Realizing Reality

4:50 am. My dad wakes me up. “It’s 5.” I roll back over as soon as he leaves the room. It’s too early. I fall asleep for fifteen more minutes or so before I crawl out of bed.

5:04 am. I’m downstairs and look at the microwave. 5:04. He knew I’d go back to sleep.

5:40 am. The Mass Pike has way more traffic than I anticipated. It’s still a smooth ride into town.

5:55 am. We pass Fenway Park to our right. The lights are out. I realize the game just ended five hours ago. I was awake when it ended. I need to sleep.

6:45 am. Standing in line at Dunkin Donuts in the JetBlue terminal, I let a woman who is only ordering tea go ahead of me. The lady behind the counter is incredulous, thinking my sister, her boyfriend Derek, and I had been bullied by this tea lady. The three of the us and the tea lady start laughing hysterically when the woman behind the counter refuses to accept her order and keeps asking Derek “Who’s next? I know who’s next, who’s next?” as she waited in vain for one of us to step forward.

6:48 am. Sausage, egg and cheese on a croissant.

7:30 am. Another Monday, another plane.

9:15 am. JFK, no bag retrieval this time. It’s much easier leaving the States.

9:45 am. Tricia, my organization’s executive director, is on the same flight. The U.S. ambassador and some head honchos from USAID are coming to our school this week. She’ll be spending 48 hours in the country. She tells me I look skinny. I tell her how I’ve lost almost ten pounds since she saw me six weeks ago. I think I eat more in Cabarete, there’s just nowhere that caters to my dollar menu tendencies there.

11:15 am. We’ve been in the air since about an hour ago. It’s basically a DREAM Project chartered flight. September is the beginning of the down season on the Dominican north coast, and the empty seats prove it. I enjoy JetBlue’s satellite TV and pass out.

1:30 pm. I’m startled awake by the pilots announcement that we are making our final descent into Puerto Plata.

3:00 pm. The Callejon is under construction. For weeks huge concrete cylindrical prisms had been sitting on the side of the road. I had been adamant that they were sewers or something involving manholes. I had some doubters. Now I see that they are replacing some kind of pipe/drainage system on the road. I grin.

3:03 pm. There’s no access to my apartment from the usual road. Our taxi driver takes a detour down the next road. I learn how to get into my neighborhood by using back roads for the first time.

3:15 pm. One of the norms of volunteer travel is that when you’re in the States, you become a supplier. All of our bags are packed full of mostly random supplies. A printer, ink, toner, and baseball gloves. JetBlue only allows two bags at no more than 50 pounds each on flights to the Dominican Republic. All of our bags weighed 50 pounds. A few were 50.5. They didn’t mind I guess. My dad gets credit for getting this weight-conscious packing down to a science.

3:18 pm. I’ve sweated through my first shirt. Just when I had gotten used to the heat I’m right back at square one. I forget how loud my apartment is. It’s loud. To get an idea of how loud it is, click here (the music isn't from an apartment, trucks actually go around with speakers on the back).

7:01 pm. After a nap, I eat some pasta for dinner. My sister brought down a very small television in her suitcase. All of our apartments have a cable box, but no one has a TV, and they’re too expensive to buy in town.

7:03 pm. We are amazed that we get nearly 100 channels of cable. This had been sitting under our noses for the last two months. Most of the channels are in English, including New York’s CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox. I still can’t watch The Office. It turns out I work with 10 girls who found out there’s a TV and Grey’s Anatomy will be on at 9 on Thursdays instead. We’re pretty spoiled now. I watch an E:60 piece about Ugueth Urbina's ongoing "ordeal"/prison sentence in Venezuela and a 13 year old girl who is kicked out of a boys league for being too good. I tell my sister I could beat her, she's only 6'1" and I have a 6'3" wingspan (plus in the footage her shot is still originating from her chest, instead of over her head, pssh). She gets offended.

8:36 pm. Red Sox v. Angels. I can’t believe I’m watching the Sox in my apartment complex. We change over to Monday Night Football during commercials. I didn’t realize Gus Frerotte is still employed.

10:00 pm. I come out of the bathroom and walk through the kitchen as an aerial view of Fenway is shown during a transition back from commercial. I pass Fenway Park on my right. The lights are on this time. I can tell it’s cold there. All the windows are open in the apartment and the ceiling fans are working hard to keep up with the heat. I’d like to tell Dane Cook that there are apparently all kinds of Octobers (and that he sucks /Chris Blake).

11ish pm. I’m struggling to stay awake. I’m peeved at Justin Masterson because I think the game’s going into extra innings. Jed Lowrie hits a grounder. I think it’s hit too weakly to be anything substantial. I’m wrong. I let out a sigh of relief. I go home and go to bed. I think of the flight attendant from my flight home a week before. Welcome back to reality.