23-26 de Enero
Friday was another rainy day and we were still tired from the trip to Santo Domingo so we took naps and laid around for most of the day.. solid. We decided to go see the movie Twilight with Bri, Charlotte and Randi and went to go meet them for a movie at 4:30. However, the theater was “broken” until 5:00 until they would start playing movies again (some random told us this.. no one was even working in the theater) so we just hung out around the mall and ate dinner there before the movie. Ha and some guy in the food court gave Rosie a napkin saying “Hello. I think all of you are beautiful and I want any of your phone numbers. I would be very happy with any of you for the rest of my life” haha. Ridiculous but we had a good laugh. We finally made it to the movie and although I judged vampire romance novels at first, I’ve gotten sucked in a loved the movie. That night we planned to go out to this bar that people had gone to earlier in the week and said it was really fun a lot of people. However (standard theme), when we got there we realized that it was a gay bar. Soo after going all the way across town we headed back to El Fogon as usual. Steeve, JB, and Dimitri came again for awhile and we went home pretty earlier.
Saturday we had people at our house to watch the view of Jenny’s Quince (15th birthday ceremony thing). I had seen pictures and already been surprised at how formal their dresses and tuxes were but seeing the tape of it was like watching a wedding/prom/dance scene from Step Up. It was literally as fancy and formal as a wedding with a reception after and then Jenny’s friends surprised her and had choreographed a dance to a lot of popular songs.. mama said they had been working on it for a long time and it was actually really good. Even though it was hard to understand most of it it was so cool to see how important it is and just how different it is than our culture. Also, they played Kenny G through the majority of the video and I just had to laugh because I’ve never heard Kenny G so much in my entire life as I have in the last three weeks.. literally people will blast it from their houses in the middle of the day. Love it. I read the second Twilight book (addicted) for about 4 hours until we got ready to go to this party with Steeve and his friends. He told us it was formal so we wore nice dresses so we were dressed up but when we got to the first place to “pick up some of their friends”, they told us to come up with them but it was like the actual graduation party with the close family. So Rosie and I met the two people the party was for and their families at this very small gathering.. I felt extremely out of place but everyone was nice to us. Ha and they started plaing Nsync at this family party and Rosie and I just cracked up at how ridiculous everything was. We were only there for a little while though until we went to go wait at another apartment for some friends, then went to Steeve and JB’s apartment because we were still waiting and finally made it to the party at about 1:30. I haven’t stayed up later than 2 this entire trip so I was already pretty tired but woke up right when we got there.. the party was so extreme. They had taken all of the furniture out of this entire house and had a DJ, fog machine, black light, strobe light (I’m glad I barely drank anything before because the lights almost made me sick), and a bar outside. I felt ridiculously cool like in a movie. We met quite a few people and danced with some guys (we were the only Americans there so, yet again, a little out of place but it was still fun) who were nice but it was hard to talk to anyone above all the extreme techno music. Rosie and I were exhausted so we left at 3:30 and everyone asked if we were sick because we were leaving so early haha. Oh well, I guess we’ll have to adjust to that. When I got home I just wanted to email my parents to tell them I was going to Santo Domingo the next day (and usually I check my email before I go to bed when people are asleep) and as usual I had already set the alarm and figured the sensor was just downstairs (because I’ve never had a problem before) but when I stepped out of my room I set the alarm off at 3:30 in the morning and it was ridiculously loud. I ran downstairs and shut it off really quick but mama still came down to see what was wrong and I felt really stupid but she was very nice about it and hopefully I just won’t make that mistake ever again.
Sunday morning I woke up early and packed because the night before at 10:00 I had decided to go to Santo Domingo for a baseball game. Baseball is like the national sport and this was one of the final games of the season so we wanted to go even though it was the Santo Domingo team (Licey) and not the Santiago team (Alguilas).We took the bus their and put our stuff in the Hostel that Trena had been staying at all weekend. The lady who owned it was from Tennessee I think and was so nice and a little goofy but the place was cool. Ultimate cousin style with tons of beds packed into small rooms. She sold art though and had it all over the hostel so it was really cool to look at and got me started thinking about what kind of painting I want to buy. The hostel was in the Zona Colonial of Santo Domingo, so right by Christopher Columbus’ house and all of the fortress/church things that are in the capital (we’re going there for an excursion so I’m not exactly sure all what we saw but will find out in a few weeks). We had decently cheap pizza at this outdoor restaurant and it was a really nice part of the city so that was lovely. After that we went right to the game, which cost 50 pesos, aka about $1.50. We couldn’t believe how cheap it was which was awesome. At first almost no one was at the game but about five minutes before it started the entire stadium was packed with people wearing royal blue (Licey’s colors) and everyone and their madre had flags and/or horns and whistles. The flags were fun, the guy right next to us who blew the horn every five seconds was not so fun. All part of the experience I guess. The game was nuts, the fans were so pumped and it was really fun to watch them even though there weren’t many hits. They also sold pizza right out of a pizza box, some guy would just keep grabbing pizzas and selling slices to people. Just different.
