Aggravations

Dear reader:

I was blessed enough to host my parents this week in Neyba. As promised, you will be treated with my mother's impressions of the country on my next post. I would like to dedicate this post to the distractions, frustrations, and aggravations of living and teaching abroad. This may sound like a bevy of complaints but I promise there will be wisdom and reflection at the end...

Aggravation!

It is never silent. As a self-professed introvert, I crave silence and solitude, but both of these have been hard to come by in the Dominican Republic. Life is definitely slower-paced than in the United States (read: nine o'clock "Dominican time" for an engagement means that people will begin to show up around 10 or 11). However, I feel accosted at all hours by barking dogs, bleating goats, revving motorcycles, and blaring music. Dominicans "saben gozar" (know how to enjoy themselves), which translates to loud conversations in rapid-fire Spanish and a different radio station blasting from every street corner. There are no such thing as noise ordinances in this country!

The day I can keep pace with the tirades of my feisty and passionate host mother is the day I will call myself fluent in a second language. It is immensely frustrating for me sometimes to look back at the twelve years I have been studying Spanish only to find in real time that I continue to bumble awkwardly through conversations. Part of this is my inner self-critic, who is loathe to give credit for mere effort. For some reason I expect myself to perform linguistic gymnastics and to sound exactly like a native. Neither of these things is going to happen, but a girl can dream :)

In terms of teaching, I have begun to bump into the problem of classroom management. My students have an overwhelming amount of energy and enthusiasm, but I find it difficult to rein them in and channel the energy into productive learning. The fact that I am the lone teacher in Neyba has been both a blessing and a curse; a blessing in that I have a lot of autonomy and control over my teaching methodology and a curse in that I have little to no external feedback as to the job I am doing. My supervisor did make the long trip from Santo Domingo to observe my class once, and her comments were informative. Other than that, I  have been on my own. It is no small task to capture the attention of 30 young adults at a time, especially in a classroom that boasts only a whiteboard, chairs, and the inimitable me--and especially when said adults are also burdened with jobs, other college courses, and children! (A fair number of my students are young parents already). There are some days when I feel prepared to tackle the challenges of foreign language teaching and some days when I struggle with the mere basics: discipline, keeping the students engaged and on task, and reining in the tendency to speak Spanish. It is my fervent hope that these problems dissipate as I gain experience in the classroom and learn to match my personality to my pedagogy.

The food is a lot of bananas. And rice. And beans. And plantains, cooked every way imaginable (just think of all the ways one can prepare a potato and you'll have a close equivalent). Not that I was the most adventurous of cooks in the United States, but I do enjoy experimenting with spices and international cuisine. The most interesting (and repulsive) thing I have eaten here so far is, hands down, intestine soup. For breakfast. I tried and failed to keep a politely disengaged face while eating, so I doubt this is a dish that my host family will repeat!

All of my waking hours are dedicated to my job. In this respect, for better or worse, I am no different than most Americans. While I do have a leisurely lunch break (2 hours), I am in the classroom for four hours at a stretch, twice a day. And, like all teachers, I am not paid for the time I dedicate outside of the school day to lesson planning and grading. This leaves little time for me to exercise, read, or enjoy life with my host family. Hopefully as I gain perspective I will come to achieve a healthier work-life balance. Seeing as the only vacation time I get is Holy Week (Easter), I need to have techniques in place to prevent the eventuality of burnout. Any suggestions would  be appreciated!

I am currently on Stage 2...

I am no longer in the honeymoon stage of culture shock. Things that were once new have become trying or mundane. But in spite of the raucous on the street, the classroom challenges, and the barrage of bananas, I am truly having a wonderful time here. I have been adopted into two loving families, the other people I have met are as warm as the climate here, and I have the opportunity to speak in Spanish (outside the classroom, of course) on a daily basis. Language is always something that has invigorated me and I am lucky to  be able to share this passion with my students. I count on my inherent  stubbornness, resilience, and chameleon-like ability to ingratiate myself with people of all stripes to carry me through the stumbling blocks that arise with new experiences.

Until next time, dear reader, I leave you with this quote: "Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, she became a butterfly" (Barbara Haines Howett). Here's my short, stubby thumb up to you in your own life being open to experience, confronting challenges with vigor, and relishing the new!

