Inmunología

Immunology was great. Highly recommend it. No idea what knd of grade I’m going to get—I mean, heck it was in Spanish!—but it was totally worth it because it’s what convinced me, in part, that I really would like medicine. It was mostly the lab, I think. You see each week we’d get a clinic case to study and diagnose, and then discussin lab. One Thursday, I hadn’t studied, and had just a coupld of hours to learn the whole complement system and diagnose the clinic case before the lab quiz. I set myself up in the cafeteria with Bach in my headphones and got to work. It was ridiculously fun. I mean, I already love drawing out biochemical pathways, and this was a whole system. And then I got to the clinic case. I started messing with the pieces of the sytem in my head and watching the dominoes fall, and it was beatiful. Like (yes, I do watch too much House) a giant puzzle.

That’s pretty much what the whole class was like. It’s a different way of looking at the problem than research, but I like it. I’m looking at MCAT prep courses now.

By the way, I aced that lab quiz.

Santo Domingo

It feels weird not to have a pen in my hand.

But the journals took a different turn a few weeks ago, and I sort of stopped writing about what’s going on in my life. So I’m going to jump right to typing for a bit.

Santo Domingo! This was quite some time ago, really. We arrived on a Saturday and stayed that night only. Spent the day doing a bunch of cool touristy stuff which I didn’t take pictures of and will probably see again with Mom and Dad in December so you can hear about it and see pics then. We stayed in the Colonial Zone—third time now!—in some very chill hostels. Not as cool as Bettye’s (not sure that’s possible, really) especially since there were private rooms, but I still liked them. I took note of the one the other half of the group stayed in for a possible place to stay on a trip back.

I was pretty out of it that day. I was in the middle of a 5-day stretch of three exams and two grant application deadlines, and hadn’t been sleeping. So most of the time spent in the guagua I was studying, and I was fairly quiet on our tours of stuff. But the part I really cared about was the Daddy Yankee concert that night, so I finally got to relax when we got there. It was an excellent experience. It was the craziest concert I’d ever been to, and that includes the Deftones one where I got crushed so hard I stopped breathing, was nearly trampled, and did some serious damage to my ears.

The concert was outdoors in a center probably the size of the Xcel, perhaps a bit smaller. As we walked up, we thought we were really early since there were hardly any people around. But it turned out we had approached the center from a weird direction, and when we finally approached the entrance we saw just how many people there were! It was packed! I don’t really know what to compare it to. It was crazier than downtown on game night. We got in a line that was already very, very long, and vendors walked up and down selling food and water.

The line moved slowly. As we got closer, it got steadily more disorganized. Apparently Dominicans do this thing where when the lines get sufficiently disorganized, everyone cuts loose and runs ahead as fast as possible, screaming. We didn’t like it at first. But after watching a few times, you sort of got the rhythm of it. So when David decided to run, I threw caution to the wind and ran after him. We hopped in a sort of trotting line as things slowed. Each person put their hands on the shoulders or back of the person ahead to try to keep their place in line, and you sort of had to hold on when everyone ran. It was exhilarating, and perhaps I’m stereotyping here, but it felt like an experience exquisitely Dominican.

Waited for the rest of the group inside the entrance. Found a spot to stand among the crowds (we bought general admission tickets) and Jenn and I got some pizza. Then the music started.

To be honest, I have no idea who the first bands were. They started significantly late, as I expected. I’m pretty sure it was dark by then. David and I wanted to give getting up close another shot like at the Omega concert, so we started inching forward, hoping to get up to the fence that separated us from the next area (what would have been the floor in a better organized event center). But we hadn’t gotten far when all hell broke loose and everyone was running. At first all I wanted to do was follow David and Stacy so I ran for it. I reached the fence—it had been broken down and the crowd was hell-bent-for-leather to get over it before security came, that’s what the commotion was. There was a girl on the ground by the fence and people were climbing over her. I grabbed her yanked her up and over the fence and out of the way and then kept running. David, Stacy and I made it to a decent spot by the time all the running had stopped.

I don’t remember much about the music at this point. I remember it was hot and crowded—crowded like the Deftones concert and the pit at Sonshine the Omega concert but much hotter. They’d spray a hose over the crowd every so often like they do at Sonshine but it always missed the area where we were. So people got hot and cranky and rowdy. We weren’t far from the fence to the VIP area, and people were walking up and down that fence selling bottles of water. We kept trying to get in on the action but we were too far back. Everyone around us started rioting. At one point there was a water bottle throwing fight. We gradually moved closer and closer to the fence, with people shoving like crazy to get close enough for water.It was like some kind of social experiment—people practically turned into animals for water (you know, the way we really are as a species but hate to admit). I observed later to David that it was a nice metaphor for the problem of societies with class stratification—water being the scarce resource in the “lower class” and it’s scarcity being the reason for increased “crime.”

After a while I felt pretty significantly sick, so I make my way out to look for water. There wasn’t any, so I ordered up a virgin vodka cranberry. I ran into Mollie and Christina, who didn’t seem real happy with the group being split up. I invited them to follow me but they couldn’t make it through the crowd, so we set a meeting place for later. I found David and Stacy again. Not too much later Don Omar started. I more impressed with his music than any other artist that night. I’d had no idea his music was so varied, and the performance was full of energy. But I couldn’t pay as much attention as I would have liked; with no sleep, the heat, and dehydration I was practically sleeping for a good chunk of it. I don’t know whether it was dreaming or hallucination but I kept thought I was seeing things in front of me, and then I’d snap awake and realize where I was for a few minutes before drifting off again.

