We Are Alex Family

Fish
Originally uploaded by Pookah.

Day three in Punta Cana was actually day one in the Dominican Republic. And by that, I mean that Jimmy and I spent our first day away from the Resort. What you see above is my favorite picture from the whole trip (although I only had 22 to choose from as my digital camera only came with a really small amount of memory).

Jimmy and I had planned to take one of Apple Vacations day trips and had decided on the Outback Safari. It turns out that we picked the best day for it as cloudy, rainy weather would have made for a really miserable beach day.

As it was, it made for a semi-miserable day-long outing in the back of an open-air truck, whipping along sometimes paved and sometimes not Dominican roadways.

Our local tour director was Alejandro and our driver was Dani, who didn't speak a lot of English and forced me to practice my Spanish when bathroom needs arose and Alejandro was too busy pouring Pepsi and rum drinks for the other tourists.

The Safari taught us about the local people and lands, and allowed us to see firsthand many parts of the Punta Cana area, away from the resorts. The first stop of the morning was at a typical family's home, where we saw the living conditions of the Dominican people.

Most homes are built out of the trunks of a type of palm tree that is too hard and dense for termites to destroy. The planks are roofed with a wavy aluminum, the design of which is for gathering rainwater that the families' use for cooking, bathing and other household necessities. All water for drinking is bottled water as the rainwater is not fit for consumption (several years ago, a certain amoeba was infecting the locals, a health risk which inspired the change to bottled water).

The home we visited had r rooms for 5 people: two small bedrooms, a living room, and a tiny indoor kitchen that is only used to cook when the weather is bad. The indoor kitchen has a propane tank they use for their stove.

The outdoor kitchen has more of a grill setup, but they burn the wood of a certain type of palm tree to cook. This is a smokey process, which is why they don't employ it in the indoor kitchen.

This particular home had an actual toilet in a hut outside, but I don't think most families have access to this kind of plumbing. The home has no electricity, but they have a television which runs on batteries and can sometimes catch Puerto Rican stations.

The average income per year is $2,500 and the estimated cost of comfortable living is $3,000 so most Dominicans live in poverty. It is also a country in which 85% of the population are Christians and it is tradition for the women not to work, but to stay home and raise the family. I can't even imagine.

In any case, the family set up a table to serve us Dominican coffee in their backyard. Admittedly, I am not a coffee drinker, but I did try some and I think their coffee is pretty tasty. It is bittersweet, with an emphasis on sweet. If American coffee tasted this good, I just may have yellow teeth like the rest of caffeine-addicted America too.

After another freezing turn in the back of the truck, with cold wind and rain heaving around the sides of the truck at us, we arrived at a local school. The schools are really only slightly bigger than an average home, and are one-room institutions. It is obvious that the teachers do their best with what they have, but there were only chairs and desks for about twenty children and a few posters. I didn't see any schoolbooks, or other learning materials, or any kind of a playground for exercise. It is so completely different from what we are used to here in the U.S.

Many children walk several miles to school each day, or ride horses or take the public bus. With the price of cars and diesel so expensive relative to their earnings, many families live without automobiles. And, on the day we were there, not a single child showed up for school due to the weather. Again, what we all take for granted...

Jimmy and I, being the wonderful examples of American tourism that we are, took pictures of each other drinking in the classroom - Jimmy double-fisting it, and I laughing so hard that my eyes somehow seem to disappear into the skinfolds above my cheeks.

Alejandro didn't let us stay long though - no school children=no fun. While he was hanging off the back of the truck, and we were all doing our best not to freeze (by the way, I was the only one in jeans and a sweater and I am fully prepared to admit that it still wasn't enough when Dani was sprinting down the roads at 50mph), Alejandro told us all about how we were all family members for the day and must treat each other as such. And then he taught us a new song:

"We are Alex family
We come from here
We are so happy
After 20 beers...!"

Apparently this song is to be sung at the top of one's lungs after each Pepsi and Rum round. This is, of course, how everyone stayed warm.

The next stop of the day was at a native coffee and chocolate plantation trail, where it downpoured for a few minutes and I didn't get to play much with the snakes and tarantulas they had caged on the side of the trail. Instead I tasted my first Dominican hot chocolate, and this elixir they call something very similar to "Marijuana." The elixir, however, is not an illegal drug, but rather some mix of native herbs that you soak in rum and water for a certain period of time. They claim this elixir can fix ailments ranging from a simple headache to arthritis. My thought is that if you drink enough rum, you can "fix" anything!

