MontanaRon

An English teacher's blog about his travels and his digital art.

Month: May 2008

The Faster I Go, The Behinder I Get

May 31, 2008 /

Well, it seems that way; at the least, I’m always a week late in my posts here. Anyway, last Sunday was a great day, as far as sports go, at the Weekend Office. I watched the Yanks score 4 runs in the bottom of the 8th inning to win their 5th straight game, 6-5 over Seattle. Then, I remembered that the Indy 500 was running. I asked one of the waiters to switch the TV and I was lucky enough to catch the last 24 laps of that event, won by Scott Dixon. I think that’s the first Indy I’ve seen live since I left the U.S. back in 2003.

The week before, once again, the Canadian National Junior All-Star team visited the camp to play an exhibition game against the Yankee squad, and, once again, like last year, they kicked rear end, beating the Yanks 13-2 or some such ridiculous score. They’re a very good team, obviously. Sporting flags and banners, lots of Canadian embassy people turned out to watch. Here are a few of them making their way onto the field to throw out the ceremonial first pitch.

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Here’s a shot of the game in progress.

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I bought my ticket to Thailand this past week. I fly out of Missoula on July 25th, arriving in Bangkok on July 27th. I’ll probably work on getting my Korean visa there, then head on up to Laos around the 30th or 31st. After spending some laid-back time in the Land of a Million Elephants (not that many left, I’m afraid), I’ll leave on Aug. 24th for Korea, Land of the Morning Calm (but frenetic at any other time of day). Koreans, according to this survey, put in more hours per year on the job than any other people. I can definitely vouch for that. Andong University students put in just as much time, staying up until 3 or 4 in the morning, grabbing a couple of hours of shuteye and then going to 9 o’clock classes (so they told me). It’s like a never-ending urge, on the part of the entire country, to succeed at ALL costs. Lose one hour here or half an hour there, and your prospects and your life, become a shambles. It’s utterly ridiculous, in my opinion, but to each their own. It will be quite a cultural warp going from languid Laos to intense Korea, but, having worked there before, I’ll manage just fine because, well, just read the title of this post again. 😛

Today is Opening Day of the Dominican Summer League, but both Yankee squads are traveling to other camps to play, so there will be no opening ceremonies here, like there were last year. Perhaps I’ll tag along with one of the teams. More later.

Post-Election

May 24, 2008 /

Since I’m writing this, I obviously wasn’t injured by celebratory gunfire in the aftermath of last week’s elections. In fact, Boca Chica was fairly normal last Saturday–the taxi driver told me that the BIG and crazy celebrations were going on in Santo Domingo and other large cities. There was, in fact, a fairly long line of cars and pickup trucks loaded with people waving the purple banners of the victorious incumbent, Leonel Fernandez, heading out toward the main highway leading to the capital.

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All the candidates here had an identifying campaign color–purple, white and red. This probably made sense in the past when many Dominicans were illiterate (there are still some) but could associate with a color. I confirmed with a Dominican friend that colored ballots with photos of the candidates are used in the voting booth. Anyway, the election craziness is over and things are back to normal in the Dominican Republic. (Hah!)

Here are a couple of Leonel supporters having a few cervezas before joining the parade.

Election1

I FedEx’ed my signed contract and other documents to Korea a few days ago. The process is moving along very nicely, and I hope to receive my visa in a timely manner. I think the documents are all in order, but whenever you’re dealing with a government–well, you just don’t know what other hoops you might have to jump through.

Political Violence

May 17, 2008 /

Lest anyone think I’m exaggerating about the dangers of the election in the D.R., here’s an article about violence that resulted in 3 deaths yesterday. I’m going into Boca Chica later, but I really don’t expect to run into anything of this nature.

Update

May 16, 2008 /

There was a LOT of confusion among the players and coaches about when everyone would be allowed to go home to vote. The voting age here is 18, so most of the Dominican players are eligible to participate in the elections, but they have to vote in their home districts. The main scuttlebutt was that they had an intra-squad game today (they did) and would be allowed to leave when that was completed, but they would have to be back for Saturday morning practice. That would have been a completely illogical restriction, but the final word was that they were allowed to go home after the game today, and Saturday practice was called off. Good news for all, except the foreign players, who, of course, can’t participate in the election. But, I called off English classes today, so the Venezuelans and others were happy about that.

