Semana Santa

It's officially Easter, or Pascua, or el domingo de la resureccion, as the Dominicans call it. And since this morning I was able to talk to both Mom and Thomas, and both of them asked me how Dominicans celebrate Easter, I thought another update was due.

The entire week before Easter is called Semana Santa, or holy week. However there are not many things that are holy about it. All of the Dominicans use this opportunity to leave the city and travel to the campo and to the beach to visit family. And since I live in both the campo and the beach, there has been a huge influx of visitors to Baoba. All kids are out of school for the week, and all business are closed from Wednesday to Sunday (there are 0 businesses in Baoba so this actually does not affect me or my shopping habits at all). Dominicans also use this holiest of weeks to celebrate by drinking rum. Lots and lots of rum. They drink this rum while they're at the beach, therefore fights occur because Dominicans always carry pistols with them, and car crashes occur because when leaving the beach, they drive drunk. It's a mess, and I was probably the only person in Baoba who didn't go to the beach this week. But I preferred to stay in my safe, comfy house.

They do have religious services on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and of course Sunday. However I didn't get to go to any of them because I was teaching my English class on Thursday during the mass, and then I left for the capital on Friday. I really didn't need to be in the capital until Monday morning, but I didn't want to be on the road on Saturday and Sunday when all of these crazy Dominican drunkards were driving home from their vacations in the campo/beach.