Day 12- Colombia, the country of happy eating people

I can not tell what exactly is the best thing in my experience so far: being in the Caribbean or being in the Caribbean with two phenomenal Colombians.

Their good spirit (the second happiest country in the world), constant singing (and talking) and extremely good cooking skills made the experience so far totally enjoyable.

Here are some samples of the food we are eating:

And trust me when I tell you that our Romanian, and I would dare say most of the other European food, is no match for the taste of some of these dishes.

As you can see, the main ingredient in many of them is platanos (a type of bananna, that cooks like potatoes but is a bit sweeter).

Natural ingredients, a certain “je ne se quoi” coming from cooking “like back home”, all coming together to create tastes and flavors that bring a very fulfilling momentary happiness.

AIESEC- the organization that facilitates a Romanian eating food cooked by Colombians in the Dominican Republic.

Day 11- Visualizing

This is what I see everyday.


Waking up:




































Going out of the bedroom and into the bathroom:









Taking a shower:














Out of the bathroom and heading towards the stairs:














Down the first flight of stairs:












Making a left and down the second flight of stairs:














Out into the office:


























Making a left, past my desk heading for the kitchen:













Entering the kitchen:














Inside the kitchen:






















Cooking- me mostly omlet :P






Washing dishes:














Working at my desk and looking out the window on my left:













And in front of me:

Others- Music

Here is a Dominican song that I like a lot

Day 10- Suzy the Orchid

Having and growing orchids has always been something I wanted to do, but could not because of the climate we have in Europe and the special care you have to take to keep them alive.

out here…..it’s their home

So, meet Suzy

She is not the prettiest, but I like her and it’s a good beginning.

Day 9- Sharing feelings

Saturday night we went to the old part of Santo Domingo called "Zona Colonial" at a very nice venue that had a Cuban live band playing.
While enjoying a "Presidente" (their national cerveza) I came to think that it is almost impossible to tell people back home how its really like over here.

Remembering how annoyed I felt when my friends that left Romania kept telling me that "its ok", "its nice"...etc, I thought that they were too lazy to share the real emotions that they had while living in a new culture, away from the confort of your safe space, away from things you are able to control at will..........
It had to be better than "ok"!

Fast forwarding back to the present, and my thoughts are different............living here, I understand that you simply cannot transmit the feeling of savoring a drink, sweating from every pore, while taking a brake from learning to dance, with lots of people around you talking, cars everywhere on the streets honking, with couples dancing, moving in a very smooth, fluent and sexy flow of steps.

Taken separately, I could say that it is polluted, the streets are full of garbage bags on the sides, most of the people are on the lazy side.......that they have heavenly looking skies, flocks of parrots flying around, exotic plants...and many more I have yet to experience.

But the feeling.....the feeling of all put together....of everything combining into a new, challenging experience, into new perspectives and ways of looking at the world.............. is not easy to describe in words.

It is better than interesting and new, it's great, it's flavorful and exotic, fresh and full of life...

........and still, the words do not describe anything from the actual experience..............

so...........its ok.

Day 6- Thank God for ants

Ants......the final frontier......
I woke up this morning to discover that ants ate my chewing gum. My freaking chewing gum, that was left on a table..
These little critters are phenomenal. I remember when I was a child that we use to have them also in the apartment back home, but those were not as fast and agile as what we have here.
Also, here they are everywhere, so maybe that's why they sense food so fast.

I always wanted to keep ants, and now my wish has come true. We have a whole house full of them.

Already see myself waking up one these mornings and finding that one of my toes is missing, with a happy small ant chewing away at it .

Day 5- Differences

You cannot miss some very "shocking" differences.

-The plants.

You get caught up in the rush of living, and stop noticing these details.

Yesterday, we went to clean up an old storage space we had in another part of the city, as the person that let us use it for more than one year wanted it back.

I was sitting, looking around to search for something, when it struck me........the plants are fantastic!

In Europe they are only growing in pots, and they are in small sizes...here there are cacti growing near walls, palms of all sizes on the sides of the streets, huge aloe vera plants everywhere....very exotic










You can see in the picture a banana tree.











-The animals



Lizards in particular. All over the place.
Even in the house (a small white type)--the picture is taken in ours.



On the streets you can see some big ones, bigger than the size of a human palm, green with small red dots on the nose.









Men.
Men here have a very "libidinos" way of acting (I believe the word in english is "sleezy") with women.
Actually they are very rude and intrusive. In times like these I am glad not to be a woman.



-Cars

Yesterday we went in a carrito publico that was in such a crappy condition that I wondered if the door will not fall while driving.

You can try to imagine a car that is at least 20 years old, making horrendous noise, with no tapestry at all on the doors, with an iron bar instead of window handle, doors not opening from inside....holes in the metal.... It's a miracle they are even running.

On the other hand, you can see next to you while driving: a brand new Porsche Cayenne Turbo S, new Mercedes S Klass, all types of Lexus, and all types of 4X4.

