering them to badly and all in all it was a nice ceremony.

On Friday after our last teacher day, Kari invited anyone who wanted to stop by for one last goodbye toast. We had a nice turn out and enjoyed one last conversation with everyone. We finished off our last night with a nice dinner together and some closer friends. It was a nice way to end our last day on the island.

Our last morning we spent loading all our final belongings into our suitcases and coloring in the final pie piece on our Doughnut of Doom. It was off the the airport where were all had a snack together before loading onto a plane for JKF. It was in JFK that we all had to say our teary goodbyes. It was sad to leave our friends knowing that we wouldn't be able to share the little things in our day to day lives with each other. But we all found comfort in the fact that we will see each other again someday soon.

Claire and I were then headed to Indy. However we had to wait on the runway for about 2 hours while the log jam of planes took off. We finally took off about the time we were to be landing in Indianapolis. When we finally did land it was storming out and had to wait on the ground at the airport while the lightening in the area cleared so a ground crew could come out and park the plane. Then it took about an hour and a half for them to get our bags off the plane before we were home bound. We got to Bloomington around 1 in the morning.

Since we have been home we have been living on cloud nine. We have enjoyed going to Wal Mart, eating at choice restaurants, sleeping in our nice soft bed, taking long hot showers, and hanging out in the air conditioning not sweating our brains out. Claire and I have also gotten new cell phones since we have been home. If you would like our new numbers just send us an email and we will be glad to pass it your way. This way we don't have to post them for the entire web to see.

We would like to thank all of you that have been reading our blog over this last year. The blog has been a very enjoyable thing for Claire and I to keep up on and a great way for us to share our story with you all. For those die hard viewers out there I just want to let you know that just because we are back doesn't mean that we are going to stop blogging. I am currently working on a new page that we will be using as this new stage in our lives begins. Once again thank you all for taking time to visit and share our stories.

Sorry it has been so long since we last posted. We have been super busy finishing up the last week of exams, making sure they all get graded, and then putting the final touches on the grade cards all while packing and getting ready to come home. Our last weekend in the city was actually last weekend, June 8th. Since it was our last weekend in the city we decided to try and fit in anything that we might want to do. So the zoo it was. We weren't expecting much before we arrived. We were told that there isn't much there and what is there isn't kept up very well. We decided to see for ourselves. The Lonely Planet book that has been our trusty guide around town said it was one of the largest in Latin America.

With only three free weekends left in our stay here, we decided we needed to check some things off our to-do list. Marte, a teacher at school who has been really friendly with us, has a membership to a club where we've gone a few times. He invited us again a few weeks ago, but it didn't work out. We wanted to make sure we went with him one more time before June 22nd. After school on Friday, we went with him to enjoy the pool, have a snack, and John even got to play a few games of basketball. He took his basketball shoes home when we went to Robby's wedding, so he had to play in flip flops, but he was still the best one out there. I cheered for him. The other players wished they had someone to cheer for them, I'm sure.

We stayed until about seven, then went home, showered, and went to a dance club called Club 60. It was GREAT!! We didn't take the camera, but John and I danced the night away. We have gotten so good a Meringue and Salsa that we can really hold our own out on the dance floor with people who have been doing this for years. John even danced with the other girls, and they couldn't stop talking about how good he was. We'll probably go back there again before we leave because it was air conditioned and it wasn't at all sleazy. It was a dance club for dancing - not for all the other things that happen at dance clubs (I'd like to remain blissfully unaware).

Today, all the other foreign teachers went to the beach for a day. We decided that we wanted to do our own thing, and that going to the beach the way they were going would be much more of a pain than we wanted. We're going to the beach for the whole weekend in a couple weeks, anyway. So - we decided to go see El Faro a Colon instead.

We started with lunch at our favorite nearby Chinese place where we can get two meals out of one. Jade has been one of the places we've gone frequently, so we thought it worthy of a picture. Then, we called a cab and headed across the whole city to El Faro a Colon, which is a gigantic memorial made to Christopher Columbus. His real name was Cristobal Colon, but for some reason, all the American text books call him Christopher Columbus.

This monument is apparently one of the only man made structures that can be seen from outer space. You see, it's a ten-story building made in the shape of a cross, and there are extremely high powered lights all along the roof. When the lights are on, the cross can be seen shining in outer space. They very rarely turn the lights on, though, because it causes power outages all throughout the city whenever they turn them on. Inside the enormous cross-shaped building rest (reportedly) the bones of Cristobal Colon. Spain and Italy both claim they have the remains, as well, but no one knows for sure. We paid 100 pesos (about $3) to get in and see the museum inside the cross-shaped monument.

The entrance is at the top of the cross, and in the center, where the four "arms" meet, there is a large marble monument that houses the remains. It is guarded all the time by an armed guard dressed in white. The bones are in the black box close to the ground in the middle of the monument. I'm standing by it in the picture to the right.

