All My Cards are on the Table

You can get used to a lot of things in this country: cold bucket baths, toilets that don’t flush, holes in the ground that are toilets, people constantly telling you how you should be living your life (you want to buy this hose Virginia, you need to wear shoes in your house Virginia, you need to have a boyfriend in the DR Virginia…) but one thing you just can’t get used to: tapeworms.

So full disclosure: I have a tapeworm. Well, hopefully at this point I had a tapeworm. And I really just tried to deny the fact that something was wrong, and to just get used to the, well, symptoms. But, without giving all the gory details away, let’s just say I had an experience that made me realize I needed to get checked out—yesterday. And sure enough I wasn’t just dealing with a month long bout of indigestion and food poisoning. So after waiting 4 days for the lab in the hospital in the next town over to even be open, then for there to be electricity when the lab was open, and then after bring two samples to the lab since the first one was no longer bueno after 3 days, I finally had my results. Then I had a small freakout. I learned that there is a big difference between thinking maybe there is something strange inside of you and knowing that there is a long worm feasting itself in your insides. But the strange thing is that you get tapeworms from eating undercooked pork or beef. I’M VEGETARIAN. So something didn’t quite add up, but as long as the sucker is dead, I’m happy.

In other news, things are going well here on the frontera. My Dad and sister came to visit and we hit up Punta Cana which is one of the most beautiful places I have seen in my life. Also, its airport is a giant tiki-hut. Just because. I went diving and saw a barracuda and an octopus that is camped out in between the legs of this sculpture of a lady kneeling on the ocean floor. The diving instructors had a clever little name for the octopus, as you might imagine. I also saw a coral garden where they are trying to reproduce an endangered species of coral! That was really cool, but the whole time I was afraid I was gonna touch some of it and kill it. There was a bit of a current down there and I kept almost drifting into the little gardens. Also the resort we stayed at had a delicious little drink called a piña merengue. It’s basically a piña colada, but with banana in it. Holy cow it’s amazing.

As for life actually in Pedro Santana, aka real life away from the lovely beach, things have been pretty busy and fun! Father O’Hare’s brother and his friend came to visit for a week, and they were a blast! Plus I got to hear some new music I’ve missed and I learned about the new ipad mini (which we were told is not the same thing as an iphone). But basically we just hung out American style and while taking it easy Caribbean style. Cool beans.

My literacy project has been developing a lot this semester, which is both frustrating and yet good. It needs to evolve, and this was always going to be a fluctuating period, but at the same time I am looking forward to the next semester when I can both stabilize and expand my project. For now what was an accelerated reading program had become a pull-out program. We were working with about 40 kids and that has dwindled down to about 13—a much more manageable number. And I can already tell we are more effective now. What is always so rewarding for me though, is how excited my kids are when they see me come into the doorway to pull them out. I got one kid, Manuelsito, to talk for the first time yesterday and it was such a huge win! I don’t know why he was always so scared to make a noise. He is intelligent and can write all the vowels, but for the life of me I couldn’t get him to speak to me directly. So I had him and the other child have a race to see who could identify the vowels faster, and he got so into it! And he has such a cute little voice. I don’t wanna get all corny on you guys, but honestly, it was a very rewarding experience. After feeling so defeated so many times during my work, I needed that win. Plus the other child, Isidro, learned so much faster when he was working with Manuelsito. I’m looking forward to seeing them this afternoon. Although Manuelsito tends to come to school once a week at most… might not see him today. My hope is that the students I work with will start enjoying learning. But that’s a lot to ask. From any child anywhere.

My English class is going to have its first exam in a week. I’m definitely more nervous than they are. I tried to make the test easy enough without it being a joke. I’m afraid some of the students just don’t know how to study. Some are amazing and learn very quickly, and some struggle more with it. You find that in any classroom. But I don’t want to scare away the students who don’t learn as quickly. Actually what I’m considering doing is to have small quizzes every week reviewing what we learned the week before. It’s more work, but I think it will make the class much more effective.

So Inigo is growing so fast! He is too big to sit in my lap anymore but every time I sit in my rocking chair he tries to climb up into my lap. The funny thing is that now, because he is so big, he actually can get up. But he also doesn’t fit! It’s so cute. I’m really lucky to have him. I’m also really lucky to have all my neighbor kids who love Inigo. They play with him, and when he’s wandered too far off they bring him back.

I have the little 2 year old who lives across the street sitting in my lap right now. He is so adorable, and his mom likes to joke that he’s my son too. So this morning she asked me to help her clean out Elian’s eyes because he’s got conjunctivitis for the 3^rd time and last night he’s eyes were sealed shut. I was like…uhhhh ok? But then the grandma did it and wouldn’t let me help. Thank god.

oh yay! rats.

I feel like every blog post is starting the same. So here we go again…sorry it’s been so long! Once again, I have no excuse.

 

So yeah: rats. They’re here. Well, I’ve only seen the one out of the corner of my eye every night, but I mean, if there’s one, there’s more. So that’s exciting. It’s not just Inigo and me anymore. We have a (some) unwanted house guest(s). If I end up getting a cat, that might take care of the rats. But I’m not sure it’s worth it…I would rather not have any more animals in the house if that could somehow be an option. The Dominican method for getting rid of rats is pretty simple:

1)      Get a cat

2)      Starve the cat

3)      Raise it to be a hunter out of necessity

4)      Cat eats the rats and other critters because it’s so hungry

Needless to say, I’m not sure I agree with this methodology.

You know what else I have? Giant spiders. But as long as they aren’t tarantulas I’m good. I went to use the bathroom the other night and there was a giant spider and I debated for a second if it was worth it and decided that it was. The night before the same thing had happened, but there was also a giant juicy cockroach on the wall. I held it that night.

Anyway things have changed quite a bit here since my last post (which I can’t even remember, coincidently). I started English classes. This is loosely stated because I have yet to get more than 20% of my students to show up. But it was the first week and I’m hoping for a greater turnout net Wednesday. But if only 2 come, then you know what? They’re gonna get a semi-private English class and I get to stress less about it. So that’s cool. I got facilitators for my literacy program, lost one, and then got two more. It’s a pretty sad story about why one facilitator had to go. See, these youth who are helping me are the recipients of scholarships from the Church. Turns out this 19 year old has an 7 month old illegitimate child with a Haitian woman who was living in his house in the campo. When he told Father, Father had to tell him he couldn’t participate in the program anymore. I understand it all, but it’s really sad. He is a very serious student and was great with the kids. But I am holding out hope that he can continue with his studies in some other way. Continuing on: I have made several work schedules to try to accommodate all the teachers’ wishes (next to impossible btw). It’s pretty frustrating when you spend forever creating in depth evaluations, giving them to the students, dividing up the students by their respective levels in four different categories, and then have the teachers be like “oh yeah, this isn’t working well for me. Maybe we could try a different way.” And you respect their wishes because some of their points are valid. So instead of going to your friend’s birthday party in Santiago, you spend all weekend creating a new schedule by rearranging ALL 37 students in new groups, taking into consideration your facilitators’ schedules (which are all different). Then come Monday you meet with the teachers to show them this new fantastic plan you have lined up which meets all of their requests and they proceed to say that maybe we could change it again. Without giving any ideas except one which would never work because the kids never ever stay for the entire school day. Actually the teachers don’t even stay for the entire allotted time aka to 6 o’clock. But that’s a whole different story. So yeah. I basically told them we were gonna try out this new schedule and if it didn’t work we could change it again. But if I change it again, they are gonna help me, because I can’t comply to all of their wishes when it seems they don’t even know what they want. Besides maybe a magic spell that will teach their children to read. That’d be cool actually. I’d be down with that. Anyway that’s my bitch-fest. On to better things!