So I bought a cannister of coffee for my Anthony at this stop.

Next stop: a traditional Dominican lunch at some sort of ranch. The food was buffet-style, as all the other Outback Safari trips were visiting this same location for lunch. The seating arrangements were picnic tables under a long roof. We were one of the last groups to arrive, so we were pretty far away from the one wall against which the buffet tables were placed and the wind blew cold rain into us during our meal.

The food was excellent! Oddly, it was one of only two meals where I found fried plantains, which I think is a really tasty food item. There was also red beans and rice, some kind of chicken, bread... While it doesn't sound like much now, it was one of my favorite meals of the trip. The Resort seems to cater to foreign tastes, while this meal felt distinctly authentic. Everything was just so wonderful.

We spent most of our meal with a couple from Wisconsin, or was it Montana? In any case, they have a lovely story: Husband was a truck driver based out of Kentucky, who one day helped out his future wife over the CB Radio. She and a friend met up with him at a truck stop while they were on some road trip and had a drink. That turned into several dates in Wisconsin/Montana every time Husband drove up that way, which turned into being re-stationed in Wisconsin/Montana once his supervisor found out, which turned into a marriage proposal and happily ever after. It's so rustic, yet so romantic. You don't see a lot of men willing to relocate for their women, nor do you rarely see that same kind of situation where it all works out for the best and He never has to change jobs. I like to see happy endings (even if I like some of my movies to be gritty, just like life can be).

The afternoon ended with a rum shack where we are charged only local prices (again, I thought of my Anthony, and our favorite alcoholic, Mike, here), and then boogie boarding at a local beach. I have pictures of Jimmy with his boogie board, but I am a temperature wuss and didn't think I could handle drying off in the back of an open-air truck, on a chilly, rainy day, while we're moving along the highway at a steady clip. So, despite the bathroom-temperature water, I still have not boogie boarded since I was about ten years old.

In due course we said our farewells to Alejandro and Dani and RACED to our hotel room for hot showers. This was also the CNN evening, so I don't even have to go into that now.

Needless to say, we had an early dinner at the only restaurant on site where they charge you a surplus fee because of the gourmet food. Jimmy and I weren't overly impressed by the food, but we had a wonderful conversation (as always). Mostly we discussed our Safari and all the people we met on it (Jimmy was especially pleased at meeting a gentlemen who was clearly very religious, what with all his Catholic jewelry, but still reacted very kindly to him - we talked a little bit about how first impressions can limit you from getting to know really great people.)

The final portion of our evening was devoted to the nightly show: Club 54, which turned out to be a 70's dance music review. Of course, Jimmy ended the evening onstage with the dancers, shaking his little tushie...

My Turn as a Movie Critic

Pedro Almodovar's Bad Education with the much-acclaimed Mexican actor, Gael Garcia Bernal, didn't catch my attention like his previous works (2002's Talk to Her, 1999's All About My Mother, 1990's Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, etc.), nor like Bernal's previous works (which include 2004's Motorcycle Diaries - which I haven't seen yet but anticipate viewing very soon, 2002's The Crime of Father Amaro, 2001's Y Tu Mama Tambien, and 2000's Amores Perros). A very human element seemed to be missing, which is always so captivating in Almodovar's films. Even while he is directing a piece that is so twisted and out of the ordinary scope of your everyday person, he manages to keep their humanity intact.

In Bad Education, Bernal plays a character for whom the audience doesn't develop a very close relationship by the end. When the movie starts out and he is appealing to an old childhood friend for an acting gig in the friend's next movie production, you want to believe in his earnestness, in his desire to do well, and in his acting ability. However, when you finally realize who he really is and what he has done to get to this point in his life, the only faith you have left is in his acting ability. This is a movie about the very baseness of the human condition, the dark side of the soul that you take pains not to examine.

You continuously want to believe the people on the screen are basically good people, people who are well-intentioned despite things ending badly. However, Almodovar paints just the opposite picture: people are destined to be bad, with intentions or possibilities that look good from the outset but aren't really. People just aren't what they seem.

