Bart's Adventures in the DR

Those who visit me, beware of the Miami curse.  Or at least, I'm convinced that there is a curse on anyone who travels to the Dominican, particularly to see me and who arrives via Miami.  Granted, Bart had much better luck than mom and dad.  His flight was delayed about an hour due to a storm.  Mom and dad had their entire flight canceled.

Luckily Don Pedro, the taxi driver, is an easy going guy.  Maria was amazing, as always, and gave him a call for me to rearrange the time.  Traffic turned out to be horrendous when we left (which was odd considering the time) and the plane had landed before we had even arrived.  The fun part about having too much traffic was that we took a different route which allowed me to play tourist and Don Pedro to play tour guide as we drove through the area containing the presidential palace, the central bank, etc.  So even though we were late getting to the airport, we still had a bit of a wait until Bart appeared through the big doors.  It was so wonderful to see him, and almost surreal at the same time.  We both said that each other looked different than we do on skype.  As we wandered out to Don Pedro's car, Bart was hit by the humidity.  I didn't even notice.

Once we arrived at the apartment, we got Bart settled in and then headed to the colmado to meet most all of my friends.  Due to the cold/flu that is circulating around, two of my friends couldn't be there and another two decided to catch up on some sleep... We enjoyed Presidente, snacks and then we moved onto rum.  The colmado closed at 11, so we took the party back to the apartment, where everyone hung out for another hour or so.  One of the most enjoyable parts was when Pavol, Jakub and Bart were communicating in a hybrid Slovak/Czech/Polish language.  Overall, it was a good evening!  Only downside - I had the beginnings of a cold...

On Friday, I woke up with a very sore throat but I didn't let that stop us!  I took Bart in his first carrito!  It was quite a nice one, in comparison to most, although we did end up with the full 6 passengers.  I took him to Emparedado so he could see one of my lunch hangouts and so that he could try the Jugo Chinola (passion fruit juice).  After lunch, I took him to see where my office is and then we went to the Haagen Dazs store.  From the moment Bart heard that we had an entire store dedicated to Haagen Dazs, he made me promise that I would take him there.  We ate far too much ice cream (we really should have stuck to just 1 scoop) but it was worth it.  We then proceeded to walk to Nacional to pick up a few things.  On our way, we were approached by 4 small Dominican children who wanted money.  They even followed us for a block.  Again, my heart broke.  From Nacional, we walked back to the apartment, only to find that the power was out.  At first, the apartment was cooler than outside so we hung out there for a while.  Hours later, the water had also gone out so even a cold shower was unavailable.  We decided instead to go for a walk down to the ocean, hoping that there would be a good breeze to keep us cool.  Nothing too exciting was happening at the ocean.  Just lots of fishermen.  At one point, I think someone must have thrown something into the water as an entire school of fish began jumping out of the water.  It was neat to see the fish, as well as all the fishermen that rushed over in the hopes of catching some of them.  The evening was pretty relaxed, we just chilled at the apartment.

Saturday was beach day!  Bart got to go in his second carrito (this one had a hole in the floor that you could see the ground through). We met up with Maria and Nicole at Nacional, then Eduardo came to pick us up, and then we went and picked up Paula from her house.  We decided to go to Hemingway since certain people didn't want to deal with the waves of Playa Caribe.  Even though we missed the turn and ended up in San Pedro, we still managed to arrive early.  The weather was alright, although we had a few moments of rain and wind while out in the water, but Bart still managed to get a bit red from the sun.  He was very impressed by how warm the water was.  I was just glad that he got to go to the beach since I knew there was an approaching tropical storm and thus, was unsure if we would see sun for the rest of his stay here.  We left the beach at around 2:30 as Eduardo had to stop by his family's place in the country to pick up a drill.  I was glad that Bart was able to see some of the countryside as it is both beautiful and also gives a bit of insight into how the rest of the country lives outside of the major cities.  It began to rain as we headed back into the city.  We hung out at Maria's place while she got ready and then took a taxi back to the apartment.  Our taxi driver was decked out in a full mesh camo outfit.  It was ridiculous.  As Maria said, the last time I have seen something like that was at Halloween... Anyway, the three of us sat and watched some of the TV shows that Bart had brought me before Maria headed out to meet Pavol. 

The remainder of Saturday was again spent at the apartment.  There was a welcome party at the MC for Laura but I still wasn't feeling well and I figured, I can welcome Laura another day, I only have Bart around for a few days.  So we made some pasta for dinner and watched a movie instead.

