Dominicans in baseball postseason

It looks like each team in the world series will have 3 Dominican Players. Also the ALCS MVP David Ortiz and the NLCS MVP Albert Pujols are both Dominican. It has been a very successful year for Dominican ball players. Each year there are more and more Dominicans in the major leagues, and there are a ton of dominican players in the minor leagues.

Many people in the DR are big Red Sox fans, so when the sox beat the yankees in game seven, the streets of santo domingo turned into a big party. Reports came in that 6 people were injured by stray bullets! Firing pistols into the air is a common form of celebration in some Dominican neighborhoods. Unfortunately in thsi isntance some innocent people were injured.

If the sox win the world series, I am sure the party will be evn bigger. Hopefully with less gunfire and injuries!

Dominican Baseball Video Clip

During the winter I went to a few Dominican Winter League baseball games and I brought my video camera to one game. I edited together a short clip to let people see the "flavor" of Dominican Baseball. There is drinking, dancing, partying and cheerleaders! It is certainly a fun way to spend an evening in Santo Domingo!

I have also been to a game in San Pedro De Macoris, which is home to many Dominican players. This winter I would like to see games in some of the other stadiums across the DR. Santiago may be the next stop. It is much different than going to a game in the states. The Dominican people REALLY get into it. It can be a bit crazy but always fun.

Baeball is so much a part of the culture down there. I also shit video of some young kids playing ball, for a documentary project that had segments being shot all around the world. The conditions these kids played under were horrible. I'll edit together a clip from that footage so you can see how the young kids take their baseball very seriously.

Here are the links to the baseball clips

Broadband video clip of Dominican Baseball

Dial up video clip of Dominican Baseball

I hope you enjoy the clips and get a bit of the "flavor" of Dominican Baseball!

New Videos Of the Dominican Republic

A few months back I decided to keep my video camera with me while sitting on my balcony, relaxing with a few Presidentes. Without leaving the balcony, I shot vendors in trucks, carts, bicycles etc selling fruits, ice cream, eggs and even live chickens! I wanted to show a "slice of life" in Santo Domingo. Here is the broadband version, and here is the dialup version.

It is amazing what one can buy without leaving the front of your house or apartment. Many dominicans are used to buying food when they need it, rather than food shopping in a supermarket. With electricity being unreliable, storing food in a refrigerator is not a great idea unless you have back up power which most dominicans do not.

So they can walk to the corner colmado, and buy a handful of rice, a spoonful of butter, an egg or two, and some bread. THey can buy all sorts of food from the vendors that stop by. Some of which will anounce their arrival with a megaphone. I will never forget in one apartment we would here the same anouncement maybe three or four times per day. . ."veinte platanos, veinte pesos"! Which meant we could buy 20 bananas for 20 pesos. Prices have gone up since then! I still get a kick out of the "meals on wheels".

There is also a wide range of already cooked food available from street vendors, and we will post a video clip of that in the near future. We already have some great footage of "street corner cuisine".

This is what makes the DR so great!

If one spends enough time in the Dominican Republic it seems like every day you run into a situation that you find. . . . . .more than a bit odd. . . . .maybe even a bit crazy. . . . . you look around, and you can't figure out why the Dominicans don't seem to even notice? How can people not seem to be phased by such strange goings on? People can walk down the street or be stuck in traffic and not even blink an eye at stuff. . . . . . . .like. . . . . . .this photo.

I was doing some work on webstuff today. Learned a lot about RSS, Atom, XML etc etc etc. Ok, so not a lot, but enough to make my head hurt. I also spent time this weekend surfing the net for more info and content on the dominican republic. I stumbled across a new website at drsol.info
that had an RSS feed of their up to date Dominican Republic news, so I hacked my way through adding their news to my dr-tourist.tv site.

I also browsed the webs for Dominican Republic related websites and blogs to explore exchanging content, links, ideas etc. I found quite a few blogs with many being in spanish. In one blog done by Osmany, I found the above picture, I'll have to keep visiting that blog to see what else he comes up with!

Yo just testing the email posting capabilities on blogger!

Theoretically I can now post to the blog by email. Then I will have ZERO excuses if I do not update the blog more often! Of course I will dig up some silly excuses such as if I am not currently in the DR etc.

I have also been learning how to publish this blog to my website at dr-tourist.tv, using atom. Apparently Google has taken over blogger and they are coming up with some cool stuff such as using "Hello" to post photos to a blog.

I have decided to start another blog that will be photos of typical Dominican Life rather than tourist type stuff. I plan on carrying my Canon Digital Elf and my Sony PC -09 DV Cam EVERYWHERE I go in the DR to be able to capture special moments on tape and as digital stills. Then I will be able to share some flavor of the DR in multiple ways on multiple
sites.

I'm not dead yet. . . .

OK. . . .so it has been a LONG time since I have posted here on the Life In Santo Domingo Blog. I have been very busy and have not been living in Santo Domingo for the last few months. Plans are in the works to move back down after the new year. I have been hard at work with doing some video projects and have shot some new clips for the dr-tourist.tv website. I need to start digitizing and organizing all this new footage etc.

I have made several trips in the months between posts and will post some pics and links to video clips. . . . . just a wee bit after the fact. . . There has been lots of change in the Dominican Republic. Exchange rates are doing a dance, a new president has been elected, a bit more violence on the streets, electricity blackouts have been really bad, and natural gas shortages are not uncommon.

As usual the Dominican People seem to somehow go about life and continue to survive.Hopefully some of their resilience will rub off on me!