I can't speak for the rest of the group, but I know for a fact that I didn't know all the names of my tripmates until the plane trip over to the DR. It was a strange feeling. The end of a stressful semester, finals were done, all the stuff I needed to do on campus had been taken care of, and I was ready to be done with the heavy thinking for a while. At least, the kind of heavy thinking that university life requires.
I'll start out with the trip to Salt Lake City. I rode in Jay's car and did a brief read-through of the story I've been working on for most of the semester, and we arrived at the hotel around the same time as Danielle. Then the next car arrived a good while later, and then the teachers' car, and the final car had to go straight to the airport due to the job-related scheduling difficulties faced by Jonathan the RA. At the airport, we spent our time waiting for our flight, sitting in the airport chairs and trying to put up with the, ah, dramatic television interviews that were playing. Then the final three members of the class arrived, and the group was nearly complete.
Moral for day 1: If you want to stay on schedule, stick with Jay.
Traveling from SLC to NYC was memorable in a few ways. #1 - the flight crew. Quite a jovial lot. #2 - the flashing of the personal TV screens. SEIZURE TIEM EVERY1! #3 - overnight flights are memorable by default due to the sleep deprivation they cause. Then we arrived at NYC and made our way to the next gate area to spend the next 4 or so hours until our flight into the DR.
Sleeping in a chilly airport that has recently cleaned its carpets can be tricky. To accomplish this, one must have a. excellent sleeping skills b. something warm and c. a relatively high tolerance for background noises. Needless to say, I failed at this. However, I succeeded in two important things: I found myself a nice journal in which I could write more of my story, and I found the manga adaptation of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, something that I'd never thought would make its way to American bookshelves in English. This second one was very important to me as OoT is possibly one of the best fantasy games of all time, but not all of our group shared my love for video games and good-looking left-handed swordsmen who can use every single object they find ever, so I did not shout to the heavens about this glorious find. I simply read through these two fantastic books to pass the time until our departure.
The plane ride from NYC to Puerto Plata was the moment when I knew for certain that I finally had everyone's names memorized. It was even more fantastic than my find in the JFK airport. And then we flew into Puerto Plata. I was almost relieved to see what it looked like from the plane window. It looked so inviting and beautiful. And so, we passed through the Tunnel of Heat and Humidity, successfully completed the daunting task of Posing With the Costumed Girls, and vanquished the Legal Dragons of the Chamber of Customs. And we found all our bags and made it to our bus just fine. We met Daniel, the man who would explain the workings of Esperanza to us in the coming days, and Tony, the man who would take us from one destination to the next. We got ourselves some cell phones in Sosua, then played in the waters of Playa Alicia, leaving when it was time to pick up our dear Teresa from the airport. The moment she got onto the bus, our group was complete. We then bought some precious commodities (water, Jack Sparrow's favorite drink, and some foods) before sitting in relative peace in the bus that Tony drove all the way to Jarabacoa. It was there that we were able to relax, change into comfortable clothing, and get our first taste of Dominican food. We finished the evening early because we were all so tired, and thus prepared ourselves for the day to come.
Moral of day 2: Sitting in a bus with wet clothes isn't all that great.
We awoke the next morning and ate breakfast before preparing ourselves for the journey into the canyon. I'm pretty sure something interesting happened before we all got ready but I can't remember for sure. At any rate, we all got our swimsuits on, some of us bought little booties at the shop to protect our feet, and we met our guides and dressed for the occasion. Meaning we all put on wetsuits, harnesses and helmets and had a good laugh at how incredibly sexy we all were. Then we got on the truck and drove up the steeeeeeeeeeeep road to where our canyoning adventure began. Man, what a steep road that was. That truck was impressive to make it up that steep road which by the way was very steep. We all got out, said which drink we'd like to have at the end of the trip (mostly beer, a couple waters) and made our way into the depths of the wilderness. The canyoning was, well, canyoning. Lots of jumping around, climbing down rocks, rappelling down waterfalls,
Moral for day 3: Diana does not tan, she burns.
We awoke the next day and split up. Some of us went horseback riding, some of us went to a monastery, and a couple stayed at Rancho Baiguate and chilled (I think someone stayed, at least...). From what I heard, the horseback riding was an interesting experience, but I know for sure that the monastery was interesting as well. We took a guagua up to the monastery and met a visiting priest who showed us around a bit and then brought us down to this waterfall and we talked to him and he spoke decent English and he was from Santo Domingo and the waterfall was pretty and so on and so forth. Then we returned to Rancho Baiguate and ate some food and swam a bit and spent some time swinging. Then the others returned and we soon returned to the bus to travel to our next destination: San Pedro de Macoris.
There isn't much to be said about the bus ride except for this: Spanish-translated girly magazines, neighboring busses, spontaneous dance parties, and teachers who sit up front and dance to their own music make for a very fun trip. I spent half of it writing my story. Then we arrived at the Kellogg Center put our stuff in our rooms, ate dinner, and after the day was mostly over I spent a good while doing laundry before going to bed.
Moral of day 4: INSTANT DANCE PARTAY WHOO!!!
Sadly, because this is taking longer to write than I thought it would, and due to the fact that I need to sleep tonight, this is going to be it for now. Parts II and III shall be up soon. PS my dog is snoring. Tee hee.
