to recharge/recargar

I spent the first part of my day reading Feast of Goats, an intricate historical fiction novel about the assassination of Trujillo and those involved in this historical turning point. I sat in the same cafeteria as I read this afternoon while Jay worked on video and still shots around the city. It was a peaceful day of taking in our surroundings and getting ready for the coming week, thus making today's word recharge/recargar.

After a slow afternoon in the cafeteria, we came back to the apartment to do pretty mundane things--laundry, dishes, image uploading, email writing. Asi pasemos la tarde.

We were told yesterday that a famous concert happens every Sunday in a spot called las ruinas del san fransisco, so we decided to cart the camera gear up to las ruinas to see what it was all about. What we foudn was more than I could have hoped for. It was like a scene from Buena Vista Social Club--tons of older Dominicans, Cubans, Spaniards, and who knows who else making mind blowing music and dancing to the pulsing rhythms of original island dances and the far away cadence of Spanish flamenco. With Jay's guidance, I began working on my photography skills! I can now talk about ISO, f-stops, and am learning how to focus my eye and be patient enough to capture something meaningful in an image. I have always been drawn towards photography and am really engaged in this learning process.

I felt recharged by taking in our environment this evening and encouraged by the agelessness of dance here; equally fluid and beautiful were the 75 year olds dancing salsa as the 18 year olds beside them! Dancing keeps us young and open to our world. It allows us to recharge our internal batteries through movement and expression. You might feel physically exhausted after dancing, but something inside yourself has been strengthened and recharged. I can tell that many of the people around us tonight come to las ruinas every Sunday to take in that awesome scene and recharge themselves on the dance floor.

This is it for a lazy Sunday...I start my language school tomorrow, and a new world unfurls.