Taxi Success!

This weekend I joined some other friends in Santo Domingo. And, a week after my semi-traumatic cab ride, I had the opportunity to try the routine again. This time, I told the cab driver the name of the city, barrio, street, and three major sites nearby and we agreed upon the price prior to climbing into his car. We were having a lovely little chat about his family, my reasons for being in the DR, and music when he started mumbling about how far our destination was “lejos, muy lejos, lejos.” He started to complain about the distance and the price of gas and amount of time he was sacrificing and he told me the ride was going to cost more. Last week, I would have felt bad. This week, I truly felt no feelings of remorse, not even the slightest pang. I agreed with him saying that “yes, Los Alcarrizos is far” and I quickly followed it up with “but I told you where I live and we agreed upon a price before we left.” The rest of the journey was an interesting mix of lively conversation and bantering about the length of the trip and abstract price increases. When we finally arrived, he tried to raise the price by 100 pesos, he even tried to engage another Dominican in the debate, who seemed to get a kick out of our exchange. I stood my ground, took on the driver and the rando, and paid him the amount that we’d initially agreed upon. Once I placed the money in his hand, his tone completely changed and he was friendly and not a bit bitter. Later, I checked with my host family and confirmed that I didn’t overpay either! And, rather than feeling exhausted and beaten down by our verbal jousting, I felt invigorated and proud. Take that Dominican taxi drivers!

We were in Santo Domingo to celebrate the Fourth of July, a birthday, and a few Esperanza employees who are going to/back to the states for graduate school (four in one). While most people came in on Friday, I didn’t make the trek until Saturday morning. Now, my friend Patricia called me Friday night to make sure I was going to the celebration too. She then invited me to return with her to Los Alcarrizos to spend the night at her house and go with her to church in the morning. Looking forward to seeing those friends again, I readily agreed. However, Patricia never showed up to the party. So, at 9PM on Saturday night, I gave her a call. I calmly asked her where she was and she, equally tranquil, said that she was in her house. I asked if she was going to come to the party. She said no. I said that we’d miss her. She asked me if I was going to go to church the next morning; (laughing uproariously at this in my head) I said probably not. I was not about to travel back to Los Alcarrios at midnight and I certainly wasn’t going to wake up early after our four-in-one fiesta.

Now, my plans had completely changed. I had my extra clothes and toiletries with me, but I hadn’t reserved a place in the hotel where we normally stay, as I hadn’t planned to spend the night in Santo Domingo. Fortunately, some of the more permanent residents let me crash on their floor. People had told me that here plans are not really plans; that plans are more like possible activities. Quite honestly, I was not too distraught by this change as I was having a fun time and wasn’t eager to go back to Los Alcarrizos that same night.

The same girls I stayed with have adopted a kitten. Another Dominican word is “chin” which means “a bit” and “chin chin” means “a very tiny bit” and it’s often used to describe how much food or drink you want. Now, since I’m a guest, my using “chin” doesn’t seem to actually change the amount I’m served. Typically, if you want a very small portion than you say “chininin” or something like that. I just add in’s until I feel I’ve made my point. Again, it’s one of the phrases that I’ve adopted into my permanent vocabulary…like many Yiddish words, there are many Dominican words that are meant to span several languages (Aaaa, I just had a terrible picture vectors and linear algebra…curses math 51) I encourage you to say it and use it freely; it’s simply perfect! Now, back to my original story, the girls named the kitten Chin Chin, which is one of the best pet names I’ve heard in a long, long time. Chin Chin, though she lives up to her name, is quite aggressive. She’s definitely a mouser and is quite expert at catching insects too. Truly a young huntress, toes and elbows seem to be among Chin Chin’s favorite objects of attack.

After a night of dancing, we returned to the apartment. Since I was sleeping on a mattress on the ground, I was a bit afraid that I was going to become Chin Chin’s next prey. However, I have no idea whether or not Chin Chin nibbled my toes or not because I conked out into a deep, deep sleep, which was certainly needed. Outside my bedroom window at home, there is a cage with probably thirty birds and they begin to sing promptly at 5:30 every morning. The birds rarely wake me. However, the birds wake the dogs who begin barking and los perros wake me… it’s kind of a “there was an old lady who swallowed a fly” chain reaction.

I particularly appreciate these weekend adventures because I can hear about everybody else’s successes and complications. They help me gauge my experiences and make a game plan for the coming week as how to best improve and challenge myself. Feeling much rejuvenated from this weekend’s gallivant, I returned home to discover that my Spanish had vastly improved, almost by magic. I had two separate hourish conversations. And, when I went to church, I understood pretty much half of what was said with respect to content, whereas I typically only catch words. When talking about literacy, we often refer to different phases. The first is recognizing and understanding letters, the next words, the next sentences, and the next stories. The ultimate form of literacy is reading and writing about abstract ideas and themes. I feel like this summer is a crash course in Spanish literacy. The first several weeks were literacy with respect to basic word and sentence comprehension and now I’m transitioning into abstract ideas. Even though these two conversations were more complex, I was far less exhausted after them. Rather, I was quite enthused. Normally, I’m excited because I simply understood what someone said. However, now I become excited because I am engaging with content that I find to be genuinely interesting and challenging, which I realized I’d been missing (in both senses of the word).

At the close of my third week en La Republica Dominicana, I am increasingly happy that I am here for eleven and not, say, four weeks. It’s also particularly wonderful that I’m in the same community for these weeks because I can continually deepen both my social and work experiences and can easily compare one week’s progress to the previous one!

Con mucho amor,
Anne