a few thoughts on my birthday

it's my birthday and I'll write wacky if i want to . . .

I'm looking at these amazing purple flowers that some friends got me tonight.
As I celebrated with 5 friends - all female - all very cool - at a Mexican restaurant.

There are so many flowers that I need two vases to put them in.

I am starting to see
A glimpse really
out of the corner of my eye
I am starting to understand
The things I use to tear myself down
It is a tiny speck
I see
but that is something
isn't it

I run and hide
in my anxiety and in terror
when my way of being
comes back and slugs me
I berate myself
into tears and gnashing of my teeth
all the while
lashing out at those who have rightly responded to my anxious way of being

oh, i say
as i get a realization
that hating myself
for what i can't control
is not the way to go
that way goes nowhere but down

I am given
friends who
see in me what i don't see
what i can't see
because i am so blinded
by the black light
of this way I am
this way I learned to be years ago
It worked then, didn't it
it protected me
and held me up and together

as an adult though
it only draws blood
in myself and others

I work at a job where
interpersonal skills are paramount
and in some ways
my interpersonal skills
well - suck
and I don't see how to fix them
and I tear my hair out anyway
trying to heal them

what reads as arrogance to some
is really me cowering in the corner
because i think i need to be there to survive.

And so I start to see, slowly
slowly
That it can be different
but that i don't have to hate myself as I begin to crawl toward the different

funny
i know this may make no sense
to the wee fan base
and part of me says, eeek,
let yourself heal a bit
before you go back out into the game.

nah
it's my birthday
for another hour anyway
and i've always preferred playing
to watching

I'm immensely grateful to my friends
I have these great friends
who just by their very thereness
help me see
beyond
my distortions

they not only let me back in the game
but welcome me
even though
i rarely catch the pop flies
and sometimes just completely strike out
when the bases are loaded

and so tonight
tonight i let myself breathe deeply

tomorrow's my birthday

and i'll cry if i want to. ha.
or complain at least.
just to let the wee fan base know that i'm nearly over my icky montezzuma's revenge thing. so that's good.
I'll write more when i've settled some latest crap about some crap that i don't want to blog about because it's too crappy.
crap.
i will say though that i hear Brangelina are thinking of tying the knot in the Dominican Republic. Good on them. On the Easter weekend apparently. it will be a bit of a hassle for me to go down there again, but i'll do it for them. and for Pax.
Seems there was some multi-million dollar plot to kidnap poor Pax.
oy.
poor pax.
and in other gossip, did you hear about Wynonna Judd's husband? That's some nastiness right there.
later fan base. I promise - once this crap gets settled one way or the other, i'm write back to the blogging.
Till then, i'm feeling rather nihilistic about everything.
"God's dead," - Nietzche
"Nietzche's dead," - God

back in awhile

fan base - i'll be back in a few days - I've got the Montezzuma's Revenge thing (how do you spell that?) quite badly. aaargh.
yup, i also censored an anonymous comment from someone who went on about how i'm a great writer but really i really, really need to get it together. love my writing style but hate my negativity so off they go, never to read again. i'm vaguely suspicious that it's someone i know who would actually tell me these types of things without having the guts to leave his/her name but since I can't be sure, I won't say who i think it is.
I will correct their comment though - DR is not in Central America, not considered part of it. Rather, it is part of the Caribbean and the West Indies. I feel that if you are going to be critical, it is important to get your facts straight!
back to bed.