In the long hallway that makes the longest part of the cross, there are rooms containing artifacts from the native peoples of countries all over the world. We weren't supposed to take pictures in these rooms, but we did anyway. There were no lights on in the whole thing, so some of the exhibits were hard to see. We found it ironic that the memorial to Cristobal Colon would contain artifacts from native peoples from around the world since one of the things he did first on the island of Hispanola was to completely eliminate the native people who lived here. He eliminated them by working them to death and letting their language and culture fall into obscurity. No one knows what the Taino culture was like. He also brought Catholicism. I'm sad that the cross was a symbol of destruction and death to those people.

The museum would be really cool if they would turn the lights on in the exhibits. I'm not referring to the superpower lights on top - I just wanted to see the stuff inside the museum. If there wasn't a window in the room (and most rooms didn't have windows), we couldn't really see anything. It was interesting nonetheless. We can check it off our list.


After we had finished there, we called another cab and headed to the old Colonial section of the city where we walked around (about 5 miles of walking) to make sure we had seen and taken pictures of everything we want to before we go. Here to the left is on of the first hospitals in the new world. It was built in 1503 and was one of the only buildings in Santo Domingo that survived the raid by the pirate Drake in the 1600s. Now it is inhabited mostly by pigeons, and the roof is no longer there.


We looked at several other old churches (besides the first cathedral in the New World) and some other old buildings. The first monastery was destroyed by Drake the pirate, and rebuilt several times after numerous fires and hurricanes. Then, it became an asylum for the insane. It was all locked up, so we couldn't go inside, but our Lonely Planet Guide to the Dominican Republic said that you can still see the iron chains in the walls that were used to restrain the "patients" in the asylum. YIKES!

After a long day of walking (it was cloudy today, otherwise we might not have survived), we were sweaty and tired, so we got some pop and sat down on a bench in the square by the first church to watch people. We saw an extremely conspicuous group of about 40 Americans all in matching T-shirts milling around by the statue of Cristobal Colon. They were acting really annoying in the way Americans act annoying abroad, and John and I were a little embarrassed for them. For a moment, we wished we didn't look so much like Americans.

It has been a great weekend so far. Tomorrow, we might try to go to the national aquarium so we can cross that off our list, too.

Kari's twin brother, Jason, came to visit this weekend, so we all tried to show him a good time. It was a busy, sweaty weekend, but it was fun.
We're getting to the point when we want to try to get everything in before we leave. We're counting the days until we get to come home (five weeks!). This has been a great experience, but we can't wait to get away from all the stress and craziness at school and to come back to our comfortable lives that involve all the modern conviences (air conditioning, washers and dryers, etc.) and, more importantly, friends who share our values and lifestyle. We miss our friends and family and the positive influence they have in our lives. So... here we go with the weekend:

Friday night was our friend Roger's birthday. No one knows exactly how old he is, but we know he's somewhere close to fifty. We took him out for dinner to a place we like called Bob's. It was fun, but we spent so much time sitting around waiting for people to be ready that we didn't get to dinner until about nine pm. Then, when dinner was done, half of us were tired and didn't want to go anywhere else and the other half wanted to go out dancing. People ended up getting upset, and the evening didn't end on a good note. Even though we don't write about it in the blog often, that happens often.

Saturday was Field Day at school. In the USA, Field Day usually means that a school day is devoted to fun and games for the students - sports competitions, prizes, everyone wins, etc. Here, Field Day means that on a Saturday, the school rents out an empty baseball field, fills it with carnival-like games, and requires the teachers to sign up for two hours of service. Students come, eat Dominican carnival food, and play the games. All of the foriegn teachers signed up for the same two hours since we don't have cars and had to take a taxi to the location. John and I ended up in charge of the bungee-run game. When we got there at 10 (the whole thing was supposed to start at 9), nothing was ready. So, for the first hour of our time, we sat in the shade and talked. The second hour, we did our duty in the scorching sun. It was so hot that the bungee-run thing got too hot for the kids to touch. We were relieved of our duties a little late, and then we had lunch (Dominican hot dogs and ice cream) and took off for activity #2 of the day. By the way, Dominicans put really weird things on their hot dogs, but it tastes great. From what we can tell, here's a list of the toppings: catchup, mustard, chili, relish (all normal), fake squirtable cheese, marinated cabbage, mayonaise, onions, and little shaved fried potatoes. I'm sure they're terrible for us, but they sure taste good!

Activity #2 for the day (by this time all of us had soaked through our clothes with sweat) was to visit some famous caves close to the city called Los Tres Ojos (which means The Three Eyes). We had heard of them before but didn't know exactly where they were or anything, but we decided they were a must-see before we leave the island for good. It was a great experience! Here we are on the left descending into the caves. We thought it would be cooler down there, and perhaps it was a few degrees cooler, but the humidity was three times as pronounced. Our clothes stayed wet with sweat.

There were three freshwater lakes down in the caves, and we saw fish and turtles swimming around. What a peaceful place! We also saw some bats flying around. We were thankful for them because we were being eaten alive by mosquitoes. For ten pesos (about 3o cents), we took a little raft over to another cave and lake that opened up all the way up to the sky. It was really beautiful.

After we climbed out of the caves, we went for a walk in a pretty garden area that was above ground right above the caves. John took some nice pictures of flowers, and by the time we got into the taxi, we were all exhausted. It's amazing what heat can do to you. We were all zapped of all energy.

We wish we could have taken our parents to see the caves and garden.