Somehow I think I managed the most amount of sympathy for the child-molesting priest and Bernal's childhood friend, the Director, which is a kind of tongue-in-cheek when you think about the moral depravity normally associated with child molestors and Hollywood types.

What I enjoyed most about this movie was Bernal's acting. He is simply an amazing actor, with a barely concealed sexuality about him and a penchant for taking on provacative roles. I haven't seen him play a character yet that doesn't truly enthrall the viewer, whether for good, bad, or ugly.

Then I saw Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby, which has Clint up for for a Best Actor and Achievement in Directing Academy Award, Morgan Freeman up for a Best Supporting Actor, Hillary Swank up for a Best Actress, Joel Cox up for Achievement in Film Editing, and itself up for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Motion Picture.

First of all, my opinion of the Academy Awards is very low, if not nearly nonexistant, but somehow every year my dislike of the Academy becomes murkily entangled with my love of movies and I spend four or five hours watching some of the worst programming on television, only to see the truly deserving nominees lose and the Academy finally give credit where credit is due, only for a completely sub-par role or sub-par movie. It's tradition.

And it will be no different this year. While I agree that Freeman, Eastwood and Swank are all gifted actors, I didn't fully revel in this movie. Granted, Vandra sobbed uncontrollably from about midway through the movie all the way until fifteen minutes past the ending, constantly penetrating the silence of the audience with a good nose-blowing that could wake an entire fraternity at 6AM on a Saturday morning...BUT I thought that the movie was missing some key dialogue in the first half to keep it totally on an Academy Award level.

From the previews, we all know the plot: Clint Eastwood plays an aging trainer who has a terrible, if not nonexistant, relationship with his own daughter and Hillary Swank is looking for a trainer. After some initial difficulties (i.e. "I don't train girls," and "Girly, tough ain't enough"), Eastwood finally agrees to take on Swank and she goes on to enjoy some success in the boxing ring. We all know this relationship somehow turns into a substitute father/daughter relationship that both characters need, but we are not prepared for the twist at the height of Swank's career.

I think what I felt through the first half of the movie was that I was being led somewhere all too familiar, with the underdog, I-don't-get-enough-love-at-home-and-I've-adopted-you-as-my-new-daddy-you-don't-have-no-one-to-love-anyway kind of a story. Morgan Freeman only helped emphasize that by playing a retired boxer who keeps up Eastwood's gym and serves as the mediator between Swank's character and Eastwood's character, before they finally start training together, and also as the narrator. Freeman, and especially Swank, are so g0sh-darn loveable, with nary a character flaw, that I find them both fairly flat and difficult to digest (the critic that I am) all throughout the first half of the film.

Then there's Eastwood's character. He's supposed to undergo some sort of major character transformation by the end, finally allowing himself to love someone like family, but I just don't buy into it. I think a lot of my reserve here has to do with the fact that the film keeps intimating that something terrible happened between him and his daughter that forever altered his life (i.e. "A man doesn't go to church everyday for 20 years if he hasn't done something wrong"), but the film never lets on what that is.

The turning point occurs at the height of Swank's career, as I said before, and this is where the movie actually starts to get interesting, and the characters formulate some depth. It is here where the actual movie lies. Up to this point, if I were to give it a rating of 1 to 5 stars (with 1 being "I hate it," 2 being "I didn't like it," 3 being "I liked it," 4 being "I really liked it," and 5 being "I loved it"), the film would get a lukewarm 3 (really, who doesn't like an underdog??!). Yet once we reach the turning point, where things don't go as the Director seems to be leading you to believe they will go, this is where my "Ah-ha!" factor goes up.

I now understand the Academy nods. It isn't your typical sports movie. The underdog doesn't always go on to overcome all the tragedies in his/her life and, just like in real life, movies don't always have to have happy endings. I think this is what I am starting to treasure the most in movies - that is to say, the movie that adheres to real life, real conclusions, real sorrows and real happiness. Sometimes the biggest heroes in life are just the ones who triumph in the face of adversity. Life isn't all saccharine sweet. And neither is this movie.

Temporary Departure

I must break into my daily accounting of my Punta Cana trip to make mention of the fact that my boyfriend is leaving me...for Condaleeza Rice!!! Anthony is spending the next ten days on one of the Secretary of State's jump teams, traveling from London to Luxembourg to Ramallah. Some boys have all the luck, no?

