Tuesday, July 31, 2007

spinning!


we have been spinning now for about 7 or 8 weeks. a british woman, Claire, runs a spinning studio in the basement of her home. after many times of saying we should try it out, we finally did and really liked it. well, i should say that we really like the workout but sometimes dread it because it is such an ass-kicking exercise. we call it "punishment" - as in, "we have punishment today..."

they play great music, turn off the lights, and use black lights, so it's kind of a wild experience when you first try it - unlike any other exercise program i have been through. the music is LOUD! when it is good, it can really motivate you. they've got A/C and fans but somehow we manage to be completely DRENCHED at the end of the workout.

little did we know that we would know most of the people who do spinning here. it is a small place in which we live and there are not that many exercise choices outside of the watersports. well, that's actually not true as there is yoga at Natura Cabanas, the gym in Sosua, and pilates here at Ocean Dream. i guess it's just that the expat community is relatively small, so it's not that surprising that we see many faces we know there. many of the spinners are kiteboarders, including some professionals, who just want to keep in shape. depending on how the wind is that day, you may or may not see them at the spinning studio.

the instructors are all quite fun. there's Claire who is like the most bad-ass of them all. you know you are going to be totally drained at the end of her classes. one of her dogs, Dill or Jasper, usually sits in the room during the class. they laze about on the floor which can be a bit of a tease to look at while you're practically falling off the bike with exhaustion. the dogs seem to love all the music and do their own stretching at the end while the group is also stretching. their behavior could not be better timed....

Coco is a total riot and always laughing as she is setting up for the class. you can't help but laugh too, so it's fun to be around here. she tends to kick your butt too. she likes spinning so much that she shows up on her own when not teaching a class herself. (man, they like the punishment!)

then there is Kit who doubles as our waxist as well. that's my latest joke - "the place we live in is so small that our waxist is also our spinning instructor". Kit has a lot of energy about her so that's fun too.

Lloyd is the only male instructor. he was our first instructor but then was away for a while. he has since returned, but we have not had a class with him again. Laurel Eastman should be returning as an instructor. i am curious to see what her style is like.

we go 3 times per week in the evenings. tonight is a night off which is a good thing because i would not be in the mood for it!

Sunday, July 29, 2007

bbq at Yohanna's


here we are with Yohanna inside her condo. she's an artist and does murals in people's homes like the one behind us in the photo. we were over at 106 last night for her BBQ party, which was fun. Yohanna is a riot - very funny and lots of energy. her storytelling of the adventures with match.com dates had us all in stitches. dates with men who essentially "lied" on their profiles. she thought she'd gone on 100 dates....all without any success and many very funny situations.

at the BBQ, we met Maggie's sister, Joli (sp?), who lives in NYC and has her own company, Musical Kids International, which is basically pre-school kids learning music in a foreign language - i.e, singing songs in Korean, Japanese, Spanish, etc. and being spoken to within those same languages during the class. she's having a lot of success with it and opening schools in Brooklyn and another section of NYC which i forget where. nowadays it's so in to teach your kids a language by the time they are like 6, so this seems to be a good supplementary element to that.

it turns out that Joli/Maggie are members of a large family that are the owners of the big land in El Limon that we have shown to several clients. we seem to be finding ourselves in these types of situations a lot recently where the island feels like it is getting smaller in terms of knowing people. apparently their great grandfather owned the El Limon land and over the years the many family members visited Samana and the land, but never actually built anything but the caretaker's house on the land. Joli told us about stories of going to Los Haiteses recently and seeing etchings of her family members' names in some of the caves ("so and so was here - 19xx") and how cool that was.

well, it's another sunny, hot day on the island. we just returned from breakfast at Claro's and visiting Sandy & Rich's new place where they are living. they've done a great job doing up the place and seem to be in good shape for the baby's arrival.

well, that's all for now.

Saturday, July 28, 2007

off to market we go


i have some photos from last night at eZe where the Brazilian band was playing, but they are on my phone. we'll download them later on veronica's laptop. in the meantime, i want to keep up the blog. so even if the above picture is not timely, i thought it worth posting. it's a shot of me in Janet's supermarket. things i now take for granted are still worth pointing out. for instance, notice the hanging banana stalk. here at the supermarket, bananas are on their stalk. you use a knife to cut off the bananas you want - usually a really dull knife that the supermarket provides and is often hard to find nearby. so there are no neatly prepared bunches of 5-6 bananas all set up for you. it's tough to get the bananas without them getting somewhat peeled during this operation. it also can be challenging to find a fully unbruised banana. that's the fault of the crappy roads here which make for lots of dented cans, fizzed up soda bottles, and bruised produce arriving at the stores.

here's another shot of the produce section as i think it's quite amusing how different it is from a produce section at Star Market - and certainly one at Whole Foods. Note the "green" tomatoes and the herbs come with their roots still attached and with much dirt still on them.



we do get fantastic fresh herbs here at super cheap prices - basil, dill (mispackaged recently as anise!), mint, and of course cilantro.

the last shot here is one of a very common sighting here - the little trucks that deliver produce to the stores.



the produce is sometimes in plastic crates but often is just tossed in and piled up in the back of the truck. slightly unsanitary for sure with all the dirt and everything that gets kicked up into the truck while it is driving on the road. this truck is out in front of the german grocer, which is chock full of overripe produce -- not the place we tend to go to.

v made a trip to janet's today to pick up some items for a bean salad we wanted to make for tonight's BBQ party being thrown by Johanna. she is a Belgian woman who lives most of the year in Naples, FL but has a place here at Ocean Dream. looking forward to some good food on the grill and an evening poolside!

Friday, July 27, 2007

nosotros retornamos!


ok, it's time to start blogging again. first order of business was to put up a new picture so that we don't have to look at the beach regeneration photo anymore. the picture accompanying this entry is from one of the tables at Marabu. our favorite thing to do here on a sunday afternoon is to have lunch at Marabu. the whole world, at least the cabarete kiting world, is out in front of Marabu in the afternoons when there is wind. this picture is on a day without wind but gives an idea of the view anyway. of course there are tons of kiters out at kite beach always too, but kite beach lacks restaurants. with the Extreme Hotel closed, we really don't have much options out there for eating. anyway Marabu provides a great vantage point to take in the views and enjoy the breezes. sunday is a day of kicking back for us usually.

a plate of pasta, some dorado carpaccio, and vino blanco at Marabu make for an easy going afternoon. they usually have some good music going and it's always interesting to watch the people eating at Marabu, hanging out by Laurel's kite school, and those kiters launching and landing their kites - usually in the middle of all the unknowing tourists who are lazing on the loungers provided by the now defunct Caracol hotel. somehow now they want to charge us Ocean Dreamers 100 or so pesos for the use of the lounge chairs. that's a bit of a bummer.

we need to enjoy Marabu while we can because it's all going to change once Coutu starts building the Millenium Condos in back of it. Marabu is supposed to stay as well as Laurel Eastman's kite school but get moved around to accommodate the new condo hotel. hopefully they'll manage to keep the vibe, but somehow i expect it will not be as good. we shall see....construction last i heard was supposed to start in september, but we know how those things go.

it's friday afternoon now. Marabu will have to wait until sunday. our friend gordon is competing in a windsurfing competition over at the Bic Center/eZe today, so we'll be off to eZe Bar later to see that and enjoy the rest of the day. later this evening a Brazilian trio is playing at eZe. so perhaps it'll be a two trip walk down the beach and back today. we're still a bit tired from this morning's spinning, but that's another story....more on spinning and the studio here in
another post.