This past weekend I experienced my favorite part of my trip, as well as my least favorite. My least favorite part was on this
Friday. We had a three-part excursion with our group that day. Since one of the
DR’s main exports is cigars, we visited the largest cigar factory in the
country. Now for those of you who don’t know me all that well, I HATE the smell
of smoke. It’s more than simply not liking the smell; cigarette/cigar smoke
makes me feel physically sick. So in hindsight, I should have just skipped the
factory all together and stayed on the bus. But I figured it wouldn’t be THAT
bad, because they’d just be making the cigars, and not smoking them. So how bad
could the smell really be? Also, I had promised one of my best guy friends from
home, Gabe, that I’d buy him some as a souvenir. So I decided to suck it up and
go.
I lasted
all of 10 minutes in the factory. It wasn’t too bad at first. It was
interesting watching the workers make the cigars, and the smell was present,
but not overwhelming. Then some of the workers light up, and start smoking
while they worked. I was scrunched up against the back wall, hating life. I
felt dizzy, light headed, nauseous, I couldn’t breathe, I had a massive
headache, and my eyes were tearing up. I literally ran out maybe a minute or two
after they had started smoking. I ended up hanging out on the bus instead of
going on the rest of the tour. Two other girls came out shortly after, once
they saw that leaving was an option. I sent some money to my friend who was
still on the tour to buy Gabe his stupid cigars, and relaxed and talked to my
fellow anti-cigar friends.
I started
to feel better later, because the rest of our trip involved the outdoors. Thank
God for fresh air. The second stop was a museum for the Mirabal sisters, who
were four extremely important women in Dominican history. The short version of
their story is that there used to be a horrible dictator in the 40’s – 50’s. He
would kill any one who opposed him, and then control the media to keep the
public unaware of what was happening. One of the sisters joined a resistance
group, and then later two of her sisters followed. They distributed pamphlets
to educate the public about what was happening, and started stocking up weapons
for an eventual revolution towards a democracy. They started to become
nationally known, and people started to nickname them the butterflies.. But one
day while the three sisters were heading home, they were stopped by Trujillo’s
forces, and violently murdered. Their death was the beginning of the revolution,
and Trujillo was assassinated the following year.
The museum
we visited was eerily beautiful and serene. It was the house that they had
lived in right before they had been killed. The rooms had been preserved, and
the dinning room table was still set for the dinner the never came home to.
Outside where their farmland had been was now a beautiful garden, full of
butterflies. I ended up buying a bunch of these little butterfly-shaped key
chains (that had the Mirabal sisters commemorative coin in the center) for all
of my family. After that, we went on an hour and a half long high through
the cacao forest. I absolutely loved being in nature and the fresh air. I also
got to see where chocolate comes from. It was definitely more enjoyable than
seeing where cigars came from.
I spent
Saturday and Sunday in Sosua with a bunch of my friends. We stayed at this gorgeous resort called Casa Marina Reef Resort. We all ate tons of food, hung out by the pool, and went to
the beach the first day. It was a lot of fun just relaxing, and enjoying each
other’s company. It felt like I was on vacation, rather than on a study abroad.
Sunday was even better than Saturday. We bargained with one of the workers at
the resort, and were able to convince them to take us out snorkeling by the
coral reefs for only $25 a person. Snorkeling was the one thing that I really
wanted to do while we were down here, so I was super excited. We grabbed 3 or 4
loafs of bread from lunch, got all of our gear together, and took a boat out to
a reef named Three Rocks.
The water
was crystal clear, and the reefs were gorgeous. There were so many tropical and
colorful fish swimming around the reefs. Then we started throwing bread in the
water, and all of the fish swam out of the reefs, and up to the surfaces. We
were literally swimming in a school of fish. They would brush my legs or arms,
or if I was subtle enough I could reach out and touch them. I was giddy the
whole time. I’ve snorkeled before, but the fish were always so far below me. At
Sosua, they were right next to me. My ears hurt afterwards from diving down
into the water so much, but it was so worth it. If I could, I would have stayed
for a week or so. But I had service Monday morning, and class Monday afternoon,
so I had to head back to Santiago.
Over the
weekend, I had kind of forgotten that there was a “study” part to my study
abroad. Oh well. Back to reality…
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| Hiking through the Cacao Forest! |
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| Playing in the river |
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| Gator Chomping at Playa Sosua |
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