Typical of 3rd world countries, they have a lot of expensive cars that belong to the few that are extremely wealthy. While at the same time countless motorcycles running back and forth. Most of them are in deplorable condition, but they have also some brand new high speed racers.









In the picture you can see a Cayenne in custom color surrounded by guaguas (motorcycles that you use when you want to kill yourself).










Trust me....you see these things in the movies and think that they are images of the past.
Nope....reality is even more scary than that :)





-Banks

I had a shock when being told that the account statement the
bank gives you is.....written BY HAND in a small notebook (like the one you had in school to receive grades).

























They have no money counters in the banks and EVERYTHING is done manually.

And....the best...... checks take TWO WEEKS TO CLEAR....TWO WEEKS........you can already smell the free money right?

Imagine all the deposits, swaps and liquidity freedom these guys have :)









As we use to joke last year....these fiscal paradises are big washing machines......and we have Citi here also (the tall building in the back)










-Fruits and vegetables


They are very simmilar, with the major difference that they are smaller, more shriveled and not as "good looking" as what we see in Europe.

On the other hand, they taste more natural and actually have more flavor.









In the picture you can see how oranges look here.










-Services

Here most of the things are delivered at your home (drinking water, food, gas for cooking---some buildings, like ours, are not connected to the gas pipes) surprisingly fast.
In 20 min max since calling you get it.
Much better than back home.



-Clothing

Image is extremely important for these people, so everyone is dressed very nice.
Not flashy, with quite good taste I would say, and they look like taken out of the box.
Really, I am surprised how much care they take of themselves.










Some pictures of views from the terrace of the bedroom











































Here is my desk.

Day 2- Adjusting

I expected to have trouble sleeping, but I guess the tiredness did it's work. Slept like a baby, and woke up at 06:59.
Seems that I am not experiencing jet lag, which is good as I was a little panicked that it would be hard for me to adjust to the seven hours time difference between here and back home. Thanks to Oana for advising me not to sleep at all during the trip.

A few impressions:

-There is no hot water. Because you do not need it. It's hot enough, and when you go in the shower and get past the initial goosebumps generating shock, you fell quite refreshed.

-I get the feeling that people here are a little full of themselves. This being said by me, a person that most will characterize as arrogant and full of himself, at least as a first impression. So, who am I to judge?

The public transportation, at least the carritos publicos, is very surprising for a European used to civilized cars and comfortable traveling. These carritos publicos are practically cars that are very old and torn apart, that travel predesigned routes (usually along the major boulevards), and that fit usually six people: two in front near the driver and four in the back. The driver is interested in keeping the car full at all times, so you frequently see him signaling with the horn to the by standers on the sidewalk that look like they may be waiting for a "transportation opportunity". I you are thin as I am, than it really is not that uncomfortable.
Of course, it's not even remotely comfortable, but it's among the only reasonably priced means of transportation, so you have to get used to it.

-Our apartment/ office is great. We live in a building that has at the first floor a plaza (office spaces and some shopping stores) and at the second and third floor two duplex apartments, one of them inhabited by us, AIESEC DR. At the first floor we have the office, two bathrooms and then kitchen, and at the second we have two sleeping rooms and a bathroom.
It looks very ok even by european standards, with most of the things in proper working order.
Overall I am delighted with it, and it's one of the best things so far.

On the flip side, we have ants. They are vey small and kind of white, and they are everywhere. If you leave food on the table or you drop some on the floor, in less than 5 min it's filled with them. They seem harmeless but are a noticeable presence.

Today we went to an event in the old part of the city dedicated to Colombia, as we have two fine representatives of this glorious country in our team. It was very nice and I got a chance to get contact with merengue and some other dances that I have no idea what they are called.
I promised myself that I will spend my time here learning to dance "latino style".

Long live Colombia!

Day 1-Arrival

Arrived at the airport in Santo Domingo at around 20:00. Weather is not as extremely hot as I expected.... it’s like when you have in Europe a very hot day (over 35C) and they clean the streets by spraying them with water.
All the moisture is up in the air, making it kind of hard to breathe. You get used to it in the end, or you stop noticing.
But the real surprise is when you want to do some body-intensive work, you are all wet in 2 minutes.

So far so good.

Going to now sleep as I am beat after more than 28 hours of traveling from Vienna to Bucharest then Paris and finally Santo Domingo.

The beginning of it all.....

Hello, and hope you enjoy reading this as much as I do actually living it.


For those of you not updated yet, I have decided in May 2008 to live for a year in the Dominican Republic. I like to call it serendipity, but some call it being crazy. None the less, it was a decision in which I put as much thought in as I did feelings.


I will be living for the next year in Santo Domingo, helping -along with my fantastic team- AIESEC DR develop and expand. And, of course, living a full and enriching experience while doing it.


So this is how I have come to this point.


About the past......let's just say that it is in my nature to take things full on, to live experiences as profoundly as I can and to do things as early as possible. 22 years old, with a powerful drive to succeed and extremely stubborn.


I will document my experiences as much and as frequent as I feel, so you should expect some randomness regarding this aspect.


This being said.........here I go.....