So every town here has its patron saint. The patron saint of Banica (4 km away) is St. Francis of Assisi. Which is so cool to me, considering I have the cross of St. Francis tattooed on my foot. It was fate that I came here and am working with this church. Anyway this week is the patronales in Banica aka they celebrate all week long. There is this pilgrimage people make to a cave that is up the nearby hill, and people come from the capital, Santiago, and even from farther off to climb the hill. So I did it yesterday, and there were SO MANY people. At times it was hard to walk, and this was a steep hill at points so I’m surprised some people could make it. Aka the larger or older ones. But we got to the top and the cave is amazing. There are gaps in the ceiling where the light just spills in. It was so gorgeous and filled with candles people have lit in prayer. So the smoke from the candles mixed with the light from above creates a very ethereal atmosphere. Plus it’s limestone and the tradition is to hack away at the lime to put the resulting powder on your face. I think the story is that St. Francis appeared in the cave and so now there’s a pilgrimage here. Anyway it was a wonderful experience that I may not repeat next year. I think next time I go up to the caves I will go when there are fewer people. But this whole week there are parties in town and on Saturday they are bringing in a singer whose name I can’t remember, so I want to go. It should be a good time complete with merengue, pizza, and maybe even, dare I even think it, a beer.

Another big thing is happening tomorrow: I’m finally getting a fridge! A little dorm fridge. It’s gonna be great. I can finally have cold water! What a lame problem… but it will be nice to have that cold water. Plus it will also be nice to store vegetables so they don’t go bad in a day and a half. Oh snap I just had a genius idea: ICED COFFEE. That’s soooo happening. It’s not exactly cheap, because I can’t find a second hand fridge to buy, and they charge me to transport it to my home, but it’s worth it. At first when they told me it was 500 pesos to take it to my house, I was a bit put off because that’s more than I pay to go to the capital. But then I realized it’s somewhere around 13 bucks so decided not to fight that battle.

                But yall wanna know what the biggest news is? My dad’s coming in 9 days!! It’s the light at the end of my relatively stressful tunnel. What with my ever changing literacy program, my English classes, my youth group, my annoying enamorados, and my not so annoying enamorados, and my daily responsibilities, it’s gonna be absolute bliss to show my dad my site, let him “live” here for a day and then ship out for a resort. I’ve never been to a resort and I can’t think of a better time to give it a whirl! Can you say piña colada? I can just see it: drink in one hand, giant ass salad in the other, lying on the beach somewhere under an umbrella because I just don’t need to get tanner. (I’d like to take this opportunity to give a shout out to the Dominican sun that is doing its best to prematurely destroy my skin.)

Knee deep in the water somewhere, got the blue sky, breeze blowing wind through my hair. Only worry in the world: is the tide gonna reach my chair?

Be jealous.

things are actually happening!

Ok in my defense the reason I haven’t posted in forever isn’t entirely my fault. We haven’t had internet for a long time. Or at least not while I’m at the centro. They say they have it when I’m not here, but what are the chances that it only ever works when I’m not here? Sheesh.

 

So I got my dog! He’s growing like crazy which I’m really glad about. He loves to play with the kids, which works well for me because it makes him sleep longer through the night. Last night we made it all the way to 5 with no accidents! It’s so nice when you don’t have to wipe pee or something worse of your floor first thing in the morning. Just saying. His name is inigo, which I believe I already stated in a different post, but I’m repeating in case I haven’t. inigo. As in Montoya. And I’m getting a cat (apparently) from the woman who actually owns my house, so I’ve decided to name it buttercup. Unless it’s a dude. Then I should name in andre. That’d be funny, because it’s a pretty small cat.

 

We’ve had some pretty big rainstorms recently which are worth mentioning because they made me realize something very important: my roof still leaks. Right above my bed. Apparently the chewing gum remedy wasn’t entirely effective. Who could have seen that coming? Actually I thought it would work, but I guess that was wishful thinking. The other cure is to mix gasoline with Styrofoam and it makes this paste which patches up the roof as well. So maybe with round 2 we will use more of that and less of the cheap-o chewing gum.

 

I love that I’m writing all of this with no hope of having internet anytime in the foreseeable future. Until Tuesday at least. I’ll be in the capital then, so the hotel there should have internet. Si dios quiere.

 

I’m finally making legit friends in my site! It’s so nice having a comfortable little crew that I’m becoming more and more comfortable just chilling with. It helps that I can finally carry something similar to a conversation now. That always tends to make friendships just a little more real, know what I’m saying? Also I have started up a girls group called chicas brillantes. It’s a peace corps initiative throughout the DR for the purpose of empowering girls to make good life decisions: to have plans and goals for the future, to wait to have kids until they graduate highschool, and to learn about HIV and AIDS and how to practices safe sex. So I’m really excited to have started this group because I think it’s really gonna help them out. The other goal of the club is to create leaders so these girls can inspire other girls in turn, and maybe even create their own groups later. Hello sustainability! So things are looking up with both of these recent developments in my life.

 

The sadder part is that I’ve started the evaluations of my 1^st graders and it’s disappointing to see how little they know. But that’s why I’m here! I wouldn’t be able to help them if there wasn’t a need. They don’t know their vowels or how to identify individual sounds. But after a year with me and my facilitators I hope they will all be little reading champs! My boss is calling my program an “accelerated reading program” which is different than the pull out program I had initially thought I would be running. So to a certain extent I’m kind of making this up as I go, but I have a good foundation of related training to fall back on. And I’m excited to have a project that the peace corps hasn’t really had here before. At least not recently.

 

Well now I have a nice little post written and someday hopefully I will have internet again to post it! Peace out kids.

brace yourselves...it's a long one.

So in my waiting for dinner to be ready boredom I have decided that you guys deserve an update! Hopefully I won’t get far into this update because I am ready to kill someone from pure hunger. Small exaggeration, but not small enough.