thank you, woman in seat 11B

Wee fan base - i is a tired monkey. I got home in the middle of the night last night, after about an 8-hour flight from DR (a stopover in Calgary). The day was very very long - I was at the airport really early. About a 16-hour situation. phew.
glad to be back, despite the never ending rain and wind. yikes.
The stress of the two weeks - the physical stress of exhaustion, not eating well and the emotional stress of a difficult trip and some other things that unfortunately coincided with the stressful time - caught up with me. I wasn't really sleeping on the flight - i felt really restless and uncomfortable. And I'd lost my neck pillow! Tragedy.
Anyway, I'd eaten a hamburger and fries at the airport several hours earlier and noticed that I wasn't feeling too well. just extreme fatigue, i figured. I started to feel really unwell by the time we'd landed in Calgary. I couldn't really even sit up properly. I was hoping it was merely exhaustion. now i recognize the signs.
fan base, i'm sure you are on the edge of your seat. hang in there, it gets rather gross.
We take off from Calgary for the hour trip to Vancouver. Oh boy, oh boy. I request from the flight attendant a barf bag. She brings one, did i want some gingerale, she asks. no, i say. It feels like something is stuck in the back of my throat. I often get that feeling before, well, you know, vomiting, for some reason. it's uncomfortable to say the least. i'm feeling hot and weak and ask for a cold cloth. The woman beside me in 11B (luckily we are in the emergency exit seats so far more leg room) asks if i want a gravol. it won't help, say i. the cloth comes with a cup of ice water to dip it in to keep it cold.
and then, you know how it just comes over you this need to vomit.
i toss the water to the ground and open the bag.
sorry for the details.
I dry heave about five times - wowza - awful. so intense, so loud, so uncontrollable. i hate so much how you just simply can't control what is happening to your body in that way - it's like choking really. between heaves i keep saying "sorry, sorry, so sorry." I know it is gross beyond the beyond for anyone around me who have gotten very quiet. 11B, the mother of two teenagers on the flight and her husband is in 11A, puts her hand on my back while this is happening.
"sorry, so sorry." "Thanks so much." i say many times.
i felt somewhat better after, less dizzy and weak but still shaky. i know i was pale beyond the pale (a little pun there). The flight attendant asks did i just start feeling sick or had i been sick before. i think it's just exhaustion i say to her, wondering if she thought i had a contagious DR illness.
The plane lands a few minutes later and then we must walk and walk and walk up down and all around. i think about simply leaving my luggage but there it is. i get in the cab and go home. i pay by visa and then promptly lose the visa card, i discover this morning. so i now have no visa for between 5-7 business days. eeek.
i'm feeling pretty awful when i get home at about 3 a.m. but i am SO relieved to be there i can't tell you.
i'm feeling rough today - exhausted really, despite my exhaustion i just haven't been sleeping much in the DR or here now. sleep is my biggest problem really, i hope it straightens out.
more yucky details - i get a little gastrointestinally ill in the middle of the night but my stomach feels better for the moment. i'm thrilled i didn't get this sick in the DR - that would have been awful. i'm also glad i didn't get this sick during the first hour of the flight. could you imagine being that sick and then having to sit through 7 more hours. it happens though, i realize. kristina told me a story of a trip she took from Paris i think. a woman beside her, right after take off started to have trouble breathing, sweaty, etc. She, well, got sick and then lay down on the ground for the duration of the flight. the flight attendant gave her a blanket and put little cones around her so no one would step on her. I get that - i totally would have lain (laid?) on the floor if stuck on the plane any longer.
so a vomitous cap-off to my trip.
I got my pictures developed today. instead of merely staying home and just letting my body relax as it desperately needs i went and did that. oh well. the pictures are quite good but don't quite capture the feel of the DR i was trying to get - the squalor really. oh well. no post-traumatic stress to looking at them yet! ha!
i'm so tired and dizzy and tired that i hope i sleep a bit better tonight. really a few really good nights of sleep would turn me around. feel free to pray for me there, Marty. I appreciate it.
back to work on Monday and i must be healthy! I have been sick for part of both of the last two sessions and i can't let that happen again. eeek, i'm obsessing about it.
while i feel like this trip took a good 5 years off of my life, i'm trying to see it in a positive light.
feel free to share any plane illness type stories you may have, wee fan base.
also, i'm a bit emotionally done, just done. I've had some rather intense emotional stuff happen during my trip, which was draining as it was. but alas, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger so they say.
carry on.

still trapped

in the seventh circle of hell, also known as the Dominican Republic. Well, for about, let's see here, in 31 hours i can leave for the airport. i've rather restlessly been unable to sleep, so i can't sleep all of that time. too bad really.
oh, wee fan base, how sad you must feel for me. oh well, as Schnee says, it's all material for writing and for many stories to tell many times. it's really not all evil. i'm just so done. done done done. i spent far too much money on this trip but oh well.
the waves were really great here in cabarete yesterday and i did get to watch some excellent kite surfing. if you are reading this, glenda, your husband would love the waves for sure.
Uh, Cabarete. filled with beach side bars and restaurants and one road filled with every motoconcho and car in the whole world.
thank god for the TV i have in my room. a little HBO, a little showtime, a little USA network and CNN is wht i get. oh TV, my saviour for sure.
anyway, if my flight gets cancelled/delayed/hijacked i am going to walk back to canada. walk on water i am.
when all is said and done, i came, i saw, i sweated. the redeeming things about this trip: 1) a rather nice tan, 2) getting a piece of blue amber - only found in the DR and millions of years old 3) meeting and hanging out with Jacob and Cari and playing the world's best card games with them and laughing our butts off. i love meeting people when travelling. could you imagine, wee fan base, if i hadnt met them? 15 glorious days and 14 glorious nights of of of of . . . shudder
4) learning about a culture and seeing first hand what a third world country is like
in this internet cafe/bar at my hotel, they play the radio all day. I have to say the same FUCKING Spanish song sung by some guy with lots of ballad type angst plays at least, at least 18 times an hour. the DR employees love it, they keep singing along. i think it will become like a pavlovian trigger for me- whenever i hear it in Vancouver (why i would i don't know) i will automatically duck for cover. like a war flashback. Post traumatic stress and all of that.
oh, wee fan base.
i did run into an old guy - a Vancouverite actually, who lives here now and sells real estate to the expats (no Dominican can afford real houses out here). he's promised to bring me a paperback or two today. he hangs out outside here and smokes all day. thank god - i have NOTHING to read and that is just not good i tell you.
oddly, there is an all-inclusive resort in Cabarete. that's unusual because there are lots of independent travellers who come here strictly for kitesurfing. most of the A.I.s are in or around Puerto Plata. I walk through this A.I. to get to the beach. i nicked a book from there share shelf (most are in German) but i didn't like it. i can't imagine how truly awful being in this A.I. would be but the people there seem happy. lots of middle-aged type people. i have witnessed a salsa lesson and some kind of aquasize in the pool run by a very gay DR guy standing on the side. i can't imagine spending two weeks at an AI in Cabarete. i would run away. mind you, i'm sure the accomodations are much nicer than my digs. and maybe they get more TV channels.
well, that be all for now. i'm going to check out the tv.
wee fan base, if i get back to vancouver on time and in one piece i will never, ever complain about the rain or my city again. it's all perspective i tell you. i even miss work - yes, people, that's where it's at.

still alive (barely)

wee fan base - just a short note to say i am still alive! i'm back in Cabarete now, after a rather interesting cab ride (some would say harrowing). i tried to get into a puerto plata hotel but the one i read about in my guidebook was being re-done (meaning, it was half torn down with workers lazing around it).
i'm done in wee fan base. i sent some of you an e-mail saying i've never been so exhausted/stressed in my life and i'm amazed that i'm not sick y et. eating hasn't been happening regularly for me and i swear i've lost 10 pounds in sweat/stress/not much eating. really. wendy will be thrilled for me.
i think i may be having a heart attack - my chest is really tight and i've been having some pain - but i'm hoping it is just stress. here are my bacon and eggs now. the food sucks at my hotel bar but desperate times. the road right behind me is right now filled with motoconchos and it is only 7 a.m. a motoconcho is basically a motorcycle that people hire to go around town. they are dangerous and annoying. nonetheless, i took it twic in Las Terrenas with Jacob - three people - one bike up and down treacherous roads. Jacob sat in the back though, good lad. A really nice young man, who, as i've said before, saved my butt in Las Terrenas. without him, i don't know. Fata Morgana was nice - although a local pub played music 24/7 - but far far from town. by nice i mean i didn't die. very rustic - cold water showers, don't put toilet paper in the toilet or it will block (oops), fans with so much dirt in them you didn't want to use them. that kind of thing. but the hammock was nice.
i have literally lost my appetite - i'm like a friggin starvation victim. but i know i must eat, well, to stay alive.
back to Fata Morgana - it was situated right in the middle between Las Terrenas beach and town (loud, annoying) and the beautiful Playa Bonita, one of the most beautiful beaches in the carribean. as i may have mentioned - strictly dirt roads everywhere. red, dry dust. Cabarete, because of kite surfing, is more touristy - with tourists and expats. Las Terrenas is the real DR. we stayed in a neighbourhood that was a neighbourhood of citizens - so, like a shanty town really. tiny, cement? houses, no doors, people hanging about all day. staring, lots of angry staring. to get into town you could walk on a main road (no sidewalks ever) but that was treacherous with motoconchos and cars. like, really treacherous.
The dirt road also went there - through an excavation site. deep holes and piles of red dirt. we literally hfad to walk over, under and around. they would finish part of the road and we would laugh our heads off because it looked the same - uneven, potholey and again, treacherous. i laughed in an hysterical way like never before. The Welsh girl, Kerry, she was great too. we would get into these laughing fits walking home about the ludicriousness of it all. our lungs were filled with crap from the cars and motoconchos and our clothes filthy with red dirt. in town people sit on these ubiquitous white plastic chairs (sort of like beach table chairs). they would sit there in groups, in the middle of the day, in the middle of the walking part of the road. shouting in Spanish, sometimes to us and sometimes to each other. always the screaming, always, any hour of the day or night. one day, i just lost it and screamed out - to myself really - would everybody shut the fuck up. stressful. also, when you are walking you are constantly approached by motoconchos and others. each shop literally sells the same tourist crap. lots of - i can't even describe this - pictures they want to sell. think simplistic, childlike scenes of people and the beach. crap. and there are hundreds - hundreds of these stands. i told kerry they should have a meeting and say, hey, we're all selling the same crap and no one is buying. perhaps we should, i don't know, do something different. it's crazy.
i'm spelling kerry's name wrong - sorry - Cari. i may switch back and forth.
haven't barfed up the egg yet. good good.
seriously, not eating messes up your head but good.
Jacob, Jacob's friend, also from Czech Republic - they are both working at a British hotel in Manchester now and came to DR for a holiday, his friend for less time and Cari and I played cards at night to the sounds of the screaming, the music from the pub and the rumble of traffic going up to a house where partying was constant. although it really wasn't horribly loud. Fata Morgana is owned by Edit, a Dutch woman witha young son. she has a house on the property. she's uptight and well, dutch and i was rather afraid of her. i cancelled a couple of tours i was going to take - she's also a tour guide - that was frightening. We all had a good laugh about Edit.
Also at this - what Cari said was really like a mental asylum - were a couple of German men . And these German men had their full time young DR women prostitutes with them. One had a baby. Another German guy, he lives here and teaches scuba diving. he told us to get the feel for the DR, a few years ago he moved into a DR slum - poorest of the poor. just to see and learn spanish. the first three weeks of the year were the hardest he said. after that he was ok. he lost 60 pounds and fathered a now 5-year-old child who still lives in the slum but he's trying to get him out or some such continual oddness. surrealism continued.
my god it was hot there. again, dirt roads that make you feel like you've eaten all of the dirt. Ceri thought people should just walk around naked - they get so dirty anyway from the fumes and dirt.
it was so oppressively hot that we decided to check out the El Limon waterfall. this is a crazy story in itself. i'm tired and not so well so i'll shorten it for now. I thought, heck, the three of them are going, i'll go too. hot day, keep this in mind. heat stroke kin dof day as always. we walked to town - 1/2 hour - found a guy to take us to El Limon on the back of a truck - we sat on the sides of it and nearly fell off. It started to pour so he takes out a blue tarp and puts it over us - not nailed down or anything - just over us - and we basically wear it over our heads till we can't breathe. i pee my pants in laughter.
we get to a farm - they talk us into taking their horses - for about $15 each, with guide. i've never been on a horse IN MY LIFE. it's hot, i haven't eaten keep in mind. we get on the horse, i'm fucking terrified. sorry for all of the swearing. i feel like i may vomit. Carlos, walks and leads my horse. he speaks french and spanish. he's crazy basically. we go on straight pavement till we hit the mountain. suffice it to say - straight up for about 1/2 hour, with rocks and all sorts. i'm screaming in terror, carlos is laughing. the others are doing fine on their horses. if the horses had fallen, we would have broken our legs at the very least. finally, a teenage guide name john hops on with me for awhile.
we get to the waterfall and have to walk down at least 1/2 mile straight down (meaning straight upafter) the waterfall is beautiful, you can swim in it - i forgot my bathing suit of course.
then 20 minute walk in the oppressive heat straight back up. i had to keep stopping, nearly fainted.
horse back, truck back.
stressful.
you see why i'm having a heart attack.
maybe more later.

a peso a minute

so i´ll be quick.
mind you, that´s like 27 cents but still.
hot as hell.
beaches beautiful.
rode the motoconcho with Jacob yesterday didn´t fall off. today may be more risky ' just me!
you would not believe the walk from Fata Morgana. It is a excavation area and i kid you not 10 foot deep holes and red dirt we had to jump around. crazy. honestly thought i would break my leg.
hanging out with jacob and a young welsh woman named Kerry but am on my own this afternoon. off to find something to eat.
will blog more next week when i am in puerto plata and access is easier.
i´m a friggin world traveller. this has definitely been an amazing mixture of things sorry the dash is in some other place on this keyboard. the most terrifying in some ways ' lots of stories but i´ll wait till i get home to tell them. is this place dangerous where is the question mark on this keyboard anyway yeah, it is dangerous in lots of ways.
oddly, i suspect i may survive and am realizing that obsessing the whole day about what may happen won´t help me.
the beaches are amazing ' playa bonita is one of the most beautiful in the carribean. the water is warm and lovely. no washroom access though ' just all inclusives around. peed behind a tree.
so much to tell but better when (if ' ha!) i get back.
the only drawback of Fata morgana is the perilous location.
don´t worry if i don´t blog for awhile ' and probably no sense commenting cause i won´t be on the net.
oh and my stomach has just started to act up last night and today but is to be expected.
by the beach.
more later

and then,things improved dramatically

as they usually do. oh me of little faith. i may not blog as often now, partly because i'm a tired monkey and partly access.
this mornng i got up at 5:30 A.M. anddecided to ttake thhe 6:30a.m. bus to Samana -Las Terrenas. I decided to bypass Rio San Juan and just get to where i was going.
after great confusion and no one at the hotel wanting or able to say yes, the bus was at 6:30 i got on. i met (yes!) a lovely young couple from New York City, down for a week. YEAH!!!!! thebus took about 3.5 hours and was a publico - soa regular bus ridden by your regular Dominicans. Iit was a twisty, windy road and driven in a twisty, windy fashion. very dominican. i'm making a lot of typos because thtis keyboard is not the greatest. bear with me. after a stopover we got off near Sanchez, they were also going to LT. A young fellow fromCzech Republic, Jacob, got in our cxab too and wwe set off up reallly wiwndy, bumpy, not really there roads (red sand, no real road to speak of) and i was riding backwards and figured vomiting would happen soon. Jacob is a sweet guy (no romance, settle down) and just really nice. Fata Morgana is a very neat place - little cabins set amidst a large yard. there are rocking chairs and a hammock on each wee porch. Check it out on line if you get a chance - Fata Morgana in Las Terrenas - there's a website. TThe only drawback is that it is quite far from town.
Jacob and i set off to explore around noon ttime - again, tthhe hottest time of the day, not smart on my part. we walked so much - and the town is muc like cabarete - fewer tourists but filled with motoconchos (motorcycles that take passengers), ATVs and people. It was getting hotteer and hotter and i hadln't eaten as of yett. wee finally found a mexican placde - i was so sugar lowe and hot that I CHEWED THE ICE and ate tacos with meat and lettuce. so far, so good. thank god for dukoral.
After luncch, we walked to the beach. finally, after about an hour, i told him i'd hfave to take a cab back b ecause i was dgooing to pass out. off he weennt to do other stuff. the cab got majorly lost and it took a really long time. honestly thought i was done for.
phew.
i spoke to the owner's friend, a 62-year old woman from Quebec and she chilled me out and gave me wateer. i thought i'd head to another place to stay because eof the distance. but Fata Morgana is beautiful and quiet and cheap and is really thhe only place to meet people. Jacob's friend is cocming today or tomorrow as well. i've convinced him to stay till monday and i'm sttaying till wed. so perfect. Jacob hdhas a better sense of diretion than mee! tonighht we walked back to town and now he is cooking up some spaghetti. oddly, they have ragu herej.
Edit, te Dutch owner, is also a tour guide. i will go to thhat park withh her on Saturday and possibly whale watching on thursday but thte water is so choppy she said it may not be worth it - too bad b ut i came at the very end of the season.
Jacob, as i keep telling him, saved my life here. i would have given up and gonee somewhere else or back to Puerto plata and sat in a cheap hotel by myself if he hadn't been on the bus.
i'm verklempt and tired!
no air conditioning or pool heree but i will survive. tomorrow we are egoing to go to playa bonita and just chill out by the water - in the shade. the heat really, really wipes you out. but i hear it is yucky in vancouvere now and tat is very good. ha.
i'm tired and the ragu is ready. if no blogging for awhile, worry not fan base, worry not. oh annd LT is filled wiwth real dominican life - i haven't in my life seen poverty like this - the houses and everything is like wha you see on TV. i'm too tired to explain it noww but one day, when lost hot, i will.

