Election Day

They are about to announce the winner of the Presidential Election.  I am sitting on the dining room floor typing to stay low from the windows.  I dont know if that is extreme but I know a man was shot by a stray bullet about 30 mins away in a restaurant, so I will sit down here for a little while until I see what happens.  My house tends to have a lot of traffic going up it and motos stop to talk to one another right in front of our house for some reason.

The two running are:  Llego Papa and Danilo.  In this country, people go by their first names (my students have no idea how to spell their last names, they just put their first name on their papers).  Danilo's last name is Medina and he is the Dominican Liberation Party (DLP).  He was Secretary of State for 2 terms in his career.   Llego Papa's name is Hipolito Mejia.  Both of these men ran against one another in the 2000 Elections and Hipolito won.  

Voting started at 6AM and ended at 6PM.  You have to be 18 to vote.   I hear that voting is done at schools, but I am not too sure.  They had a ban on alcohol sales that started yesterday at 6AM and ended tonight at 9PM.  I'm not too sure if they enforce it or not.  This doesn't help with the violence.  They are getting drunk anyways.  This country drinks a lot from what I see.  You SELDOM see a smoker because it is frowned upon, but drivers are often seen with a bottle in hand.   Workers have a bottle in their hand.  I've seen people open a bottle and make a drink in a grocery store before they even purchased it.  They have the largest bottles of liquor I HAVE EVER seen in my life in the supermarkets.

The election parades are so crazy because people are in the streets drinking like crazy.  I think there has been about 4 reported deaths surrounding the election so far.  I found out last night from one of the students at my school (she was over for dinner with her sister) that the reason it seems like everyone is very involved in whom wins presidency is because they are betting on the winners.  I thought they had money in the candidates.  Instead, they have turned the election into a huge gambling fiasco.  When one team wins, the others become crazy seeking to collect on their bets.  Add lots of alcohol and things are out of hand.  

We are told to stay indoors today and tomorrow.  They have cancelled school, which is normal for the day after elections b/c of the violence.  There have been times where they have closed school for 4 days after b/c of problems, so we will see if we have school the rest of the week.