Eventually David, Stacy, and I hopped the fence into the VIP area where there was slightly more space, and after a bit of hunting, water! Quite a few people were standing or sitting on chairs—evidently the people who had actually bought VIP tickets. But there were a lot more people than that. Security had evidently decided to help people hop the fence at a slow rate to keep things somewhat sane on the other side. We couldn’t find a spot with a good view for a bit of it, but when we did, the show was colorful and impressive. It got more crowded over time, and there was a group of schoolgirls near us. At one point one of them fainted and had to be carried out on a stretcher. After a while, I got a call from the rest of the group. They’d gathered at our meeting spot and wanted us out before Daddy Yankee started. Stacy, David, and I didn’t want to give up our excellent view, so I said I’d go out and see what the deal was and then call. I found everyone cranky, and there was some whining and yelling. Couldn’t get a hold of David, so I stayed and watched Daddy Yankee from the sidelines till they made it out. The tech work on his performance was great; in the first song they swung him out over the crowd on a sort of crane. But the music was badly remixed and he lacked energy. We headed out before he finished and got home very late. Overall, it was a fabulous cultural experience, and I vowed to find Don Omar’s discography.

Update on El Suroeste!

Hi folks! I added several things to the suroeste post you should check out. There are pics I stole from other people (thank you, Jenn, Kelly, and Daniel) and several recordings. The recordings look like videos--I had to add pics to them because blogger won't let you upload audio alone. The first several are songs; be sure to listen to one or two of those, I think they turned out pretty well. And then there are several snippets of conversation for Spanish lovers.

Enjoy!

PIE Shoutout

'Tis better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

-att. Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln, among others

That’s assuming, of course, that being thought a fool is really such a bad thing.

I’ve been wanting to say something about questions. I ask a lot of them. And since understanding what people are saying is my language weakness, I tend to ask questions until I’m sure I understand what the other person in saying. I don’t like making assumptions, you see.

It seems to have annoyed people here. Not the Dominicans of course—they’re always very patient and appreciate being understood. If you smile and nod, actually a lot of them can tell you don’t really understand, and will stop to clarify what they are saying. But it always feels like other Americans get impatient with this pretty quickly when they’re around. Maybe the don’t like looking like idiots.

The thing is, in some ways I’ve grown accustomed to looking like an idiot over the years. It’s much preferable to making assumptions, because so often assumptions lead to both people feeling like idiots, or someone getting hurt.

I spent some time thinking about where I picked up this habit of displaying my ignorance. And I remembered myself in the last year or two saying things like “Um, I have no idea where that country is,” and “Is that more of a philosophy or a religion?” and “I’ve never heard of that person, tell me about them.” And I realized it was through the folks in PIE that I learned to say those kinds of things. Because when you’re talking about people’s origins and beliefs, especially in today’s social climate, saying something wrong can be pretty devastating. Spending time with people so different from me allowed me to learn just how ignorant I really am. And I learned from all you PIE people that everyone is at least a little ignorant about something, and that the admission of that ignorance is what allows us to learn, and gives others the great opportunity to teach. My host dad loves to explain stuff to me, anything from what he’s building at work to what’s on TV to how to fix Christmas lights. He has to stop at teach me new words every few sentences. I’ve been keeping word lists from these conversations. And I’d never have those lists, nor more importantly, those wonderful moments with my host dad, if I’d held on to my pride and pretended I already understood.

So thank you, PIE for teaching me how to be an idiot.

Dile Al Amor

Aventura on 6Lyrics.com

Samaná

Ok, I know I haven't updated you all in quite a while. Will do soon, I promise. In the meantime, here's a journal entry from last weekend.

It's moments like this I'm sure Shakespeare got it wrong about time. Because at points like this the waves do not neatly follow each other in succession; they battle for ground. I'm standing at one of those points on the shore where you can put your feet in the water and feel the tide closing in from two directions. And the waves crash upon you in exactly the same spot, some from one side, some from the other, vying for that coveted piece of shoreline upon which you have chosen to stand.

To my left a bronze athlete takes a kite and board out for windsurfing. I smile. Out over the breakers where the white crests dance a large black bird soars. There are patches of navy in the light tourquoise water--a small bit close to me, and larger ones farther out where the colors get deeper. But out on the horizon just past a line of white, the water is a jewel-tone aquamarine. Cottong-ball clouds are stacked above this--occasionally one passes in front of the beautiful, menacing sun beating my neck.

I stand here on the frontier of worlds where two arms of the ocean are clamoring at me. I let the water wash over my feel without moving, so that with each wave I sink into the sand, allowing the earth to grasp for me too.

It is these sort of places where the rules don't apply. I'm sorry my dear Shakespeare, but here, time stops.

Artículo 30

So I thought you guys might be interested in article 30. Article 30 is perhaps the most significant political event that's happened while I've been here. The government is in the process of reviewing the constitution, and changes to article 30 were recently proposed and voted on. The changes were voted down by a large majority. Now, I knew that article 30 has to do with abortion, but it wasn't until recently that I learned exactly what it says. In short, abortion is always illegal, in all circumstances, even those which a woman will die without one. Yeah. You can find a bit more info here--sorry it was hard to find a good article in English. Here are some photos from Santo Domingo that will give you an idea of the influence of the Catholic church regarding this issue (and essentially all politics in this country, by the way). One is a statue of John Paul II, and the second is a sculpture of a fetus in hands with a quote from John Paul II:

The human life is sacred and inviolable at every moment of existence, including the initial phase which precedes birth. All human beings, from their mother's womb, belong to God who searches them and knows them, who forms them and knits them together with His own hands, who gazes on them when they are tiny shapeless embryos and already sees in them the adults of tomorrow whose days are numbered and whose vocation is even now written in the book of the life.

Quick me update: Been pretty swamped the past couple of weeks, but I'm still doing exciting medical stuff, which I'll fill you in on later.