                I am currently at my 3 month In Service Training in the capital. All 11 of us who are still here from the education sector are meeting up to present our community diagnostics and receive some more training to help us now that we will finally be able to start our real projects. I am super pumped to get cracking on all my plans that will inevitably overwhelm me and transform me into a stressed ball of fury. But that’s what r&r is for! Anyway the best part of our IST is our location. Because when I tell you we are right in the middle of an entire block of sex hotels, I am not exaggerating in the least. You see, in the DR when people wanna have sex they go to these “cabañas” where you can pay for however much time you want in these rooms of varying swankiness. And we are surrounded by them. Right next door we have cabaña si o no and across the street is cabaña honeymoon. Then we have chevere, kiss, princesa, and a bunch of equally entertaining locals. Kiss looked interesting because it had a bunch of grecian statues out front. That means it’s classy, obviously. It was also hilarious when my project partner and I got into our cab and told him we needed to go to the government training facility INFAS on 30 de Mayo (the street) and he was like, “I dunno what that is.” But when I said it was right next to cabaña si o no, he knew exactly where we wanted to go. Job well done santo domingo. Job well done.

                Ok I really expected dinner to be ready now. But I’m still wrong.

                In further news, I have started moving out of my doñas house into my own little house! I’m super pumped because it’s adorable and comfortable and I can finally finally finally cook for myself. That’s the best part. That and getting a dog soon. And that I was wrong when I said I’m gonna have a latrine. It’s a bathroom. Score! So hypothetically that means my toilet will flush, but not really because that requires running water which only comes for about an hour a couple of times a week. You win some, you lose some. And seriously where is dinner??? This dinner was supposed to be ready 45 minutes ago. Which is 15 dominican minutes ago. Grrrrrrr…

                I should really keep thinking about my house and not my stomach that is caving in on itself now that all the sugar I ate a few hours ago has abandoned ship. So yeah I have started decorating and organizing and in a week in a half I will get my stove which will be good news. It’s the last major thing I need. Besides a small fridge, but I don’t see myself getting that one this month. That can be september’s big purchase. I also need some way to organize my clothes. The tricky part about that is that whatever I buy somehow has to get transported to my sight. Now, luckily the lady I’m renting the house from has provided most of the big things, like chairs and a bed and the like, because she’s awesome as it gets, but I do need some way to organize my clothes. There’s no room for a closet, but I would love to find some cheap foldable stand to use. There is an ikea in the capital and I feel like it’s something I could find there. But I have been to ikea once in my life, and have no idea if that will be in my price range. Probably not, but I can always splurge.

OH SNAP DINNER IS READY. Peace.

                Ok that was a tasty dish of onions, mangu (mashed up boiled plantains), and cheese. It was disappointingly delicious. Hello stomach ache.

And part 2, because, of course, I didn’t put up my blog post from a week ago.

                So I have a lot of interesting Dominican culture experiences that I want to write about and don’t even know where to start. Tell you what. We will start with last Monday which was almost to Dominican to be believable:

                I get up in the morning and have my breakfast of hot dog bun and (shockingly) yogurt! Trust my last breakfast with Dona E to be decent. So I ate up and started moving because I didn’t have all that much left to carry to my new casita. But before I left I gave Dona Eudocia these beautiful earrings and this whole speech about how I was leaving, but she is still my Dominican mom and thanks for everything. She seemed to like the earrings, but literally within minutes came back to my room to ask for her final payment. And she had her voice all low as if we were talking about some taboo thing that no one else should hear—despite the fact that there was no one else in the house. But here’s why she was talking like that: we had already discussed the fact that the last payment had already been made! She wanted me to in august for the last 2 weeks of july again. She just didn’t understand that I always paid at the beginning of each period and so I, in fact, as I thought I had made clear previously, did not owe her another 2500 pesos. So that was an interesting start to the very hot morning. I mention that it was very hot because after taking two trips between my old house to my new awesome house, I was nice and sweaty and figured I would probably want to take a shower after the whole ordeal. But when I went to my water tank it was practically empty minus about  6 inches of dirty water at the bottom. So I turned it over to dump in out (this is a big tank by the way, so keep that in mind for the rest of this story) and it turns out there were a solid 3 inches of wet cement in the bottom of the tank. The tank that is waaaaaay to deep for me to be able to reach to clean out the cement. So I kept dumping a bucket of water in, swirling it around, and dumping it back out until I got rid of the cement. That was fun. You know what was more fun though? When I then put the tank in the bathroom so when I shower it’s easily accessible only to find that the water in the bathroom wasn’t working. At this point I felt like I was working on borrowed time because you never know when the water is going to cut off (for example, we haven’t had any today, which basically just means I have a legit excuse to not mop my house). But anyway the faucet/shower thing in my bathroom decided it didn’t feel like working so I had to fill my tank walking back and forth from the spicket to the tank with a small bucket of water because my hose has mysteriously gone missing. And get this, when I had maybe 6 inches of space left, the water came on in the bathroom! And that was just the beginning of my very Dominican day.

                This feels like a good place to start a new paragraph. I continue: then I was in my house and cleaning up and all with a bunch of muchachos who honestly weren’t bothering me at all, when one of my neighbors just decided that they had been here long enough. So he ran through my house with a switch yelling at them to leave me alone. He only actually barely got one kid though, so then I a screaming toddler in my yard after all the others had fled. And the dude peaced out pretty quickly too. I didn’t even get the chance to tell him to never hit kids in my yard or home. I want my home to be a safe place for these kids, so I don’t let them fight here—even fake fighting—and I sure as hell am not going to let someone else come in and use a switch on a child in my yard. No sir. But that wasn’t the end of the day. Then I called Ellen to check how things were going with the puppies and to ask her how she handled getting shots and all when she got her dog. So she decided to call her old project partner in her old site where the puppies are and it turns out something bad happened. (heads up: this is a story about how they abuse animals here). Turns out the mama dog had eaten some 5 peso eggs that belonged to her owner’s brother the night before. So he killed the dog. Even though she had puppies less than 2 months old AND ONLY ATE 1 OR 2 EGGS. It makes me so angry just thinking about it. I don’t care if it’s just a part of the culture here, it’s disgusting. I mean, I think it’s bad enough to kill a dog for eating a chicken (which happens all the time) but an egg???? Come on! I’m going to stop myself here with this story or I’ll rant forever. Anyway Ellen went over there that day and saved the 2 puppies that we left (the rest were already given away). So luckily Indi aka Inigo (apparently Indi is a girl’s name. oops.) is safe, defleaed, and finally eating properly thanks to Ellen! He’s also adorable—check out my facebook page for a picture.

