My next adventure of the summer was a research trip to the Dominican Republic! I was pretty excited to go and to get to use my Spanish. The trip itself was great, but I don't think I'll be going back anytime soon!
We stayed with host families in Santiago, and this time my host family was fantastic! The only issue was that the house didn't have water for about a week. Normally, this would be ok but this also meant no real shower for about a week. Add that to the fact that the Dominican Republic is the hottest place I've ever been and the fact I had to wear absurd amounts of bug spray to keep all the mosquitoes at bay, and you have one very unhappy me! Oh and did I mention that air conditioning is pretty much unheard of there? Yeah, not so fun! Luckily, the water did come back on before I left! Apparently a water main or something broke and they had a lot of trouble fixing it. We'd been warned electricity could be intermittent but not that the water could be as well! Funny thing is there was never a problem with the electricity while I was there! The other bad fact was that I was without internet for 2 weeks (or I would have posted quite a few blogs with all my free time!)
While we were there, we visited a lot of very poor places in order to conduct our research. I didn't exactly find what I was looking for in regards to my research, but I learned that I should be very grateful for what I had at my home stay because the people we visited did not even have that much. Every time I travel, I appreciate the fact that I'm from the U.S. even more! It is a really eye-opening experience to travel to third world countries and see how they live. We all take for granted things like air conditioning, hot running water, being able to flush toilet paper, and being able to drink the water out of the tap (even if people think Evansville's water tastes bad at least it won't make you sick!)
It was a really great experience to see those places though, because they are places that people don't normally go, not even the Dominicans. We went to a place called Batey Libertad and even though the people were poor, they were so happy and eager to help. They even sang and danced for us and were more than willing to do interviews. We all enjoyed our time there a lot. We visited another Batey, called Cerro Gordo and what we found there was very sad. There was a clear division between the Dominicans and the Haitians and the Haitians lived in huts near the back of the village and worked in the sugar cane fields. They were all reluctant to talk to us and most only spoke Creole so we didn't get many interviews but still gained valuable information. The people there told us that they didn't sing or make any music because the owner of the plantation didn't like them making a lot of noise. While these people weren't slaves, it was the closest thing I've ever seen to slavery and it makes me sad just to think about it.
Onto a lighter note, the "tourist" places we went to in the DR were great, I highly recommend 27 Charcos de Damajagua (27 waterfalls). It was one of the prettiest places I've ever been to in my life, plus I got to jump off/slide down 27 waterfalls! I didn't get any pictures as my camera isn't waterproof but it was definitely a great experience! We also got to see some pretty beaches as well, but the waterfalls were definitely my favorite!
Ok-well this is all for now! I leave for Belgium in 6 days and we're going to Paris as well! I will try to blog while I'm actually there this time and not weeks afterwards!
Thursday, July 7, 2011
A hostage situation in Greece
So in keeping with the spirit of my last post and the changing of this blog to "Adventures Abroad" instead of "Adventures in Costa Rica" I've realized that I've been slacking a bit and have since traveled to several countries without blogging about it. Since I'm supposed to be writing a 10 page paper right now, I figured there's no better way to procrastinate some more than to update my blogsite that no one reads anyway! Yay for procrastination!
Anyway- the first country I made it to this summer and didn't blog about was Greece! I've always wanted to go there so when a summer class option came up to get 6 credits and go to Greece I jumped on it! I was there from May 17th-May 30th and it was an amazing adventure! We went to the Acropolis and saw the Parthenon and a lot of other amazing ruins, but the real story everyone wants to hear about is how our group was held hostage on a ferry!
Nobody freak out or anything, it really sounds a lot cooler than it actually was! We were taking a boat from the port of Heraklion in Crete back to Athens after we'd spent several amazing days in Crete. The ferry was an overnight ferry and it was supposed to leave at 9pm but we could board at 6pm. Since we'd had to check out of our hotel at the regular checkout time, we ended up boarding right at 6pm. Luckily we did, or we may have been stuck in the port for a long time. Around 9pm, some anarchists that had been protesting all over Greece decided to take over the port and not let any ships leave. We were a little confused how they could stop the ferry from leaving because it's a huge ship and they were on shore. I figured the only way they could seriously threaten the ship was with bombs, which they more than likely had, but I guess I'll never know if they did for sure! Anyway, like I said, the ferry was huge and we had rooms on board so we were pretty comfortable while we waited. It took us until about 10:30pm to even realize we hadn't left the port yet. Then our professor came around and told us what was going on. She'd talked to the staff on the ship and they'd told her this had happened for the last three days and the night before they hadn't left until 3am.