It is only in moments like this when I actually miss my old job with Diplomatic Security (well, that and when it comes time to pay bills). Granted, in the past six months or so, I have rafted the Grand Canyon and parked my butt beachside in the Caribbean, but all the same, I'm not sure I like it when my honey is more well-traveled than I. THE NERVE!

So I get to act like a State Department widow for the next two weeks. Whatever will I do with myself?

Although, speaking of travel: Anthony and I have decided (or was that just me?) that for our one-year anniversary, instead of buying some sort of materialistic gift that neither one of us will remember in 10 years, we are going to commemorate the occasion by taking a trip to Northern Ireland. DARWIN: Get ready, 'cause here we come!!!

Mostly Day 2

Jimmy and I slept in, slightly affected by mild hangovers from our wild night of wine and gambling the night before. I slipped out to the lobby early to make reservations for dinner for the following evening (most of the restaurants require reservations, some of which fill up early in the morning), and to buy a US$21 bottle of sunblock. Yes, my friends, I, the perennially poor lives-like-a-broke-college-student Ryan, spent $21 on a bottle of sunblock. I only had about a tablespoon left in the old bottle I kept from last summer - especially after Vince and my trip to the Grand Canyon - and I thought Jimmy and I would need reinforcements. So $21 of the last $100 in my bank account went towards sunblock.

Keeping that in mind, we headed out straight for the beach, hitting the sand around 11AM. Jimmy used a drop of sunblock on his face and neck and proceeded to burn himself to a crisp by 3PM. Yes, we sat outside in the Caribbean sun during the least sun-friendly hours of the day and JIMMY DIDN'T WEAR SUNBLOCK. So by the end of the afternoon, Jimmy was read from his toenails to his neck. Due to the slight bit of sunblock he DID use on his face and neck, he ended up with a ring of red around his neck and shoulders, remaining pale from there up.

Mother Nature's little joke on him occurred when for the rest of our vacation, the sun didn't come back out again and he was forced to go home with an uneven burn, despite all his attempts to be shirtless and absorb the sunlight reflected off of the clouds. The sun seemed to be saying, "It just wasn't meant to be, little Jimmy."

Much to the chagrin of one of our Outback Safari members, I even managed to have a little adventure all my own on the beach that Tuesday. For the first time in my life, I sunbathed topless. I figured, "What the heck! All the Europeans don't seem to give a crap, and why on earth would I try to please that one ignorant blockhead from Texas anyway?!!!" So, in an attempt to avoid tan lines, I went with the birthday suit plus bikini bottom look. Mother Nature's HA-HA on me was that I only developed one itsy-bitsy shade darker of a tan. I probably wouldn't have gotten tan lines if I tried, what with my 30SPF sunblock on.

The most amusing part of our hours in the sun was the half hour or so that Jimmy actually convinced me to go into the beachside pool. Of course, we jumped in and headed directly for the in-pool bar, where we were greatly amused by the bartender who only growled and catcalled at me:

Me: "Can I have a bloody mary please...por favor, un bloody mary?"
Bartender: "Grrrrr....." (in that rolling your tongue, happy to see you kind of way)
Jimmy: "I'll have the same. UN BLOODY MARY, POR FAVOR." (his Spanish spoken so slowly and obviously that even a drunk Texan could understand him, the bartender still growling) "You are so funny; you remind me of Ricky from The Lucille Ball Show. Grrrrrrrrrr....."
Bartender: "Grrrrrrr...."
Me: "Gracias. Um...Jimmy...shouldn't we go drink this somewhere else in the pool, it's not warm here in the shade..."
Jimmy: "He's funny."

Eventually, I got Jimmy away from our own little Ricky, with very little affrontery to my virgin sensibilities.

The other amusement was the group of several obviously drunk Spaniards at the poolside bar, who moved between singing the Macarena at the top of their lungs, to shouting, "Me llamo Fernando, Fernando Cortes!!!" Or something really close to that. It certainly made for some interesting background noise for my book reading.

Later that evening, we found our way to the spa and made appointments for Thursday for massages. We also found our way back down to the beach to have a quick massage poolside. The massage techniques are so completely different in the Dominican Republic - I am not really sure that these people go to school for massage therapy at all. I haven't had many professional massages in my life, but the American massages I've received seem to be a lot more educated. And the massages we got that afternoon were much too soft - I like to feel like I've really paid for something. However, all that being said, I still enjoyed having someone rub massage oils into my back while listening to the waves crash on the sand and feel the ocean breeze.