thank god for gravol

well, the expired stuff i brought with me - still works it seems. excellent.
More on the why i needed gravol in a second
Today was, hmmm, challenging. Or, in my new positive parlance, an adventure.
on a positive note i slept better last night.
now remember fan base, i have my period and it is hot and humid. too much information but it might help you in some way. don't know how, but maybe.
I started the day by going to this place - Panaderia Reposteria Dick. Till 1 or so they have pastries. I picked out a couple and went to the beach to sit on a beach chair and watch the morning swimmers and the few kiteboarders out. Apparently the wind is not strong enough for good kiteboarding - surprising, seems very windy to me.
This was actually kind of relaxing to do. Should have stuck with that. However, I seem to always need something to actually be doing so I decided to take a guagua to Sosua, a town about a 15-minute ride from Cabarete, towards Puerto Plata. check it out, I thought. I'd heard it was filled with kitsch and such but maybe a good restaurant or two.
The guagua is a true DR experience. It's like a small (and old and rundown) mini-van, with the side door always open. One comes by every 10 minutes or so, to Sosua and Puerto Plata or the other way toward Rio San Juan (where I'm going tomorrow for two nights) I caught one quickly and off we went. Jammed in with me were about 10 Dominicans. This costs less than a dollar and is quick, yet rather harrowing.
I got to Sosua around 11:30 am. and it is approaching the hottest part of the day. I went over to the beach and found it wavier and less friendly looking than Cabarete. Also, it is jampacked with people. People everywhere. And all along the beach are little kitch shops. So many that it is actually overwhelming. I really want to emphasize how overwhelming it is. Rio San Juan and Las Terrenas promise to be much quieter. By the time I got to the end of the beach I was so hot and overwhelmed that I decided to go right back to Cabarete and my beach chair. I got lost of course and ended up in a spot on a street that was really seedy. People, i will not be politically correct about it - it had impoverished storefront type things and lots of DR men simply standing around, yelling out to each other (and to me) in Spanish.
I'm lost and desperate so say, "Cabarete guagua?" to a young man. This is risky not so much in a violent way, but in a he will start demanding money or for me to buy something. I am so exhausted from people doing this. He takes me to where the guagua will come and he stays with me till it comes. I tell him I won't be giving him money because i am sure he wants money. Vicky Chan, if you are reading this, i suspect you are nodding your head in agreement. mind you, vicky was staying at an A.I. and only ventured out a couple of times but still. Through my broken French i learn he is from Haiti. When the guagua goes by, he stops it for me.
I get on, waving at him and smiling. nice bloke.
The guagua made me nauseous or helped anyway.
I went back to the beach and had lunch at that nice place where i had lasagna. I had pizza margerita this time. It was really hot then and i started feeling vaguely heat stroked so i headed back to the hotel, intending to cool off in the pool.
I went back to my wee bungalow and the keycard wouldn't open the door. i'm beyond hot by this point. one of the cleaning ladies tried her card and it also didn't work. she said a few things in Spanish and began to laugh. i laughed at first too but then said, you know what, we have to fix this.
She goes away and 10 minutes later comes back with the receptionist, who is on the phone, speaking in Spanish to someone. She also laughs. She checks to see maybe i've left a window open.
"don't know," she says.
in different countries i absolutely get and respect that there are different levels of helpfulness. I was at my breaking point though. period, tired, hot, a bit heat-stroked. You need to do something, i said. call the owner. or i will smash in the window with a rock.
10 minutes later the owner comes by.
he tries the door with his key, doesn't work. he laughs.
I WILL SMASH THE WINDOW.
now now, he says in his French accent, this is not something to get so excited about. you are not dying.
He eventually opens it with his key and says he's off to figure something out. 10 minutes go by. i decide to leave my room and go to the pool, to cool off in many ways. 20 minutes later he finds me and hands me a new key. "might work." "you feel better now?" he asks me.
I relax somewhat swimming and reading. I see two middle-aged German guests in the pool with a beautiful, very young Dominican girl (maybe 18). Even though my brain really is heat-stroked, i know this is a prostitute. She is giggling and splashing water on them.
Michel, the in his 40s owner, is now in the pool with another young Dominican girl who is cuddled in his arms.
about 4:00 i go back to my room to get out of the sun. i start to feel quite nauseous and know it is the combo of the guagua ride and the heat. I take a gravol and it helps somewhat.
i've just gotten back from buying some more water.
phew.
i hesitate to tell the truth of my experience here in Cabarete. it hasn't in any way been all bad - meeting Laurel Eastman, swimming, frolicking, etc. But I am glad to be going on a longer guagua ride (gravol before for sure) tomorrow to Rio San Juan. It is simply impossible to meet people here. They are either at all-inclusives and sticking only with each other or are perhaps not in all-inclusives but again, not alone and not open to meeting new people. Kristina hoped that if i went to a cafe and sat I might meet people. An excellent idea and i have done that in other places and it has worked. i'm not a neophyte traveller and i do know how to meet people. here in cabarete, it cannot be done. if i kiteboarded i'm sure it would be a different story.
some of you worried about me coming on this trip alone, which is why i'm so hesitant to write anything negative. But it's not that. By the way, I do feel safe. The only thing that makes me feel unsafe is that i might wring the neck of the next "Hola" person I get and get sent to prison here. hey, maybe i'd meet people there.
I've looked around for any kind of souvenirs mainly for my 10-year-0ld niece, but honestly, there are at least a million items here and not one, not one, is less than extremely tacky. Apparently Las Terrenas has some nice artwork.
I have higher hopes for Rio San Juan in that I plan to go snorkelling there. And in Las Terrenas there are two tours i want to do - whale watching and a tour of a national park near there - lots of birds and other wildlife. i also simply need to spend less time in the sun - realizing that it takes the body and mind awhile to adjust.
I don't regret this trip in the sense that i don't regret travelling anywhere. I have never been to a third world country. And heck, it is beautiful and the water is amazing.
I want to be honest in my blog because well, my wee fan base deserves it and also it is a trip memento for me too.
so a few things it has been so far (after 3 full days): hot, humid, heat stroky a bit, draining, exciting, educational, confidence-building, stories to tell, lonely, swimming, swimming, some vague resting.
that's what it is now, let's not give up people.

a few cute men

Thought that title would get the wee fan base attention.
first, apologies to those who have commented on my blog - i only just saw them - for some reason they didn't come through my e-mail. anyway, they should appear now. hairdresser Karren, I miss you too! And, well, my hair misses you.
Speaking of hair, it is indeed doing interesting things here in the DR. I don't bother putting product in it because i'm in the water so much. Frizzy, let's just say.
my camera seems to be working again so that's good.
Today i woke up on the wrong side of the bed and there was a Dominican man there. kidding. I haven't been sleeping too well and last night was not so good either. so i was a tad cranky. oh and i have my period. too much information, says the fan base.
nonetheless, i have to put in some negative things sometimes just not well, obsessively.
Anyway, i decided to go to this excellent breakfast place i'd read about run by, you guessed it, a German woman. A lovely German woman as it turns out. Claro's i think is the name of the place. i went wild and crazy and had banana and chocolate pancakes with whipped cream and syrup. i figure i sweat out all of the calories. coming back i got vaguely lost (really hard to do it is all one street with the beach running parallel. I just came back from the beach part onto the street too soon and thought i'd overshot the hotel and I hadn't. It was about 30C at this point and humid. I'm sweating profusely, exhausted as I said. Wow. I made myself keep drinking water (water bottle) because usually when i get lost i do nothing till i find my location. i would have passed out if i'd done that! along the way i saw some actual dominican homes and some actual dominicans - other than the ones on the road offering a motoconcho ride or to do my hair. One house advertised massage. I went in but it was 1,000 pesos (about $ 40) for an hour which is actually a good price. didn't do it though. my sweat alone would have soaked this woman. (ewww).
finally i found my hotel, changed and jumped in the pool. refreshing.
i lay around for awhile then tried to sleep in my sort of air-conditioned room. well, the bedmaking woman had turned off the air-conditioning again so it was hot. and oddly they were powerwashing the area, loud that. and bang bang bang on the door - i'm naked as the day i was born - (curtains closed) - they were going to powerwash my little door area and needed me to put in my clothes. okay dokey.
phew.
wow it is 6:30 p.m. and humid still.
then i walked over to Laurel Eastman's kiteboarding school on the beach for the interview. she was in a meeting with her accountant so her head instructor, Ika from Serbia (pronounced Eka) His nickname he tells me is Guru Ika. He's about 25 and sexy as all hell. he wanted me to guess the country he was from and after about 12 wrong guesses he told me. "Like Goran Visnij from ER," I said. He had a sexy accent and was a nice guy. He's a kiteboarder, windsurfer, etc. etc.
Then i talked to Laurel. She's 29, was ranked as #2 kiteboarder in the world and when she came to Cabarete for the world championships in 2002, the sponsoring hotel asked her to set up a school. she came with her Israeli fiance and set it up. Now she has eight full time employees and some part-timers who teach the A.I. hotel guests how to literally fly a kite. I talked to one of those Dominican part-timers, a really nice 17-year-old boy named Jonathan. He attends the Puerto Plata English school part time and thus speaks some English. A nice boy, I could tell he was really proud to be attending the school. So, Charleen, if you want to meet good looking young expats from around the world, you could work at this school and learn to kiteboard in Cabarete, a half-hour ride away.
Ika and Laurel knew most people on this part of the beach and wowza the ex-pat boys are cute. I sat at the beachclub restaurant after and had a lovely lasagna. it was a bit more expensive but worth it.
i am craving chips, wonder if it's the salt i need in the tropics.
did you know that DR is considered part of the West Indes? i didn't.
i'm ready to move on from Cabarete and will do so on Monday to Rio San juan, about an hour up the road. Jonathan said with the guagua (sort of a public bus) it could take much longer and with a stopover waiting for more people. he told me what price to expect to pay - which is good since otherwise, laurel says, the drivers will charge you a zillion dollars.
she also taught me the two-fingered "no" signal. helpful that.
hot.
laurel sent me on my way - she's a busy bee with a great and interesting life. she's lived all over the world (including, oddly, near Coeur d'alaine in Montana) and learned kiteboarding in New Zealand. have a good holiday, said she. so that was nice.
think i'll go get some chips.
it's cloudy tonight and i'm actually hoping for a wee bit of rain.
i must admit i'm feeling lonesome but am determined that such feelings will not ruin my trip. i think my next vacation will involve one of those adventure tour type thingys. might be fun.

