A Typical Week

I spent Saturday night in Cristo Rey, quite a rough part of town, with Cristian and some of his friends, who insisted on taking about 100 photos with my camera. Cristian is very excited because his girlfriend, Rachelle, is pregnant. He always tells me how he wants to have a kid and now he is going to, which is great. While we were sipping our whisky and cranberry, we heard some gunshots a few blocks away. The others didn't seem too bothered by this; Cristian jut shrugged and said: "well, it's a dangerous area." Apparently, the chief of police for this district was shot dead earlier in the week, which is a little worrying. I'm doing my best to stay out of the firing line.

On Sunday, I decided to download some of the local music onto my phone. I'm quite keen on 'bachata' and 'dembow' now, seeing as I've been hearing then non-stop for the past two months. As the downloads were free, I decided to make the most of the opportunity; this basically means downloading every Cat Empire song: very exciting!! 

After work on Monday, I went for a 6 kilometre run in a beautiful part of town. A whole dual carriegeway is closed to cars and only available to runners and cyclists. Sandwiched between a park and the Caribbean Sea, it was an epic jogging spot, enhanced by the rapidly setting sun. I decided to have another haircut, a little shorter than before; you can really see my scalp at the back which is excellent. It should mean that I won't need another one until I get back.. 

I went to Santiago again on Wednesday for business. Over lunch we had a great discussion about sport. I started it off with a deliberately contorversial comment: "Baseball doesn't take much skill really, does it?" This enraged the Dominicans, as expected, and I had to endure 10 minutes of being told how wonderful baseball is. I have to say, that I'm not convinced. The conversation
 moved onto English sport and I found myself explaining our various sporting rivalries with the Scots, Aussies, Germans, Argentinians etc.. We really do know how to hold a grudge!

I did a casual 1.5K swimming on Thursday evening with Victor. We were hoping to enter an open water swimming race at Boca Chica beach on Sunday, but unfortunately, I just missed the application date. Swimming is a lot harder than I remember; my arms hurt quite a lot. 

I leave in exactly a week. People keep asking me when I'm coming back, and when I reply that I'm not, they seem really shocked. They all seem to think that I don't like the country or the people, which is really not true. If anything, I would like to have more time here. Having said that, I am very excited about next week!