                Now, at this point it was only lunchtime. The afternoon was much more pleasant. Some chicas came over to clean my lawn for me (apparently there were just too many leaves to handle) and I read Rapunzel with a bunch of kids. Now they love to recite “Rapunzel, rapunzel, tirame tus trenzas!” whenever they see me. I have been reading consistently now with the many many kids in my barrio, and I love it. I read to the smaller ones and the older ones read aloud to themselves. I think on Sunday I’m gonna try to have a movie night and show Tangled (in Spanish) for the kiddies. They wanna have a sleep-over but I told them that has to wait.

                Other interesting tidbits to share: the kids in my barrio love to make kites out of strings and a piece of paper. It actually works surprisingly well and is absolutely adorable. Of course they also all have the tire-and-stick game that is straight out of scene from Tom Sawyer or Pollyanna.

                And here’s the coolest thing that happen last night actually: I learned something very interesting and dangerous about my barrio. I have witches!! Gasp. Yes. My muchachas informed me in all seriousness that there is a witch who comes out at night near here who eats little children. There is also a headless horse who roams around, doing nothing as far as I can tell. And finally there is a crazy man, who may also be headless, but still manages to eat a ton of yucca and people. He doesn’t limit himself to children. So, I’ve been warned. I’m on full alert for yucca eating witches who wanna take a bite out of my unbelieving gringo flesh.

                I feel like you should all know I’m becoming the babysitter around here. People just tell their kids to come here when they are sick of them. But it’s ok because they are all giving me meals and coffees and curtains (seriously one lady just gave me a curtain when I told her that I liked hers and am looking for a similar one) so I don’t mind playing with their kids. Especially now that I have a curtain and can keep them out of my room! Still don’t have a stove though…hence the meals I’m being given. Because if I don’t have a stove, I clearly must be starving. Despite the fact that I have many cans of tuna, fresh fruit, and oatmeal with powdered soy milk (it’s not as bad as it sounds) and tons of dried fruit (ps a giant thanks to Mrs. Hundley for saving my life with the dried fruit!! Seriously, it’s the best thing I’m eating currently. Somehow adding craisins makes cold oatmeal delicious!)

Ok I’m gonna stop writing now because the 5 year old who is sitting with me keeps trying to turn off my computer because the button is lit up.

PS: got a moto burn from a super hot muffler that i barely brushed with my leg. oops.

everytime i kill a mosquito an angel gets its wings

james stewart is probably rolling over in his grave at that allusion. sorry Terrence! 

anyways:

So i’m sitting here trying to work on my community diagnostic, coming up with all these genius plans of what I could potentially do to improve the community, but of course no ideas about how to implement the particularly ambitious plans. I could help the libraries come up with more money  so they can stay open and actually lend books to the people…because money grows on trees right? Oh and I can help all the Haitian kids get their papers so they can continue their educations, because I know so much about DR bureaucracy and all… isn’t idealism fun? I can do it! Maybe. But I decided to take a break from my dreaming to update you all, because knowing me, this post still won’t be up for at least a week.

You know, I did read about this one volunteer who came up with a plan to make money for the her library in Ghana so it could stay open and be sustainable. She put solar panels on the roof and people could pay to use them to charge their cellphones. It’s a great idea because, especially in places like this where we always have cell service, but don’t always have electricity, it benefits the library and the people. Plus it would promote reading which is an impact I would love to leave behind here. So I need to take a page out of her book and get creative!

Ok funny story. My friend Alex just texted me that he was showering and dropped his soap. And when he bent over to pick it up he grabbed a giant toad the size of his hand. Welcome to the DR!!

Alright I’m off to help a bunch of missionaries build an enramada in the church and paint symbols on the houses here. It’s funny but once a few houses have a cross or a bible painted on their house, suddenly everyone wants one! 

Ok more news: the owners of the house I’m renting have started building my latrine! And the best part of this news is that the place to shower will be a separate structure. Gracias a dios. I would hate to shower in a latrine… and that’s all I’m gonna say about that.

whatup kids: GIANT three part update that was a long time coming

Well I’m very aware that this is beyond overdue… sorry America. I could try to scrape up some excuse for not posting for so long, but they’d mostly be lies. So I won’t.  the truth is, I’m lazy and whenever I have time to write a post, I do something else instead. So then when I actually have internet, I have nothing to post. Oops! But I’m posting now!

So now the question: what to write about? I have been a part of 2 camps (one mine, one run by the churches and a local environmental lady named Rosanna), I took some awesome and very much needed R&R in the capital last weekend, and mango season is over. Yeah I should definitely start with that.

Mango season is over!! I’m crying inside. I got seriously spoiled by the fact that I could walk into the backyard and grab a mango off the ground and eat it. I didn’t even like mangos before I got here, but clearly that was because I had never eaten a Pedro Santana mango. And now they are gone! I could cry, but I won’t because I have a seriously awesome silver lining: avocado season is coming up. BOOM! And life is good again. But I will mourn the mangos for a while. Mostly because they were such nice little midday snacks in between my lackluster lunches and disappointing dinners.

Ok so now onto the camps. First I helped out with Rosanna’s church/environment camp. I use the term “help” loosely because I only actually led an activity once, when I had an art session with the kids. The rest of the time I just help keep kids quiet during the charlas and acted as camp photographer. It was really fun though. We had potato sack races and jump rope every afternoon, and the mornings were more dedicated to the educational stuff. It was a great learning experience and the best part was that it helped me integrate myself into the community more. I got to meet several young leaders in Pedro Santana and that is a huge asset for me.  So that camp lasted a week and averaged out at about 100 kids per day. Yikes. My camp was the next week, and gracias a dios, I never really had more than 15 kids at once. To be fair, I also didn’t have a team of youth helping me. The camp was a huge success I think. Maybe that’s just me rationalizing it so that the physical and emotional toll it took on me are justified, but I feel pretty confident in saying the kids loved it. They certainly made big enough messes every day to suggest they had some good times!  To be fair, I’m not sure how I thought paper-macheing old soda bottles and then painting them the next day would be anything but messy. Even if I did cover every inch of the table with paper. Those kids got paint on chairs we weren’t even using! Luckily it was washable paint on plastic chairs so it came right off of everything. The paper-mache paste was a bit harder to clean up. We also had origami/paper snowflakes day, which the kids loved but I didn’t have enough scissors for. And I know that’s poor grammar, sue me. Anyway by the end of week 1 of my camp my nerves were frayed bare and it was the perfect time for our R&R in Santo Domingo.

Basically the 5 of us chilled in our hotel rooms, walked all over the capital, swam in the embassy pool, and just had a grand old time. And I came back truly rejuvenated and excited to be a volunteer again! It was so amazing to feel excited again, because I think the experience was starting to overtake me as opposed to my being in charge of it, and that had become a big drain on me. But now I feel better and totally appreciate the necessity of getting away for a weekend to unwind with friends! I even think my Spanish has started to improve more quickly thanks to my changed mindset.

