Brunost and Svele

The highlight of the past few days was definitely Wednesday.  In the morning, on the way to work, I helped Robert do some filming.  He literally filmed our entire commute to work.  He was doing this because he was supposed to prepare a video presentation of his life here for AIESEC Norway.  It was so much fun.  it made the commute kind of exciting and adventurous.  In the process we also got a picture of me with the lovely chicas from Sweet Bakery!

Me and the Sweet Bakery girls 

During the day, my main excitement came from a package that had arrived from Bart.  Inside was an adorable book he had made for me!  Wednesday was also the start of my lonely afternoons, as Robert and Mari are taking a Spanish course from 4-6pm each weekday.  So I have a few months of walking home by myself ahead of me.  In the evening, Silje and Mari came over to do some baking at our place (their stove wasn't working) for a sort of impromptu Norwegian/Guatemalan night.

Gerardo prepping his black bean dip

Robert, keeping cool...

Silje and Mari in the kitchen

Skillingsbolle

Norwegian Brown Cheese (Brunost)

Brunost with butter inside svele!

In the end, there was myself, Robert, Mari, Silje, Gerardo, Pavol, Sylvia and Manuel in attendance.  Robert and I were rather anti social though since we were working at getting the video put together.  Here's the end result:

The morning commute on Thursday seemed really boring in comparison to Wednesday.  The day was fairly normal at work.  Robert and I were both craving the Burger King chicken wrap so we decided to head there for lunch.  We were quite disappointed though, since upon our arrival, we found out that they didn't have it at that location.  Regardless, what we did end up getting was still good. When we left BK to head back to the office, we experienced a bit of a shock upon seeing something in a pile of garbage.  It was absolutely horrible and it really had an impact on me.  I was in shock the entire way back to the office and ended up having a little breakdown at my desk because of it.  And here, I was just getting over my fear of piles of garbage.  That sounds random, but my first few dead rat sightings were always in piles of garbage, so until recently, I'd still get nervous and paranoid each time I passed one.  Now those feelings are back in full force.

That evening, I went to pilates which was a really good way to get my mind off of the day's events.

Friday was a much better day.  I still didn't have my laptop back at work, and since the power was out until close to 11:00am I ended up getting a lot of reading done.  As a result, I ended up finishing The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People last night!  For lunch, Robert and I met up with Gerardo, Mari and Silje at Taco Bell.  I ordered their 7 layer nachos cause it looked really good on the menu.  When I actually got the meal I realized how incredibly small it was.  I ended up having to order an additional bean burrito just to fill myself up.  We finished off our lunch with a trip to Sweet Bakery for some coffee.  Always a great way to spend a lunch hour.

On my way home from work I snapped a few pictures:

Christmas decorations at Nacional.  It feels so weird.

Guy on a quad in the city (in front of the black car)

Today, I had to work during the morning but I am heading to Bayahibe with Robert, Mari, Silje and Gerardo for the weekend.  Should be fun!

Vegetarian Mofongo!

The last two days have been brutally humid and thus brutally hot.  Of course, we've been having issues with our air conditioner at work, which has just made everything that much better. Sarcasm.

O is still giving me a ride to work, which I am extremely grateful for.  On the way to work on Tuesday, he took Tiradentes instead of Lincoln.  We were about one block from the office and situated behind and to the right of a garbage truck while stopped at a red light.  The one garbage man started digging in the garbage and pulled out an empty plastic coke bottle.  I thought this was kind of odd.  Then he took the bottle and smacked something.  Turns out it was one of the street kids.  It made me very angry, sad, frustrated and confused all at once.  The kid didn't seem to upset by this but made his hand into a gun shape, and pretended to shoot the garbage man.  Then the kid joined two others and began begging at the windows of all the cars.  O just said no and shooed them away.  It was kind of an intense moment for me.

Lunch on Tuesday was prepared by Joel and the rest of the crew.  A Dominican dish, mofongo, was on the menu.  Normally it is made with several types of meat... but they made it without for me, and had some meat on the side.

David also thinks that I need to get myself a walker... you know for my ankle.  Rene and I were joking around with a "cane."  Here are some random pictures:

After work, I went back to the MC to meet up with everyone to go to the movie.  We saw Extraordinary Measures (Harrison Ford and Brendan Fraser).  I'm glad it only cost RD$50 (CAD$1.43) because it wasn't that great of a movie.  Personally, I thought Brendan Fraser ruined it - which is not surprising...  It could have had potential without him playing the lead character though.  I also ate popcorn for the first time since I left Canada.  It was good.  By the way, a medium pop and medium popcorn cost me RD$130 (CAD$3.71).  The best part of the whole evening was the experience in the theatre.  Dominicans are very vocal during the movie.  When something is sad, everyone makes sad noises.  When something good happens, they cheer and clap.  At the end when it all works out, there were more claps and hooting and hollering.  It was awesome.  I mentioned this to Ozumy after and she said, "Dominican clapping style".  It's so true.  When we landed here in Santo Domingo, the plane erupted into cheers.  Now I've had this happen before on particularly stressful flights (insane delays, bad turbulence, etc.) but never on a normal on-time flight.  Come and visit me - you'll see.  I kind of like it.  I also found it interesting that cell phones went off during the movie although people put their ring tones on a low volume setting.  They would answer and talk quietly.  It actually didn't bother me too much.  Could it be that I'm becoming more, uh, relaxed?

