Eeeeek! How could I forget about Semana Santa?!

Semana Santa, or Holy Week, is widely celebrated throughout Latin America and much of the world. It serves to commemorate the last week of Christ's life on Earth before his crucifixion...Or provide people with a week off of work and school to drink, dance and make merry. I decided to experience it for myself but I prefer to get paid to party so I got a job as a beach bar tender for the wild Semana Santa weekend. It was indeed an exciting time!
On Thursday at midnight all the bars are required by law to shut off all music until midnight Friday night out of respect for Good Friday. Right on the dot of midnight Friday night the music begins BLASTING. I thought for sure my brain was going to explode! And it keeps blasting until 4 am when the police shut everything down. The party doesn't really stop until Sunday.

I'm not sure that I would describe Semana Santa in Cabarete as holy but it sure was a good party...

Ok, the party is over. Time to clean up!

This mess is going to require bigger equipment!

Even after all the extensive clean up, a week later there were still pieces of glass mixed into the sand. One of the kids on a mission trip staying at Crossroads, my family's place, got his foot cut open. Not pretty.

Cabarete on any other day

Welcome to Miami! Things I already miss about the Dominican Republic

I have officially been in the United States for all of 3 hours and already I find myself missing certain things about life in the Dominican Republic.

Here are some things that I miss in no particular order:

Ridding on Guaguas

The panoramic vistas 

The sunsets

The fact that if you leave books in a closet for more than a day they become termite condominiums. Of the ten books I had stacked on a chair in a closet for a week the termites chose this one to inhabit:

Carl Jung's Man and His Symbols. That has got to mean something, right?!

I miss the random guy you meet on the street selling a 4 pound lobster

Seeing guys pet their cocks

Going to the beach

And of course I'll really miss the New York subs because I went all the way to the Dominican Republic to eat a New York sub sandwich. 

Tourists are dumb.

Sure, I'll even miss the creepy crawlies because they made my life interesting!

But most of all I'll miss getting to spend time with this guy

My dad and I enjoying my last Presidente for a while.

Vladimir is such a loser

Traffic associated with political rallies has become pretty bad. Ilana had a rally last week that blocked traffic for a good 5 miles and it's happened where we haven't made a trip to Sosua because we didn't want to get stuck in one of Vladimir's gatherings. The elections are May 16 so it's only going to get worse before it improves.

Speaking of Vladimir, isn't he flashing the loser sign in his most recent posters?

Is this for real? Another visit to the public hospital in Puerto Plata

On an earlier date I wrote about the public hospital in Puerto Plata but I felt that it deserved another entry.

I went to the hospital last Saturday to check on 3 men from Villa Ascension who had been in a motorbike accident. Here are some photos.

[Take care of your hospital, maintain the cleanliness.]
I guess it's good job security to keep the hospital full of potential hazards.

Prisoners are kept handcuffed to beds.
Let's go to the lab.

The lab tech explains how the machine to test for HIV/AIDS works.
I needed to use the bathroom.

The faucet was broken, so this is where I rinsed my hands. No, there's no hand sanitizer. 

On the one hand you can look at these pictures and lament the conditions, but as my uncle pointed out, they do a great job with what they are given.

    Plus, in all honesty hospitals in the US are arguably too hung up on rules. I like that here people are so friendly I can do things like this

And who knows when you'll need to make a quick exit.