sand in every orificed

uh, sand. It is now 5:50 p.m. and the last few hours have helped considerably with the culture shock. Everytime I travel i forget that the first few days are difficult.
Anyway, I swam in the pool for a couple of hours, interspersed with lounging in the shade. lovely. Then i relaxed in my vaguely air conditioned room for a bit. Air conditioning means a box above the head, intermittently turning on and off. There is also a nice ceiling fan.
Meeting anyone here is a challenge indeed. There were a couple of older people at the pool but they had each other and weren't the talking to me type. I got so desperate for conversation that I tried to drown someone. but that only resulted in sputtering.
So around 3 i headed over to Bozo Beach (so named because many people kitesurf there and crash) to go to Laurel Eastman's kite school. I had e-mailed her through a DR forum about advice on DR. She'd said to drop by. A California ex-pat, she's listed in the Lonely Planet as one of the foremost kitesurfers in the world. She was friendly and i got it into my head that i could try to freelance a story to the Globe and Mail or Vancouver Sun travel section on kitesurfing, Cabarete, DR and travelling through it alone, not on an all-inclusive. I'm a faithful reader of these papers and haven't seen anything about it. I told her i'd love to interview her, with the understanding that i was doing it on spec (speculation) and the papers may or may not accept it. She was thrilled and i'm going by tomorrow as today she was really busy.
She sent me off with young Javier (looked about 16, spoke only Spanish) for a small kite lesson. i thought she had meant kitesurfing so i was nervous. thank god no. working with a small kite, i succeeded in crashing it about 20 times in 20 minutes. Javier was very patient and sweet and tried to instruct me in hand gestures and Spanish. I think i was swaying way too wildly. oh well. wow, that is a great workout for the arms. i've done lots of exercise in the hot sun today - swimming, walking in the sand, fending off Dominicans insisting i needed what they had to offer and a little bit of kiting. Sadly, my camera has gone super slow, despite getting new batteries. aargh. i suspect my pictures may not turn out at all. I'll try to buy from somewhere a disposable, especially for whale watching in samana next week.
i went to a supermarcato and bought a calculator for 3 bucks - thought it would be useful for dividing by 27 to get pesos to Canadian. Shaped like an apple, i discover this calculator only accepts the number 9. everything else makes it shut off. ha!
a bit more used to the chaotic street i searched for a cheap restaurant - anything on the beach is a bit crazy. Off the beach, across the street i found a place with rice and beans! Yeehaw! Healthy, easy to digest, filling. that and a bottle of 7 up was 95 pesos. divide by 27 and that's - ooh wait my brain is a bit too tired - 4 bucks? something like that. i've also found a good breakfast place for tomorrow. since i need to buy all meals, this is a good thing. i'm not so hungry but am making sure to drink a ton of water. must go soon and take my anti-malarials. aargh. interestingly, no mosquitoes at all in this area. probably more in Samana, where conditions and my lodging will be more basic.
if you get a chance and are so inclined - check out Fata Morgana in Las Terrenas online - google it - that is where i'll be spending a week.
wow, i'm hotter than hot. off to take another shower and maybe another cooling off swim.
beside me are some more germans. nothing against them you understand - just DR = spanish, a little french. and and and, the entire country of Germany. feel like i'm in europe again.
later. ciao, as we say here in my homeland. i think we do.