About halfway through the game someone fell off of the wall in the outfield onto the field and was just laying there unconscious and the security guards ran over and picked this guy up by the back of his shirt and his legs and just ran him off the field.. it was really disturbing and just weird to see (especially because I thought the security guard had shot the guy.. I don’t believe he was dead but he was for sure not moving so it was scary). Five seconds late the game was back to normal though so I’m not sure if that’s a regular occurrence. Ha another eventful thing was that one of the Licey players had picked Angelica out of the crowd and was pointing at her and waving so she waved back and he told someone to come up to her and get her phone number. So they called her down and she typed in a number and like our whole section of the crowd was watching this famous player get our friend’s number. She has a serious boyfriend though and thought it was a little creepy and degrading to get picked out of a crowd so she gave him a wrong number and we think he figured it out about half an hour later when him and like 3 of his teammates were just glaring at her for a really long time. I was fascinated that this was going on in the middle of the game and just laughed because it was a huge slap in the face to this famous guy. Nice. Bri and I had a little boy situation of our own.. there was a boy that was probably four years old sitting three rows in front of us and he kept looking at us and smiling and then hiding and then smiling again.. so adorable. Then his dad lifted him up the three rows and he gave Bri a single kernel of popcorn and then came back five minutes later and gave her a heart shaped sucker and gave me a cough drop. Ha, true love. I literally am in love with the kids down here and want to bring one back with me. During the 7th inning it kind of started to sprinkle and some people were deciding to leave but Bri and I decided to stay a little bit to sit it out.. poor choice. It literally started pouring and the two of us along with the rest of the stadium had to push through to get out of the stadium. It was so chaotic and ridiculous and there were babies just screaming everywhere. The entire crowd tried to push into this very small hallway to try to get out of the rain so it was literally like sardines. Joe got his wallet stolen out of his pocket because it was just so crazy which sucked but we helped him pay for stuff and he just had to cancel his card. We went back to the Zona Colonial to find dinner. Even though it was a pretty touristy area we found a cheap sandwich place so that was good. We just hung out for the rest of the night in this park that was right by what I think was an old church but I’m still unsure.. it was still really awesome though. Some people dressed up for carnival (this really big cultural festival that lasts for the month of February and people dress up in ridiculously bright colored outfits and masks and stuff.. a little scary but I’m way excited for the real holiday) came right by us with drums and people dressed up and dancing.. some of the little kids cried because they were so scared and even though it was only a couple of them it got us all pumped for it to start. We also found out that Licey won because people kept driving through the streets honking and screaming and waving their flags so that was fun to see. We got some phenomenal ice cream and just hung out until a lot of homeless people started coming up to us, just one after the other. It’s so sad to just sit and watch and one man came and asked for money and said he had aids and looked like he was in really bad shape, and we said we’d buy him a sandwich or some food and at first was almost turning down the food even though he said he was starving, but we weren’t about to give an addict money for drugs so we bought him a milkshake and I’m sure he appreciated it but it’s just really hard to watch and try to help without making things worse. People just kept coming up to us so we just had to leave because although we wanted to there’s just no way to help everyone so we went back to the hostel and just hung out until we went to bed.
Breakfast was included with the room so we ate at the hostel and looked at all her paintings and then just walked around Santo Domingo for a few hours (Joe and Angelica didn’t know we were staying over night and didn’t want to pay for the hostel so they went to the bus station at midnight to sleep there and take the 6 am bus back to Santiago.. ridiculous but I guess it’s all an adventure) and Sally went to go see her friends so just Bri, Charlotte, Randi, and I spent the day there. I’m really excited to go back and learn about all of the history (krissttaaa historryyyy) because there are so many historic and interesting places there. We took the bus back and were home by 4:00. A much smoother trip than last time and very well planned so there’s hope for us and I’m glad we got to see a game before the end of the season. There are smaller leagues after this so we’ll probably go to more games in Santiago but we really wanted to get the feeling of a huge game. Very worth the trip. When I got back I went and did “homework” with Rosie, Ronnie, and Racky at El Fogon, aka just hung out but I haven’t spent much time with those guys (they both know Spanish and are cousins and are really cool and nice) so that was fun. More people came over to the house tonight to watch the video of Jenny again and I did some more homework and tried to get mentally prepared to go back to school at 8 am after the four day weekend. (It’s our last holiday for awhile so I’ll actually have to have my four days of class a week.. still ridiculous and I love it). Les amo mucho!