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!