The night before we'd been out eating dinner when we saw a protest going on. We asked our waiter about it and he told us that people were protesting the management of the local soccer team. Like stupid tourists, we fell for it. (Apparently Crete doesn't really have any soccer teams that are good enough for people to protest about the management) Though we had no problems dining not too far away from the protest and we'd even walked right through it earlier in the day. Turns out it was really about the austerity measures the government was attempting to impose and the horrible Greek economy that the EU was not bailing out like they did for Ireland and other countries.
Around midnight, we finally decided to go to bed because our rooms were the only place on the ship that didn't smell strongly of gas. We were a little worried that it smelled that strongly but the ship had been running and not going anywhere for too long and that is why it smelled so bad. I woke up when we finally left the port at 2:30am. This resulted in us missing our bus to Delphi as we got back to Athens much later than expected, but we also didn't have to get up at 5am to get off the ship. We got another bus to Delphi and no harm was done, though now I can say I've been held hostage!
So that's the whole story (sorry it wasn't more exciting!) Overall, Greece was AMAZING and I will go back someday because I really want to see more of the Greek Islands. We only made it to Crete and to Santorini. We weren't originally supposed to go to Santorini but we had a free day while we were in Crete so we hopped a boat to Santorini for the day. It was one of the best decisions I've ever made! Check facebook for pictures!
Anyway- the first country I made it to this summer and didn't blog about was Greece! I've always wanted to go there so when a summer class option came up to get 6 credits and go to Greece I jumped on it! I was there from May 17th-May 30th and it was an amazing adventure! We went to the Acropolis and saw the Parthenon and a lot of other amazing ruins, but the real story everyone wants to hear about is how our group was held hostage on a ferry!
Nobody freak out or anything, it really sounds a lot cooler than it actually was! We were taking a boat from the port of Heraklion in Crete back to Athens after we'd spent several amazing days in Crete. The ferry was an overnight ferry and it was supposed to leave at 9pm but we could board at 6pm. Since we'd had to check out of our hotel at the regular checkout time, we ended up boarding right at 6pm. Luckily we did, or we may have been stuck in the port for a long time. Around 9pm, some anarchists that had been protesting all over Greece decided to take over the port and not let any ships leave. We were a little confused how they could stop the ferry from leaving because it's a huge ship and they were on shore. I figured the only way they could seriously threaten the ship was with bombs, which they more than likely had, but I guess I'll never know if they did for sure! Anyway, like I said, the ferry was huge and we had rooms on board so we were pretty comfortable while we waited. It took us until about 10:30pm to even realize we hadn't left the port yet. Then our professor came around and told us what was going on. She'd talked to the staff on the ship and they'd told her this had happened for the last three days and the night before they hadn't left until 3am.
The night before we'd been out eating dinner when we saw a protest going on. We asked our waiter about it and he told us that people were protesting the management of the local soccer team. Like stupid tourists, we fell for it. (Apparently Crete doesn't really have any soccer teams that are good enough for people to protest about the management) Though we had no problems dining not too far away from the protest and we'd even walked right through it earlier in the day. Turns out it was really about the austerity measures the government was attempting to impose and the horrible Greek economy that the EU was not bailing out like they did for Ireland and other countries.
Around midnight, we finally decided to go to bed because our rooms were the only place on the ship that didn't smell strongly of gas. We were a little worried that it smelled that strongly but the ship had been running and not going anywhere for too long and that is why it smelled so bad. I woke up when we finally left the port at 2:30am. This resulted in us missing our bus to Delphi as we got back to Athens much later than expected, but we also didn't have to get up at 5am to get off the ship. We got another bus to Delphi and no harm was done, though now I can say I've been held hostage!
So that's the whole story (sorry it wasn't more exciting!) Overall, Greece was AMAZING and I will go back someday because I really want to see more of the Greek Islands. We only made it to Crete and to Santorini. We weren't originally supposed to go to Santorini but we had a free day while we were in Crete so we hopped a boat to Santorini for the day. It was one of the best decisions I've ever made! Check facebook for pictures!
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