I went into Boca Chica to see if anything interesting was going on, but the place was completely shut down. Almost all the small, neighborhood grocery stores, bars and restaurants on the main strip were closed, but the beach establishments were open for business as usual. As if it mattered, the beach was pretty empty, too. I’m told that tomorrow will be interesting, to say the least, with celebrations, marches, occasional gunfire (!!!), and general mayhem to commemorate the victory of the winning party. I have been warned to use a bit of caution (and I will) if I planned to leave the camp, but I have to go into Boca Chica to see what happens. Going to Santo Domingo would be much more interesting, but since I have to go there on Monday, I’ll just use some of that caution and stay out of the city tomorrow. Hopefully, Boca Chica will be interesting enough–if so, I’ll try to get some photos while avoiding any gunshots aimed in my direction. (Just kidding). 😮

Yeosu

May 16, 2008 /

Strange title for a new post, but that’s the city where I’ll be working starting in September. It’s the Yeosu campus of Chonnam National University, a highly-rated Korean educational institute. Yeosu (also spelled Yosu) is, by all the accounts I’ve read, a very beautiful ocean city, and it will be the host of Expo 2012. You can read more about Yeosu at its Wikipedia entry. As I said in an earlier post, it’s a fairly isolated locale. Here’s a map showing its location on the south coast (underlined). It’s a little difficult to see on the blog, but click on the caption underneath (in orange–Map of Korea [EDIT 11/18/09-click on the map itself]) for a larger version. Of course, you’re never all that far from a big Korean city, but the university offers a nice bonus for working there, due to it’s isolation, I presume.

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I got the contracts and other documents last week from DHL in Santo Domingo. Of course, they couldn’t find the baseball camp (nobody can, it seems), so I had to go into town to pick up the package. I was going to go back today to drop off the necessary documents to send back to Yeosu, but I read in an online English-language newspaper that the government here has declared a national holiday from yesterday at noon until 9 a.m. tomorrow morning. The reason? Today is election day, when Dominicans vote for their president and other candidates. I asked some of the players about traveling on Thursday, Friday or Saturday and they all told me not to do it–too much traffic, too dangerous because of people shooting off firearms in celebration, etc. I asked Victor Mata, but he said there’s really no danger. Well, I decided not to go mainly because I’m afraid once I got to the city, I’d find the shipping companies closed because of the holiday declaration; I’ll take a trip in on Monday to mail the documents.

The two teams here, Yankees and Bombers, have started playing practice games against each other in preparation for the opening of the Dominican Summer League on the 31st of this month. One of the teams traveled to the Red Sox camp yesterday to play a game, which ended in a 2-2 tie. Hopefully, the two teams can do better than the big club is doing at the moment. Looks like a long season ahead for the Yanks.

Interestingly, I weighed myself last week on Friday morning, a day I took off from jogging. I was very surprised when the scale showed I was at 192.5–too much Burger King, I thought. I checked again on Saturday after jogging. I was at 188. I know I sweat out a lot of water when I run, but I don’t think it’s that much. My weight can vary a lot from day to day, and I don’t know why. It’s probably due to the scales here being off, which might lead me to believe that my actual weight is in the mid-170s. 😆 (I weighed myself this morning–I’m down to 186.5). More later.

Weather, Wreck and a Few Photos

May 3, 2008 /

The weather has certainly changed. Gone are the cool, low-humidity mornings and the moderate afternoons. The sweat that pours out of me on my sunrise jogs has me feeling like I’ve just run through a rain shower. I’ve been wearing long pants to my classes in the afternoon, but I’ll be switching to shorts soon. And my room air-con, which I’ve not had on a whole lot, will now be put to ever more increasing use.

We hadn’t had much rain until last weekend. We had some gentle showers on Friday and Saturday, but Boca Chica had much more, so they told me at the Weekend Office. I think I knew that before I got there. As the Yankee bus to Santo Domingo slowed to let me off in Boca Chica, we noticed a logjam of traffic ahead of us. Skid marks in the watery mud led to a concrete power pole. Here’s what was at the end of those marks:

Boca_Chica_Wreck

This had to have happened not much more than 30 minutes before, since an ambulance arrived as I took the photo. Unbelievably, someone survived the single-vehicle wreck. I glimpsed a guy laid out on the ground, bloody arm and hand outstretched, propped on his elbow. I wasn’t about to get closer to take a photo–very inappropriate, and he was surrounded by a few dozen people as he was loaded into the ambulance. Not a pretty scene.

As promised, here are some photos of the April 24th visit to the camp by the U.S. Military baseball team. I thought it was the Army team, but the guys represent all branches of the military. They practiced with the Yankee players about 4 hours, then returned with some of the Yankee coaches to Santo Domingo, where they gave a baseball clinic to some youngsters. It was an interesting visit, something to break up the daily routine.

Infield practice at first base. The Yankee kid on the left is Reymond Nunez, from the D.R. He’s a top prospect who can crush the ball a mile. He’s got a great attitude and he’s an all-round good guy. Let’s hope he can hit a curve. If so, he could be a big star at the major league level. I wrote about him in an earlier post.

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Here, Coach Mota (in the shorts) gives baserunning instructions. Mota, coincidentally, coached with the Missoula minor league team for a few years in the early ’90s. I kid him that the cops are still looking for him.

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Military team members get ready for practice.

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Stretching before the practice session.

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Here’s one more photo: me with two of the smaller guys on the team. 🙂

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If you can’t figure it out, that’s me in the middle. To the left is Luis Guillen, a pitcher, and the other fellow is Manual, the new strength coach. Both are from Venezuela. More later.

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