Museo de Arte Moderno

I had a lovely Sunday!

It all began by getting up early to get some laundry done and hung up before I had to meet up with Manuel, Robert and Mari at 10am.  Mari had recently went to the Museo de Arte Moderno and had told us about a great exhibit on the environment and environmental issues that was ending today - so we figured we should go and check it out!  I met up with Mari and Robert but we couldn't get ahold of Manuel.  The three of us went to grab a bite to eat at the colmado and then waited some more. Finally Manuel messaged us to tell us he had slept in.  We decided to just head over on our own, instead of waiting around in the heat.  The metro conveniently gets us within a couple blocks of the museum.  Overall, I really enjoyed the exhibits and felt more like "myself" by spending a morning wandering around and looking at art.  We were able to take photos of the works, so I'll let the pictures and captions do the rest of the talking.  As a side note, the floor of the gallery looks remarkably similar to the floor in our apartment.

Museo de Arte Moderno

Covered in Ants!

Close-up

Deer couch with built in TV screen

Dolls with boxing gloves

Sandals with barbed-wire straps

Branches

Hammock

Made out of electrical cords

"Pac-Man"

Commentary on how we let junk build up

Termite

ecologic footprint

"For Sale: la casa de Mario"

We could go inside!!

Mari looks in

Wooden Chairs Biodegrade

Tree from foil

Bird cage

See!

Leaves strung together

I don't remember what this one was

Foods preserved in rum

Boats with messages made from flip flops

Atomics

Memory card on display

Blue rocks

When we exited the museum and headed over to Manuel's car, we spotted this guy:

Me and the snowman dude

After the museum, we headed to Nacional to pick up some groceries.  On the way, I was FINALLY able to get a picture of this billboard.  Backstory: in early July, this billboard was put up and it made the news.  It features the current president, who, under the Dominican Constitution, is unable to run for an additional term.  However, he and his party are trying to find a way for him to run again.  So this billboard is one of many that can be seen around now, but when it first showed up the President denied knowing anything about it.  Manuel told me that there was the same story surrounding a billboard of the First Lady which I see everyday on my way to work.  

El destino 

Back to grocery shopping...  Mari was really wanting to go to the colmado and have some rum and coke, but since the colmado was already closed for the day, I suggested we just sit outside in the yard and drink there.  So that is what we did.  I made some guacamole and Mari made some pasta.  During our little outdoor meal, Robert picked a couple oranges from the tree above us and Mari was sure that she saw a black snake.  We couldn't confirm the snake though.  The oranges were not too bad, just a bit bitter.

Yeah, our table is an ironing board...

My two favorite Norwegians!

Attempting to pick some oranges

Success!

Mari cutting the orange

Robert comparing a bug to a piece of wood

After eating and drinking, Robert got the idea that he should put some chip crumbs on the ground to see what the ants would do.  It was quite interesting to watch how quickly they were able to get the word out to the other ants about the chips.  We spent quite a while just watching them carry the chips back to wherever they had come from.  One of our favorite moments was watching three ants carrying one chip, one on each corner, trying to climb up a leaf.

The rest of the evening was quite relaxing and I decided to finish it off with a nice cup of tea.  Something I don't do often enough here.