So then week 2 commenced of my art camp, and it went awesomely. We made friendship bracelets, watched Tangled in Spanish (I had run out of materials by this point) and on our last day we just went and played in the river for hours! It was a blast, we roasted corn on some rocks, I taught a bunch of the kids how to float, and I’m working on teaching some of them how to swim. It turns out a lot of the kids here don’t know how to swim and I have decided that one of my ongoing secondary projects here will be teaching them. If they are going to go to the river unsupervised, especially after it rains, then they have to know how to swim.

So yeah that’s my real quick update on my recently mango-less life here on the fronterra.

Part 2:

So here are a few quick and funny anecdotes from the past week:

I got up at 2 in the morning on the 3^rd to make sure that I didn’t miss the 3 oclock guagua to the capital. See, all the volunteers meet up in samana for the 4^th and I have an 11 hour travel day to get there. So I wanted to start bright and early, which I certainly did. Except, despite my  early-rising, the guagua still left me. Zoomed right past me and out of town actually. Luckily the volunteer who lives about 3 km away got the driver to turn back around and get me. So that was good news, because I was sitting at the deserted bus stop listening to some chickens fighting a dog wondering when the dog was gonna get tired of the chickens. So after a nice 5 hour nap I arrived in the capital!

                As a side note to this story: I am so lucky to live near not only one, but two other volunteers. They have both been here a year and are awesome girls. I can tell they are going to be a huge asset to me here, in terms of mentoring me and as friends. It’s hard being not only the only American for miles and miles, but also the only English speaker. And now they are both back from their vacations to visit their families and I am so happy to have them nearby!  In fact, Keeton recently developed a new model for our literacy-teaching techniques in the schools, where we train facilitators to help the children, making our efforts much more sustainable after we are gone. And Sarah has a lot of experience helping Haitians and their children with their papers, which is another aspect of service here that I want to work with. So honestly, who better to live close to than those two?? I am super lucky.

                Another funny story: last night, after I had been in and out of my room several times, my door decided to freak out on me. See, somehow I managed to lock myself out of my room. I have no idea how or why my door suddenly switched from unlocked to locked, but it did. And here’s the trickiest part: it won’t switch back. It’s permanently locked! But I’m getting ahead of myself. When I first realized my door was locked I had a small heart attack because there are no other keys. Just mine. And, of course, it was in my room. Awesome. But then I realized that my walls don’t all reach the roof so maybe I could climb up the wall and hop over! Because, you know, I’m capable of that. So I tried but the wall was very flimsy, and the only thing worse than my doña coming home to me locked out of my room, would be my doña coming home to me locked out of my room AND a broken wall. Then I saw a hole in the wall and thought maybe I could stick my arm through it and reach the door handle. That didn’t work out either. But it took myself bruising my arm to admit it. Oops. So of course my Doña came home to find me trying to pick the lock credit card style, but with a flimsy calling card, because, of course, my cards were all in my room. And she called over a cousin who lives next door, and guess what he did? HE CLIMBED THE WALL. After all that, I had the right of way the first time. Of course, that still doesn’t mean I was actually capable of it. Bottom line I finally got into my room and now I had just better not shut the door again with the key inside. Because it’s stuck on locked. My room has become so safe even I sometimes apparently can’t get in. That’s winning in a big way…

You know what’s frustrating? So I’m working on writing my novel right? And yet it’s so annoying that I can so easily crank out 1500 words for a blog post, and yet it takes so many strenuous hours to accomplish the same when it comes to my novel. Super annoying. Whatever, I’m just gonna keep drinking my coffee and leave well enough alone.

Ok part 3: HUGE NEWS

I found a house to move into! I may be paying a bit too much for it, but you just can’t escape the gringo tax here. Even at colmados sometimes they try to overcharge me and I want to get all red in the face and make it very clear that I’m a volunteer, as they know, and don’t have more money than them, as they know. But I don’t. That wouldn’t be cool. But yeah, I found a house!! Well, they call it a “casita” really because it’s very small. It is 2 rooms (a bedroom and an everything else room). The owner promised to build me a bathroom out back before August when I move, but that could easily end up being a latrine. They are also going to install electricity before I move so I will have luz at least a couple hours a day which is good news. And it already has water, so I will also hopefully have water at least every other day. Usually it comes a few hours everyday, but not always. And it changes depending on your barrio. This house has a giant yard around it, and a couple small banana trees planted out back. They are too small to produce fruit, but they are cute, and perfectly sized for my equally small house. I can’t wait to move in and have a place to call my own. I have realized how much more confidant I am in myself when I am able to take care of myself, so having my own space and to be in charge of my own life more is going to be a huge relief. It will be more work, for sure, but totally worth it. Plus the house comes with a bed, little desk/table, some chairs, and some shelves. So that really helps with the huge problem of furnishing a new place. Now the biggest things I have yet to buy are a stove top, a gas tank for it, and hopefully a real table. Soon after I hope to be able to afford a fridge. I don’t have luz often, but if I don’t open the fridge when there isn’t electricity maybe the stuff inside will stay semi-cool.  Plus I met a bunch of the new neighbors yesterday and they all seem great. Energetic and super excited for me to be living near them. I can’t wait to move in, make it mine, and maybe even splurge on a rocking chair. Probably not, but it can’t hurt to fit in! next step: get Indie!!! Then my life will be completely settled.

PS on my run this morning I ran through a herd of cows, then got chased by a dog, and then ran through a bunch of goats. Minus the being chased by a dog with one red eye, I found it awesome! Cows and goats are funny. Mean dogs aren’t.

i have no shame.

ps if anyone wants to prove that they love me here's my address. i welcome peanut butter and small school supplies!

Virginia Martin

Cuerpo de Paz

Avenida Bolivar 451, Gazcue

Apartado Postal 1412

Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

let's play catch up

Or not.

                I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted, but I haven’t had internet, so sue me. In fact, I still don’t have internet, I’m just writing this in the hope that soon Pedro Santana will recover from election immobility and I may be able to get into the CTC (computer lab) soon. Because, yeah, it’s been election times which means a) no one does anything and b) I can’t get to work, because the kids don’t even go to school. they should be back in full swing by Wednesday though (today is Monday fyi) at which point I’m hoping to observe as many classes as I can before the school year ends (technically in june).

                So Danilo is gonna be our next president. We aren’t allowed to have political opinions though, so this is me saying without any emotion whatsoever, “papá lost, and Danilo is gonna be our next president.” You’re wondering how I feel about it aren’t you? You’re all “oh man, I can’t tell if she’s disappointed or not”. The truth is I don’t know enough about the politics here to have an opinion, so I’m actually completely ambivalent about the whole thing. Except that it has prevented me from being able to stuff in my community (that and me being ever so slightly timid). I’m less ambivalent about that.

                So these past few days all I’ve done is walk around town, explore outside of town, study Spanish, read (Harry Potter in Spanish, and West with the Night when I just can’t handle any more Spanish) and eat way too much. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome back all the weight I accidently lost during training. I would also like to take this opportunity to say a less than fond farewell to the “diapation” I’ve been suffering from. Thanks so much for your visit, please don’t come again.