fear not, wee fan base

i'm in the dominican republic - and this page is in spanish, hopefully this will be in english - ha!
Anyway, the keyboard here is not so good and the connection is slow so i may not blog much while i'm here.
just to let the fanbase know i got here last night and i'm tired today! i will relax around the pool. it's about 30 here in the shade and humid. i'm staying in Cabarete till Monday, then off to a quieter town for 2 days, then to Las Terrenas for a week - that's in Samana and is supposed to be beautiful. i'm staying in a place that is not a hostel in Las Terrenas (no hostels in this country) but as close to a hostel as you can get. I hope to meet people there. i haven't met anyone here yet - lots of young germans mainly. Cabarete is strictly a kitesurfing/windsurfing/partying town. a good place to get acclimatized. But the main street (the only street) is CRAZY and everyone wants to sell me something every second. i'm culture shocking quite a lot and feeling lonely i must say.
but the hotel here is peaceful, the pool more so.
i'll blog more later i think - for now, fan base, i'm here, it's hot and i'm off to swim in the pool.
carry on.
culture shock!

a new tack

people - wee fan base. I've been reading over some of my blog entries from last year and I notice a pattern. They are generally: a.) quite negative b.) quite obsessed with my physical well-being c) yeah, okay, sometimes funny.
So, as hard as this may be, I am going to try to cut out a and b from the blog while attempting to keep c. a and b are definitely part of a distorted thinking pattern so can't be booted out completely but I will make an effort mainly for my sanity.
I'll start this new thing off with a joke:
"what do you call a guy with no arms and no legs in the water?"
"Bob."
Ha! an oldie but a goodie.

still alive, wee fan base

First, before I forget - Marty, I opened that website but my computer, such as it lame is, doesn't support some of it and so I no see photos. Really, seriously, e-mail some. Thank you.
I have pretty much quarantined myself the last 3.5 days in order to recover faster from whatever cold virus this damn well is. It is now day 3.5 of this and I'm bored. Bored like a bored person. I'm getting better, me thinks, although I now have a seal cough. I get those all the time now after colds, the post-nasal drip situation. Oooh. I know, I know. Unfortunately it affects the quality of my voice, a much needed thing when teaching. Especially when I'm teaching the intros - I do speak more loudly with them for some reason. And the seal sound is disturbing to some.
I went briefly out of quarantine yesterday to get a much needed (you have no idea) pedicure. For the trip, for the upcoming in 3.5 days beach trip where I plan to wear as little footwear as possible. The pedicurist was a lovely Vietnamese woman. Not a talkative woman, after my tenth seal bark, she looked up and asked did I need some water. No, said I, seal barking, I'm getting over a cold. Luckily, the full body spasms that accompany said coughing didn't mess up the lovely red nail polish. The pedicure was very relaxing. She had a pedicure chair, one with a remote control that could be adjusted to lay back more or not. Nice. A foot bath, a foot/calf massage, lovely. "This is very relaxing," I said to her, "well," I babbled and seal barked, "not for you of course but for me, me very relaxing to me." I think it all sounded like mumbling to her. Which really it was. In quarantine I have forgotten how to speak properly or coherently.
My toes look good.
Luckily, as of yet, my coughing is not keeping me up at night. very good.
I'm going back to work for Mon, Tuesday, Wednesday (provided my voice holds up) and then off on my trip early early (4 a.m. to the airport early) on Thursday morning.
I've discovered some nice TV treats during this quarantine. Repeats of the classic Party of Five are on at 3 p.m. weekdays oddly on channel 70, which usually airs South Asian religious shows. There's a great game show called (I think) In the Box out of Toronto. 12:30 p.m. on channel 48 weekdays and later at night too says Toaster Melanie. It's TV trivia!!!!! From the 70s-present. OH MY GOD. you could win $10,000. I applied online but it is filmed in Toronto, so not sure about that. If ever a show was made for me, this is it. Here's a TV trivia question I just thought of. See if you can guess the answer without looking it up. On the 70s comedy One Day at a Time, what late actor played Julie's much older lover? Hint: His son was formerly married to Debra Winger.
Schnee lent me (over a year ago, eeek) a DVD of the first season of a Scottish TV show called The Book Group. Last night I watched all six episodes (about 22 minutes each). It was quirky and good. The annoying American girl on it was too annoying to watch to begin with but it got better for me. Although I did like the jabs at Americans on it. Soccer, she asked, people can actually make a living playing soccer? She was incredulous. She had started a book group to meet people but the people who showed up were not what she, in her intellectual arrogance, had in mind. Hee hee. Good job Schnee. And Marty, being of Scottish origin, you may want to look into this series.
I must foray once more today out of quarantine back to the store that sold me the waterproof moneybelt. I've just been getting water in it, making it, well, not so useful. Wish me luck.