So far things are starting nicely. It is hard to be extremely productive these first couple of days because the entire country is on holiday celebrating Chirstmas/New Year. Still we have gotten to talk to a lot of people in the street and do a couple interviews just to get a feel for how people feel about American Baseball teams, the Academies, etc. One thing is for sure: this is a country full of characters and this project will never encounter a shortage of passionate people who want to talk about baseball.
At the same time we are learning an interesting lesson. We are trying harder and harder not to come off as some American baseball fans who assume there is nothing more to Dominican culture than 'la pelota'. One interesting man named Martin told us about how he works washing cars telling us that baseball is just a game that young kids here dream about. Car washing, he said, is real work. "Aqui hay sangre, aqui hay lagrimas". So, we need to make sure to show the people we talk to that we want to show real Dominican culture, not just baseball.
With not that much else to do these first two days, Jon's friend Rosa Sanlley (who has been extraordinarily helpful so far) took us to her father-in-law's house on a golf course and then to a country club down the street with a private beach. No we weren't just there for pleasure. We had been planning all along to get some footage of this sort of scene to juxtapose that lifestyle with the pueblos.