                Is that TMI? I don’t really care. This kind of talk is commonplace among us volunteers. Ps, I have not gotten tired of saying “us volunteers” yet. I may not be doing much of anything in my site yet, and I may be feeling slightly overwhelmed, but at least I can say “yeah, I’m a Peace Corps volunteer. What of it?” with a nonchalant shrug of my shoulders, hands in my pockets, “modestly” downcast eyes, and a casual sniff. The sniff obviously being a side-effect of the gripe I can’t quite kick.

Ok Sudoku break (what was all that I was saying before about being a useless volunteer?)

--Dominican hour later)—

                So I just forced myself out of the house, and decided to sit across the street with my Doña for an hour mas or menos. I played myself some dominoes with some of the dudes sitting nearby after my Doña figured out that I can play…because I told her. I won a few games, got myself some respect, lost a few games, lost myself some of said respect. But hey, a gringa winning a few games? I came out ahead there.  Then I sat and “listened” to some other elders talking for a while. I say “listened” because I still haven’t figured out the accent here entirely and can only sometimes get the gist of what is being said when they aren’t slowing down their speech for the Americana who just stares blankly back at you if you talk to fast at her. Too be fair, it’s the same for me in English. But anyway, I could tell they were chisme-ing (aka gossiping for those of you aren’t as proficient in Spanglish as I am) about family in Santiago, and then about guagua drivers and their cobredors (the guys who handle the money). I am just proud I figured out that much!

                So lesson learned: stop feeling lame and/or sorry for yourself and go sit with neighbors. You will feel better, somehow you will feel productive, and you will no longer be a useless slob. Cool beans!

                So about that catch up: I got back from kreyòl camp on Friday. That was an experience. The camp, and the getting back home fiasco. Let’s start with the getting back home fiasco because it’s a fun little story. Kreyòl camp was in the south of the country in a little place called Batey 9. That means nothing to you, I know, but the important part is that it is in a place I had never been to, traveled through, or nada. Getting there, I had taken the bus from Pedro Santana to Azua where the private bus (full of all the other volunteers who were allowed to meet in Santo Domingo before camp) picked me up. So that was easy. But on the way back I was gonna have that private bus drop me off at a crossroads called Cruz 15 de Azua because that is a common stop for my bus, and when it went through I would definitely see it, whereas my chances of randomly finding it in Azua were close to 0%. But luckily the genius driver dropped me off at a different tiny Cruz 15 a solid 45 kilometers away from anywhere my bus would be even remotely close to (aka the correct Cruz 15). So after several halting conversations with roadside stall owners and one guagua driver we figured out that I was in the wrong spot. Actually those guys had figured it out a bit before me and spent about 8 minutes trying to convince me to get on the driver’s guagua so he could take me to the right spot. 30 minutes later I was finally at the correct crossroads and sat by the road for 4 hours reading West with the Night and journaling. I wasn’t about to whip out my ipod, call me paranoid. Oh and here’s the best part. If the busses were running on time, then I absolutely had to catch the one I saw to my site, because it would be the last one of the day, so if I missed it, I would be royally fucked. Now let’s rewind to elections again: here everyone has to return to where they are registered in order to vote. Like Mary and Joseph. Which means everyone was leaving the big cities to go to the campos where they were born this weekend. And I knew this, so the big fear wasn’t my missing the bus, but rather that I would see it and it would be full. There would almost be no room in the inn for me and my backpack. If the inn was a rundown piece of public transportation. So here’s what went down: I saw the bus and barely flagged it down on time (I was on the phone with my mom and wasn’t paying perfect attention, oops). Was there space? Kind of. I forced my bag under the last fold out seat on which I sat side-saddle because there were a bunch of laundry hampers where my legs were supposed to go. Then the cobredor basically had to sit on me every time he wanted to open or close the door. But I fit! I figured out later that there actually was another bus after that one, simply because all the busses were running so late that day, due to parades for the elections—thank god, I will never have to live through another Dominican election. I mean, never say never, but yeah—never. At 7 I practically fell out of the bus, left butt cheek completely asleep, just thrilled to see a bowl of piping hot vegetable soup waiting for me on the table!

                Ok so camp: it was awesome. I can now speak a tiny bit of kreyòl. M’pale kreyòl yon tikras. Boom! Yeah nine of us volunteers (there I go again) hung out in the batey eating delicious Haitian bread called biskwit, and delicious Haitian spicy peanut butter called mamba. It was the best. We had seven hours of class a day, which was not nearly as tedious as it sounds. Two nights Arthur spun fire which was epic! I had never seen anyone spin fire before, so I was as mesmerized as the group of kids who circled around Arthur completely hypnotized by the whirling flames. I may have nerded out a bit. Thanks Brendan. Also, there was a medical mission using the girls dorm when we arrived, which made me nervous that my mattress was gonna be full of germs, but then I felt like a foolish American when we realized that they were really only using the dorm as a pharmacy. Oops. Also you should all know initially I typed farmacy and couldn’t figure out why there was a red squiggly line under it. Sorry English.

there is such a lot of world to see

So honestly i am so tired at this point that the only reason i'm writing this is because it's been so long, and yall deserve a post. but otherwise i would seriously just postpone again. i'm a procrastinator (william and mary taught me well) and clearly that has extended past term papers into life. anywho, i'm sitting here writing while Patty Griffin singing moon river keeps me going. here's my update: I'M A VOLUNTEER!!! we swore in today. may 9th, 2012. today was one of those days that will stick with me forever. It is so weird when you finally achieve something you have wanted for SO long and suddenly, it's over. or, i guess more it's finally beginning. years after deciding to go with the PC route, it's finally the real deal. my service has  officially begun (i know because the ambassador said so). today was just surreal. i had so many emotions and yet felt ecstatic through all of them. even when i got tremendously sad to be leaving all of these wonderful people i've been surrounded by, i still felt so very happy, and so very at peace with it all. And i kept just getting struck by how lucky i am. sorry for getting sappy on you guys, but it's a sappy moment for a sappy day. go with it! There are days when you are straight up allowed to indulge in as many emotions as you need to in order to process and really just embrace the expanse of the whole day. this is one of those days, so bear with me here. He is how the day went: This afternoon we met at the training center at 3:30 in our nice clothes which we promptly sweat through. Jeff and I were lucky because we got a bola for the last third of our walk to the training center so at least my hair didn't soak through with sweat, because jeff's host sister had done my hair for me (remind me to do a post sometime on the salons here by the way). We all moved into the big pavilion and a bunch of people talked, including our country director, Art Flannigan, the american ambassador, a representative for the host families, and then Jim talked as a representative for the volunteers. and his speech choked me up, i'm not gonna lie. (i just caught myself from going all sappy again. you're welcome). We sang the DR's national anthem and then our own. we swore our oaths in english and spanish, and we walked across the stage to get our pins and diplomas and BOOM we are volunteers. 800 pictures later (i'm guilty of probably 758 of them) we went and grabbed beers as a group at a colmado, because let's face it, we deserved it. Today just kicked so much ass.  i honestly don't think i've completely processed the fact that within days i will be living minutes from Haiti, trying to force myself into as many classroom observations as i can! of course, i'm gonna be going to creole training next week in a batey in the south, so that's gonna be a really cool experience. but the classroom observations and such work will have to be postponed. Gosh, there is so much to write about but all i can think about is how ready i am, and yet how much i'm going to miss all my friends. i know that it would seem no where in the DR is that far apart, but that's not exactly true. what with all the mountains and crappy winding roads, i actually feel pretty isolated from everyone in my group. but i'm really lucky because 2 current volunteers are living in a community that is probably 3 kilometers from Pedro Santana, and they are seriously awesome. seriously. Just about everything about my site is awesome really. it's more beautiful than eden (sorry adam and eve, you've been trumped), the kids really do need my help, and are very excited to be working with the new americana in town, the teachers are enthusiastic so far about my presence, and my town seems pretty safe and clean! i don't have constant electricity or water, but that's a sacrifice i'm more than willing to make if i can feel safe and needed. and consequently to feel effective.  crap, i'm gonna have to finish this later. i'm dying of sleepiness.  Also happy birthday mom!!