Now that it is a week and a half from our vacation, I can't remember when we met our friends, the Canadians, but it was either before or after the beach massage. Steve and Adrien, I believe, were their names. They joined us in the hot tub in the spa and we chatted for a while. They were part of a group of 42 Canadians who came down for a couple's wedding. They had all these ice-breaker activities planned for the week, group sports, yadda, yadda, yadda. It all sounded like a lot of fun - even if I can't ever imagine making all my friends and family travel abroad for my wedding! Anyway, they were a lot of fun and Jimmy and I had a wonderful time later trying to determine if they were gay or straight.

Our basic conclusion was that there certainly weren't enough gay boys at the Resort to compliment and harass Jimmy, to boost his ego. Granted, there were plenty of women lavishing him with attention, but he tends to not notice that kind of stuff from the fairer sex. Instead, it was a week all about me being overly catered to by the male staff... not that I'm complaining, mind you, but I would have rather have been overly catered to by Anthony for a week.

Our day on the beach was, of course, cut short by Jimmy's sunburn and our dinner reservations. Traveling with a gay man means that there must always be time for another shower and primping before dinner. So we're back to the apartment, admiring the columns and catching up on our Bush inauguration.

Speaking of which, let me just point out that the priest at the ceremony concluded with something to the effect of, "...and with due respect to people of all other faiths, I offer this prayer to Our Lord, Jesus Christ." Was I the only one listening??? First of all, having a priest or monk or rabbi or whatever at the inauguration certainly must violate the separation of church and state - not that this administration has taken ANY pains to uphold that! Secondly, isn't that only slightly ironic? I assume that he was serious when he made that statement, but am I the only one who can't see his logic?!! How is it at all respectful of all other faiths to offer up a prayer to Jesus? How is it respectful to all other faiths to necessarily pray at all in this kind of setting? I know it's just a small detail, when so many other things are wrong with this administration, but all the little things do add up and I only need one example of the ignorance of this administration to make my point, no matter how small. Really, what the hell!!!

So anyway, Jimmy got himself all worked up watching CNN while I was sponging the massage oil off my body, and it took me several drinks to calm him down and completely change the subject.

Actually, I just realized that this CNN debacle occurred on Wednesday night, NOT Tuesday, but the message is still the same: BUSH SUCKS. Those of us who have a certain fondness for personal freedom, and the "right to pursue happiness" without infringing upon the rights of others of course, are having a huge problem with another four years of a man who wishes to impose his will on us and take away basic freedoms. What woman could vote for a man who wishes to make us second-class citizens again? What military personnel and their families could vote for a man who sent us to war for no good reason and no longer feels the need to give us one? What self-respecting citizen could vote for a man who works toward undermining the rights of gays, women, and non-Christians? What true Christian could, with the basic tenets of love, forgiveness, and tolerance, vote for a man who preaches disrespect and non-tolerance for life-views outside of that which he is comfortable? I completely understand why Jimmy was so upset, but I must admit that I refused to let that man ruin my vacation. After all, we were in another country, far away from his evil grasp....

So, what we really watched on Tuesday night was this really terrible 80's movie with Marky Mark and Reese Witherspoon, Fear. What is funny is that Jimmy and I have the same weakness - we will watch anything, no matter how cheesy, if it is in movie format. Although it is kind of amusing to watch Marky Mark play a psychotic teenager...

Unfortunately, we had to cut the movie short and keep up with our dinner appointment at El Pescador. This restaurant is in a building right on the beach, where they have a lunch-time buffet in the afternoons. During the day, the building just has one buffet, but at night, they separate out the rooms into three different upscale dining areas - or three restaurants. During the day, the chairs are plastic and the tables run-down; at night, the chairs have cushions and the tables are covered in gleaming white linens, with real cloth napkins.

So we had wonderful conversation with a side of lobster and shrimp, and an even bigger helping of wine. As we were still pretty worn out from traveling there, staying up so late the night before, and spending all day in the healing rays of the sun with a drink at our sides, we skipped the Miss Bavaro Princess competition and went straight to bed.