Vignettes

This week I am hard-pressed to come up with a theme for my blog so I've decided to share a series of  anecdotes with you, dear reader. Here goes:

(1) In the Dominican Republic it is customary to shower three times daily. I got this memo a little late in the game and thus have been walking around as a "stinkpot" for several weeks!
(2) I have awoken several times to find a cockroach scuttling around my room (and once, across my face)!
(3) I have taken precisely zero pictures of my time here in Neyba since my camera battery and charger have both died :(
(4) In the process of making "fritos" or fried plantains with my 8-year-old host brother we almost burned the kitchen down. There is a definite learning curve for Dominican cooking.
(5) I have grown accustomed to the wind-whipped hair that results from speeding along on the back of a dilapidated motorcycle, and have lost a sandal in the process.
(6) Everything--and I mean EVERYTHING--here is cooked in coconut oil. I find it delicious.
(7) The diet here is starch-based: plantains, rice and beans or lentils are the stars of every meal.
(8) The coffee is espresso-strong and from experience I find it advisable to drink in small doses only!
(9) The worst part of teaching by far is the tedious process of grading homework and exams. I once had a professor tell me that she was not paid to teach but rather to grade. I would agree.
(10) I had an unfortunate event of two students I caught sacando chivos (translated as "getting goats")--in other words, cheating--on their most recent exam. I found it necessary to give these students a zero on their exam as well as a stern talking-to about academic honor and integrity.
(11) Apart from the instance described in number (10), I continue to enjoy teaching but sometimes find it to be a lonely pursuit. Since my direct supervisor and coordinator are the same person, and since she is located four hours away in the capital, I do not have regular feedback on how I am doing. (12) In other news, my parents are coming to visit this week. I am beyond excited...and you will probably be graced with the words of a "guest writer" on my next blog post.

Until next time, dear reader, take care!

~Kirsten

El Renacer/New Beginnings

Dear faithful reader:

Thanks for checking back in on my Dominican adventures. I feel the need to apologize for leaving you hanging so long without a word on my whereabouts. So here's the promised update...

Last weekend I was privileged enough to travel to Pedernales and Bahía de las Águilas with my second host family. (An aside: I have two lives here in the Dominican Republic. On weekdays I live in Neyba with a host family and their three children--Georgina (16), Manrique (14) and Jorge Miguel (8). On the weekends I travel to Villa Jaragua, a town over, to spend time with the local congressman and his wife who originally hosted me after my move from Higüey.) We joined up with a motley crew of journalists from all over the country for a tour of the South. The idea was to highlight under-explored parts of the country. Pedernales fits the bill. My camera chose a bad time to die, so my

words will have to suffice to describe the beauty. Imagine cerulean and marine blues competing with each other on an endless horizon. Imagine 10 miles of unsullied white-sand beach ensconced far away from the nearest tourist trap. Then imagine 100 rowdy, soaked, and slightly inebriated journalists descending on said beach for an afternoon of relaxation and camaraderie. Thus I passed a Saturday afternoon, rejecting marriage proposals (seriously) and contemplating the beauty of the natural world. A word on men: if the first polite question to ask a person is "What's your name?" the inevitable second, in my experience with Latinos, is "Are you married?" The male attention I receive here for being "americana" and "rubia" (or blonde, by Dominican standards) borders on the excessive. Although I must admit that in Neyba I have received  a lot more respect from men than in Higüey, perhaps because a small town affords so little anonymity for the would-be cat-caller.

Back to my workaday life. I love my students! I am enlivened by the prospect of being able to mold 60 young minds in this coming year and am humbled to the task. Most of my students are true beginners, meaning that even the most basic things (alphabet, counting, etc) are new to them. This is an advantage in that I as a teacher will be the sole barometer of their progress; there will be no one else to credit or blame for what the students have and have not learned. It's a daunting task I've taken on, the idea that students will leave from under my wing after 8 months with a solid grasp of the English language. That I will be able to impart this knowledge using only markers, a whiteboard, and my incalculable creativity :) And that I will enjoy the process enough to last a year in the developing world with all its vicissitudes: power outages, no drinking laws to speak of, and potentially contaminated tap water. I am nothing if not honest: having spent just under two months in the Dominican so far, there are days when all I want is a hot shower and an over-priced latte. But then I realize I've traded some of the creature comforts of home for something much more important: the warmth and kindness of a people who've made me feel more welcome in a foreign country than I ever thought possible.

Until next time, dear reader. And please don't ponerse guapo conmigo (literally translated, don't "get pretty with me", colloquially translated as don't become angry with me) for waiting so long to write!