On the road again

Well we are all back together in Santo domingo again! it is great to see everyone again. we are all looking a bit more ragged (some more than others--Dan didn't shave for all of CBT. respect.) However, it was very sad leaving Dona Agueda. I was alright leaving Bandido behind, but i definitely welled up when i was saying goodbye to my Dona. She is a sweet woman, with such a peaceful spirit and it's always sad, and difficult, to leave someone like that behind. But we have to keep moving because that's how training works! soon though we will all be in our new cites for two years and will cultivate deep relationships with equally amazing people i'm sure. if i can be sad leaving a woman i only knew for 5 weeks, imagine how strong the relationships i have will be after 2 years in my cite. i get excited just thinking about it. But yeah, when i gave Dona Agueda her poem book she got emotional so then i started crying and we hugged and that was it. on the road again. (speaking of, i've been on a willie nelson kick recently. just saying.)
So i finally got my merengue on! the night before we left El Seibo a bunch of volunteers who live nearby came into the city and we met up with them in the park. And they taught us the merengue and the bachata. or, well, they tried to. we are gonna need more practice to get to their levels, but they have a year's head start so i'm not worried. anyway it was really fun, because i love dancing and we haven't really danced much here. i definitely can dance the merengue better than the bachata, but i need to practice because i wanna get good at them, come home, and just put you all in awe of my mad dancing skills. (sure...) 
The youth presentations at the ayuntamiento went really well too! my group did a "night of merengue" presentation and they danced three pretty awesome dances. One of them was a mix of bachata and merengue, which was particularly complicated. We had more of a hand in the getting them to research and write up their speeches and in helping them plan the event. i wish i could say i had anything to do with the dances, but i didn't. that was all them, and they nailed it. the three other groups had videos they had made. one was a documentary about the bullfights in El Seibo. another was a telenovela that i heard described as "the dominican slumdog millionaire without the millionaire" which sounds about right. and the last one was another telenovela about a rebel girl who ended up pregnant. they were all very good, and tastefully touched on some hot topics here in the DR, like the drug problems and delinquencia. 
So tomorrow we all find out where we are going! and by tomorrow, i mean tuesday, so probably today for all of you. i already have an idea of where i'm going (cough, cough haitian border) because the process of elimination worked wonders while i was talking to some volunteers at a teacher training we sat in on. so that's awesome. i get to learn creole! when i told that to me dad, he just said "when are you ever going to use that again?". he so doesn't get the point. haha, sorry dad, love you! 
Also yesterday was a fantastic day. first a bunch of us went to the book fair that's going on in the city right now and i got some children's books that i am very excited about. snow white, pinocchio, sleeping beauty, etc. i hope they aren't too hard for my future kids to be able to read, since i will really be working with the basic levels, but maybe i can just start a book club where i read to them once a week or something. I want to have a little library of kids books to use with my kids because what i have now is a) very basic b) stapled together and c) not varied. so slowly i will try to pick up books here and there. i also bought peter pan for me. it's not a hard read so i think it will be good spanish practice for my level. Then we went to see the avengers, which i don't think is out in the states yet so yeah be jealous because it's awesome. and i'm sure it will be great for all of you who don't have a bunch of dominicans cheering every time the hulk comes on the screen. it was so much fun to go to the movies though! a giant air conditioned room watching iron man and co kick some ass. good times. and after that we went to a merengue concert! we all were on a hill right next to some ruins of a franciscan monastery while we looked down on the show. it was a really fun time, especially because we are all back together again! even if only for a few days, it is just so great to see everyone again. i'm pretty lucky with this crew i came to country with. don't worry, i'm not going all sappy on you guys, i'm just saying that i lucked out. i can't wait until we all know where we are going and what we will be doing!
So one final more somber note before i wrap this up: i had such a cool conversation with Dona Patria yesterday. i feel so lucky that i am able to get by when i talk to her now because she has such cool things to say. she reminds me of kahlil gibran in how she can take profound and important themes and make them seem so simple. we were talking about always living with love and peace in your heart. about how you won't have pain in your heart when you live in love and peace. and the truth is i need to remember that sometimes. i definitely forget sometimes and those are the times i do things that i don't like. that eat me up with guilt for days and make me not like that part of myself. and here my little dona in my seedy little barrio starts talking to me about just living with love for the world inside of you, and it just seems so simple somehow. I am so glad she is my dona. 
and on that note, i'm done! over and out.