Today's lunch at the MC was Falafel.  It was so good.  I need to get Joel's recipe.

I ended up getting quite a bit of work near the end of the day.  Sr. S came by and was asking me what I was eating.  Now normally he asks this when I'm actually eating, but today, no food.  I looked confused, and he sort of clarified.  Apparently he wanted to know if I was eating, in general.  He worries that I will end my internship and be too skinny.  Then we talked about what Dominican food I had tried lately.  Later in the day, Sr. S's granddaughter was in the office.  She is adorable all on her own.  But he sent her over to my desk to give me some papers.  She came by and said to me in Spanish, "This is from papa S" (except S was his full name in real life).  I said thank you and away she went.  Later, when I went into his office, she was sitting at his big desk working on her handwriting.  Did I mention that she is adorable!

I ended up taking a taxi home.  Traffic was insane and it took half an hour.  We were nearly hit a few times and the driver was ridiculously close to a lot of vehicles.  In the end it worked out and I made it home.  Right now the three of us (Pavol, David and myself) are all sitting in the living area with our laptops.  Pavol just got his new one today so he's rather excited.  We're so social!

7 Weeks in the DR

I decided not to write yesterday because it was just an overly bad day for me.  Nothing too serious, just a lot of frustration at work which made me stressed and homesick. 

When I woke up today, I decided that indeed, it was a new day, and considering I still have months of work to go, I need to figure it all out.  When I got to work, I opened up a new word document and started from scratch.  Lots of extra work, but at least I will be able to feel like the end product is good enough for the client.  Only problem is that I'm still waiting on the answers to a few questions and new data from J.  So there is only so much I can put together right now.  But at least I have a plan of attack, and that's all that matters.

Also, here is a picture of the garbage outside the Chinese restaurant which I had mentioned the other day. This is actually better than it usually is. The dark kind of ring around it is some sort of grease. It stinks really bad.

Lunch made me laugh.  Again, I was at EmpareDado (since I don't know how to order at anywhere else yet) and there was a new girl who took my order.  I thought I was clear with what I said, but then she asked me again which small size I wanted, and the other girl who was nearby (and who has helped me the last few times) was like "6" (the size I always get) before I could answer.  This made us all laugh.  Then the girl was confused and was asking me something about the water and I swear she said 20oz (which is the size of a bottle), so I said yes, but I guess this wasn't quite her question, so I ended up repeating my order and then she understood.  I then proceeded to sit down at my favorite table and when she brought out the sandwich, she asked me a question.  I had no idea what she was asking me, so I just gave that look of helplessness and said thank you.  She thought this was funny, and started laughing and so did the other girl.  And I laughed at myself.  Once I looked at what she brought I decided that perhaps she was asking me if I wanted a cup with ice.  Normally they bring that regardless, but today they didn't.  I have no idea though.  Even though they laughed at me, I think they still like me, so it's all good.

I also have to admit that I've become rather obsessed with Kady O'Malley's liveblogs on cbc.ca.  The political geek in me has been indulging a lot lately in her writing along with several others from the various media outlets.  But there is something about her liveblog that I am particularly attracted to. 

ALSO!  I got served coffee twice today!  The first time, it was already made with sugar (but not nearly as much as the first time) but this afternoon I was able to tell her "no azúcar" (although my azúcar comes out more like sucre - my constant issues with similar sounding French/Spanish words - but she got the point).  I hope I continue to be on the coffee round.  I'm still trying to get used to the small size of the coffees.  I'm a regular morning Grande Pike drinker at Starbucks, so this is fine for an afternoon sip, but in the morning I usually feel like I need more.  I'll adjust soon enough though.

Randoms from Yesterday:

We finally got toilet paper in our bathroom at work after a week without it.  I'm not really sure how this happens.  I've gotten used to having to carry around kleenex when out and about since several places will not have toilet paper, but you would think that at work, I wouldn't have to worry about that.

At lunch I saw the Pola security guard, who stands out near the parking lot entrance under an umbrella, giving himself a dry shave with a disposable razor.  No mirror, just casually going over his face.  Regardless of how silly this looked, it's definitely not good for his skin.