Sunday morning was spent packing up our bags before heading to Nicolas de Ovando in the Colonial Zone.  We had a quick skype chat with mom, dad and Jonathan - which was nice - where Bart shared his new experiences and mom and dad provided their take on their same experiences here.  I had some issues calling the taxi... it went something like this:

Taxi: Allo?
Kierstin: Allo!  Yo quiero un taxi a calle Juan Tomas Diaz, numero ciento trece.
Taxi: Calle Juan Tomas Diaz?
Kierstin: Si.
Taxi: numero ciento veinte?
Kierstin: no ciento trece.
Taxi: veinte?
Kierstin: no trece. 
Taxi: ciento veinte?
Kierstin: no, ciento trece.
Taxi: Puedes decir en Inglés?
Kierstin: si, one hundred and thirteen.
Taxi: oooh trece
Kierstin: siiii trece...**

I had Bart laughing and even Pavol gave a few chuckles as he walked by.  After all that frustration, the taxi arrived and I got us to the hotel with no issues.  When we checked in they brought us warm, moist towels to clean our hands and cute glasses of fruit punch!  Our room was lovely and the little gift they had waiting for us was 3 cigars.  The cigars made Bart happy, me, not so much.  However, they brought us chocolates later on in the evening so I was happy again.  We had lunch at the pool bar and then went for a quick walk around the Colonial Zone and Parque de la Independencia to give Bart an idea of what we could see.  Since it was raining, we didn't stay out too long but instead hung out at the hotel and had a nap before dinner.  We ate at the hotel restaurant and our meal was excellent!  It was so nice to just sit, eat good food, drink good wine and catch up in person.  Since it was still raining, our evening was spent watching a movie that, due to faster internet at the hotel I had finally finished downloading off iTunes, and a few TV shows.

Monday morning was pretty lazy since it was still raining.  We had a quick lunch at the pool bar again where I got to deal with some issues in Spanish.  I had ordered a small pizza but had asked for it to be made with pineapple instead of ham and mushrooms.  Once the waiter got over his surprise at someone wanting pineapple on a pizza (interesting) he seemed clear about what I had asked for.  When the pizza arrived though, it had ham on as well.  I think perhaps the cook got confused by the pineapple and thought I wanted a "Hawaiian" pizza.  Anyways, I had to attempt to tell a waiter who didn't speak any English what the problem was.  This didn't work so well, but then the regular waiter came back and was able to get the problem fixed.  By the time my correct pizza arrived, Bart had already finished his meal.  It was an excellent pizza though!

We headed out into the Colonial Zone and went to the Larimar and Amber museums.  The Dominican men were pestering us to go into this store and that store and trying to offer us tours.  Bart, similar to my father, was too nice to them so they would keep following us.  I told Bart that I bet they don't know how to speak Polish, so we should pretend that we only speak Polish and see what happens.  It was quite funny as they would try desperately to somehow speak to us in a language they did not know.  And Bart would speak in Polish to me and I would just reply with "tak."  It was actually kind of impressive how they didn't give up!  We then headed over to Fortaleza Ozama.  A guide tried to get us to pay for a tour, but we were content to just wander around on our own.  Other than the walls, cannons and old buildings, there isn't too much to see.  Again, it started raining, so we headed into the main building.  It kept raining so we decided to be adventurous and explore all of the building even though that meant we had to go outside a few times.  It turned out to be a lot of fun and I got some great pictures.  When we returned to the hotel we were a bit chilly so we decided to just sit and have a cup of tea before dinner.  We had dinner again at the hotel's restaurant.  Since it had been raining for essentially two days straight, it had gotten a bit chilly.  For the first time, really, since I arrived I needed to wear my sweater outside! 

Tuesday was Bart's last full day here.  We had a nice breakfast before checking out and seeing the remainder of the sights in the Colonial Zone.  We went to Museo de las Casas Reales, Alcázar de Colón, Monasterio San Francisco and the Ruinas del Hospital San Nicolás de Bari.  Following that, we did a bit of shopping for gifts for Bart to take home and then began to head back to the hotel to grab our bags when I realized that we forgot to go into the Panteón Nacional.  Once again, the guides wanted us to pay for a tour, we just ignored them but the one guy continued to ask us which language we spoke.  Spanish? No. English? No. French? No. Italian? No.  Bart turns to him and says something in Polish.  Russian? No.  Again, you have to give them credit for trying!

I took Bart to La Panioteca for a late lunch.  We took a carrito most of the way there and then walked the rest of the way in the rain.  At the restaurant we saw a young politician guy TV personality (I think) who is on a billboard near my house!  We then walked to Nacional to get some groceries and then had a very wet and rainy walk home.  We both had soaked shoes and pant bottoms. 

Don Pedro was kind enough to get up at 3:30am this morning to be at my apartment by 4am, which is when Bart had to leave at to catch his 6:10am flight to Miami.  It was definitely sad to have to say goodbye all over again. 

It was pouring rain on my way to work today.  I was happy that the carrito driver was kind enough to pull into a small parking lot to let me off as the alternative would have seen me walk into an extremely large gutter of water.  Regardless, I was still soaked up to the knees when I arrived less than one block later at the office (and yes I had my umbrella!).  I promptly went into the washroom and tried to wring out the bottoms of my pants and my sockettes as well as dumping out the water from my shoes.  This is not helping my cold! Sr. S saw that I had a cold, and that I had gotten wet (he had apparently called O to get O to pick me up, but I had already gotten to work and O was already on his way here), he told me that I was not to go out in the rain.  He meant it.  At lunch, it was raining again so he came by and told me to come and pick out what I wanted for lunch as he was ordering in his lunch.  No air conditioning needed today.  Sweater was a must though!

**... I'm not sure how my trece sounds like veinte... I mean sure, I can't roll my r's but really... (similar to how at Wendy's the lady didn't understand, Combo numero nueve, I think it is something about how when you hear someone with a different accent you get a bit nervous that you won't understand and then try too hard which leads to not actually understanding)