Yay, colonialism.

We do so much stuff here, it's hard to believe it all happens in one day.

After having breakfast and answering email at Ellen's house (which is just around the corner from where I'm staying), Robin and I got dropped off at the Colonial District in Santo Domingo. It's the ancient part of the city that includes a stone fortress/mansion where Christopher Columbus and his brother lived, the oldest cathedral in the Americas, museums, and other touristy parts. I was expecting it to be kind of like the old part of the city in Salvador, Brazil, but it was much less crowded -- meaning Robin and I were much more conspicuous, which I didn't like. We took a lot of pictures, saw a lot of kids on school trips (they all wanted pictures with us, too), and walked around. We also shopped a little, and I got to bargain for some things, which is fun.


We found an old museum that we wanted to go into, but it was being renovated. They let us go in anyway and look at the crumbling parts of the exhibits. This museum was supposed to be about pirates, but it looked like the pirates got there first. Robin wanted to take some "booty," but the guard wanted a bribe and eventually we just left. You never refuse a guy a bribe when he has a gun. Our foray into urban exploration in the Caribbean was fairly successful, and we learned a lot about astrolabes in the process.

We got into a cab to go home and get lunch before going to do more stuff. It was 2 pm, the height of the lunch hour, on the hottest day since we've been here, and we're stuck in a cab with no air conditioning in heavy traffic. By the time we got home, we were completely soaked in sweat. The driver kept telling me how much he loves Obama.

After freshening up a little, Robin, Jorge and I went to do a little concert for a school for children with Down's syndrome. Most of them had never seen instruments like ours before, and they were totally excited and interested. We gave them some instruments so they could participate, too, and we vamped on some chords while they sang a favorite song. After we were done, they didn't want us to leave and kept hugging us and saying thank you.

We headed back to the Palacio des Belles Artes, which is where we've been teaching this week. We taught for four hours. I coached my wind quintet on Ravel and then moved on to help a Mozart flute quartet. After that...well, Ellen asked us if we wanted to go have dinner and then swim in the ocean. Um, yes. So it's now two in the morning and my hair is still wet from swimming in an ocean that feels like bath water. Robin and I looked at each other in the water and I said, "Aren't our lives strange?" We don't have money to replace our old shoes with holes in the bottoms, but we're hanging out with the super-rich on an island in the Caribbean.

Here's a picture of Christopher Colombus' house: