Santo Domingo

Oct. 4

Hey guys, I know I haven’t updated the blog lately, but there hasn’t been too much to stay till this past weekend, since we spent it Santo Domingo, the capital of Dominican Republic. Just for a heads up if something doesn’t makes sense or doesn’t sound right grammatically, etc etc just know that I’m running on only like 7 hours of sleep in the past 2 days, meaning I only slept 3.5 hours last night and Friday night. So I’m a wee bit tired, but I have things to say. So, on Saturday we left at 7am and had like a 2 hour and 15 minute drive to Santo Domingo. It was fun, and a definite experience. Once we arrived in Santo Domingo, first we went to the botanical gardens, and that was just really cool, just seeing this nature-y part of the Santo Domingo was cool. The trees, flowers and fountains were just really nice to see and a nice change of pace in comparison to the city of Santiago. After that we tried to the Anthropological museum, but unfortunately they had no electricity and thus the exhibits were closed. It was a bummer, but we had more time to see others things. After checking out the closed museums we went to eat lunch, and afterwards went to Tres Ojos (Three Eyes). It was one of the coolest things I’ve seen. The three eyes are 3 lakes in a cave-like area beneath Santo Domingo. One of the coolest things, the water is a certain blue color similar to Window Washer fluid and there were bats, turtles and fish all in the lakes. Laura (Lilly, our program director’s daughter) told us that there use to a be a Alligator in one of the lakes we visited. We didn’t see it, so it was kinda of a let down. But no worries. Afterwards we went to our hostels, and for me, this was the first time for me staying at a hostel. But I was surprised it was pretty nice. I’ve heard bad things or just that they’re cheap and not the best places, but I liked where we stayed. Pretty nice bed, David and I had to share again, but we were cool with that. Nice shower, air conditioning and everything. We ended up showering before the concert and since the girls take more time to get ready, David and I ended up exploring the neighborhood and found a cigar shop. We talked to the guys in the shop and they ended up being really nice and helped us pick out a good cigar. We decided to smoke ones that had just been prepared that day by the guy in the back with his desk. We took them back to our hostel and smoked them on the patio and had an ice cold Presidente. It was, for David and me, a perfect way to start for the concert.

So we ended up buying tickets for a concert of merguenue, bachata, and reggaeton there in Santo Domingo at the Olympic Stadium. They only people though we all really wanted to see were Don Omar and Daddy Yankee. So this was the experience I think I’m never going to forget, ever. People here, in the Dominican Republic, at this type of concert, are crazy. Just absolutely insane. We got there at 5pm, right? The concert was suppose to start at 6pm and they first musician (there were 5 of them) didn’t start singing until 7:30pm. It was ridiculous too, how many people were there. This was the biggest concert I have ever been to in my life. A lot of cool things are happening down here for me, just have all these new experiences and such. Anyways, what ended up happening was being stuck in a huge crowd for about 3 hours standing the entire time. The people were crazy too, they broke the barrier in between the stage and ground area and basically stamped to the front of the stage. It was ridiculous. People were drunk too, so that made things just so much worse. After a while, I had to leave the group cause, I was just feeling too claustrophobic, if you didn’t know that about me now you do, I kinda have claustrophobia of large groups. But it was kinda justified, cause I kid you not, these people just acted so primitively. At one point, there was a fight with throwing water bottles back and forth through the crowds, we had to run to the center to avoid getting hit, but still we close to people who got hit. I even saw a poor woman got hit with a glass bottle, it was just really saddening. Even when things calmed down every 15 minutes or so people were running from some kind of fight making me feel even more nervous about shit that could happen. Oh, another thing that was just so different from any other concert I’ve been too, garbage was EVERYWHERE. They had no garbage cans, and people just throw they’re trash on the floor, which truth be told doesn’t help when people end up stampeding at points in the concerts. It was just so unorganized and kinda just insane. I don’t regret not going, cause it was an experience, I just wish they made it safer, cause there were little kids at the concerts, and I was worried for them, cause the people just go insane for the music. Just pure insanity. Anyways, finally at the end Don Omar and Daddy Yankee played, but the concert didn’t end until 3. And I didn’t get to sleep till 4 last night, so I’m still pretty tired.

Anyways, today was much more relaxed, we just toured around Santo Domingo’s colonial zone, which I really liked. To me it reminded me of Europe, like Spain or Italy. Makes sense though, since that was the first city of the Americas! Just for you information! Santo Domingo was founded in 1498. It was really cool to just walk around and see the ruins and old cathedrals. We went to the market too which was really cool, really similar to markets I’ve been too in Texas, Mexico and Israel. People just striving for your attention and such. In English too for the girls (and David), but lately they’ve been only speaking to me in Spanish. Maybe I’m looking more foreign lately. Ah, but I digress. After the Mercado we went to had a guide who took us all around the colonial zone and just really made me feel in Europe. You guys should check it out if you ever come down here, its really cool. If you like Europe you’d like that area of Santo Domingo. Where was I? After the tour we ate in the center of the Colonial zone at Parque Colón. (After Christopher Colombus) Had a nice sandwich and was able to tour the center of the colonial zone, specifically the art. It was really impressive to see the artists working and to see what they can do. Otherwise that’s all we did today. So that’s it, I hope all is going well back home! Oh, can somebody tell me who won the UofM v MSU game? I am totally disconnected from football down here. But feel free to send me an email or message with questions or comments, I’d love to discuss it with you, my loveable fans (haha, no just you guys, my friends and family) any topic I’ve written about. Miss you guys! Talk to you guys later!