On the road again

Well we are all back together in Santo domingo again! it is great to see everyone again. we are all looking a bit more ragged (some more than others--Dan didn't shave for all of CBT. respect.) However, it was very sad leaving Dona Agueda. I was alright leaving Bandido behind, but i definitely welled up when i was saying goodbye to my Dona. She is a sweet woman, with such a peaceful spirit and it's always sad, and difficult, to leave someone like that behind. But we have to keep moving because that's how training works! soon though we will all be in our new cites for two years and will cultivate deep relationships with equally amazing people i'm sure. if i can be sad leaving a woman i only knew for 5 weeks, imagine how strong the relationships i have will be after 2 years in my cite. i get excited just thinking about it. But yeah, when i gave Dona Agueda her poem book she got emotional so then i started crying and we hugged and that was it. on the road again. (speaking of, i've been on a willie nelson kick recently. just saying.)
So i finally got my merengue on! the night before we left El Seibo a bunch of volunteers who live nearby came into the city and we met up with them in the park. And they taught us the merengue and the bachata. or, well, they tried to. we are gonna need more practice to get to their levels, but they have a year's head start so i'm not worried. anyway it was really fun, because i love dancing and we haven't really danced much here. i definitely can dance the merengue better than the bachata, but i need to practice because i wanna get good at them, come home, and just put you all in awe of my mad dancing skills. (sure...) 
The youth presentations at the ayuntamiento went really well too! my group did a "night of merengue" presentation and they danced three pretty awesome dances. One of them was a mix of bachata and merengue, which was particularly complicated. We had more of a hand in the getting them to research and write up their speeches and in helping them plan the event. i wish i could say i had anything to do with the dances, but i didn't. that was all them, and they nailed it. the three other groups had videos they had made. one was a documentary about the bullfights in El Seibo. another was a telenovela that i heard described as "the dominican slumdog millionaire without the millionaire" which sounds about right. and the last one was another telenovela about a rebel girl who ended up pregnant. they were all very good, and tastefully touched on some hot topics here in the DR, like the drug problems and delinquencia. 
So tomorrow we all find out where we are going! and by tomorrow, i mean tuesday, so probably today for all of you. i already have an idea of where i'm going (cough, cough haitian border) because the process of elimination worked wonders while i was talking to some volunteers at a teacher training we sat in on. so that's awesome. i get to learn creole! when i told that to me dad, he just said "when are you ever going to use that again?". he so doesn't get the point. haha, sorry dad, love you! 
Also yesterday was a fantastic day. first a bunch of us went to the book fair that's going on in the city right now and i got some children's books that i am very excited about. snow white, pinocchio, sleeping beauty, etc. i hope they aren't too hard for my future kids to be able to read, since i will really be working with the basic levels, but maybe i can just start a book club where i read to them once a week or something. I want to have a little library of kids books to use with my kids because what i have now is a) very basic b) stapled together and c) not varied. so slowly i will try to pick up books here and there. i also bought peter pan for me. it's not a hard read so i think it will be good spanish practice for my level. Then we went to see the avengers, which i don't think is out in the states yet so yeah be jealous because it's awesome. and i'm sure it will be great for all of you who don't have a bunch of dominicans cheering every time the hulk comes on the screen. it was so much fun to go to the movies though! a giant air conditioned room watching iron man and co kick some ass. good times. and after that we went to a merengue concert! we all were on a hill right next to some ruins of a franciscan monastery while we looked down on the show. it was a really fun time, especially because we are all back together again! even if only for a few days, it is just so great to see everyone again. i'm pretty lucky with this crew i came to country with. don't worry, i'm not going all sappy on you guys, i'm just saying that i lucked out. i can't wait until we all know where we are going and what we will be doing!
So one final more somber note before i wrap this up: i had such a cool conversation with Dona Patria yesterday. i feel so lucky that i am able to get by when i talk to her now because she has such cool things to say. she reminds me of kahlil gibran in how she can take profound and important themes and make them seem so simple. we were talking about always living with love and peace in your heart. about how you won't have pain in your heart when you live in love and peace. and the truth is i need to remember that sometimes. i definitely forget sometimes and those are the times i do things that i don't like. that eat me up with guilt for days and make me not like that part of myself. and here my little dona in my seedy little barrio starts talking to me about just living with love for the world inside of you, and it just seems so simple somehow. I am so glad she is my dona. 
and on that note, i'm done! over and out.

On the road again

Well we are all back together in Santo domingo again! it is great to see everyone again. we are all looking a bit more ragged (some more than others--Dan didn't shave for all of CBT. respect.) However, it was very sad leaving Dona Agueda. I was alright leaving Bandido behind, but i definitely welled up when i was saying goodbye to my Dona. She is a sweet woman, with such a peaceful spirit and it's always sad, and difficult, to leave someone like that behind. But we have to keep moving because that's how training works! soon though we will all be in our new cites for two years and will cultivate deep relationships with equally amazing people i'm sure. if i can be sad leaving a woman i only knew for 5 weeks, imagine how strong the relationships i have will be after 2 years in my cite. i get excited just thinking about it. But yeah, when i gave Dona Agueda her poem book she got emotional so then i started crying and we hugged and that was it. on the road again. (speaking of, i've been on a willie nelson kick recently. just saying.)
So i finally got my merengue on! the night before we left El Seibo a bunch of volunteers who live nearby came into the city and we met up with them in the park. And they taught us the merengue and the bachata. or, well, they tried to. we are gonna need more practice to get to their levels, but they have a year's head start so i'm not worried. anyway it was really fun, because i love dancing and we haven't really danced much here. i definitely can dance the merengue better than the bachata, but i need to practice because i wanna get good at them, come home, and just put you all in awe of my mad dancing skills. (sure...) 
The youth presentations at the ayuntamiento went really well too! my group did a "night of merengue" presentation and they danced three pretty awesome dances. One of them was a mix of bachata and merengue, which was particularly complicated. We had more of a hand in the getting them to research and write up their speeches and in helping them plan the event. i wish i could say i had anything to do with the dances, but i didn't. that was all them, and they nailed it. the three other groups had videos they had made. one was a documentary about the bullfights in El Seibo. another was a telenovela that i heard described as "the dominican slumdog millionaire without the millionaire" which sounds about right. and the last one was another telenovela about a rebel girl who ended up pregnant. they were all very good, and tastefully touched on some hot topics here in the DR, like the drug problems and delinquencia. 
So tomorrow we all find out where we are going! and by tomorrow, i mean tuesday, so probably today for all of you. i already have an idea of where i'm going (cough, cough haitian border) because the process of elimination worked wonders while i was talking to some volunteers at a teacher training we sat in on. so that's awesome. i get to learn creole! when i told that to me dad, he just said "when are you ever going to use that again?". he so doesn't get the point. haha, sorry dad, love you! 
Also yesterday was a fantastic day. first a bunch of us went to the book fair that's going on in the city right now and i got some children's books that i am very excited about. snow white, pinocchio, sleeping beauty, etc. i hope they aren't too hard for my future kids to be able to read, since i will really be working with the basic levels, but maybe i can just start a book club where i read to them once a week or something. I want to have a little library of kids books to use with my kids because what i have now is a) very basic b) stapled together and c) not varied. so slowly i will try to pick up books here and there. i also bought peter pan for me. it's not a hard read so i think it will be good spanish practice for my level. Then we went to see the avengers, which i don't think is out in the states yet so yeah be jealous because it's awesome. and i'm sure it will be great for all of you who don't have a bunch of dominicans cheering every time the hulk comes on the screen. it was so much fun to go to the movies though! a giant air conditioned room watching iron man and co kick some ass. good times. and after that we went to a merengue concert! we all were on a hill right next to some ruins of a franciscan monastery while we looked down on the show. it was a really fun time, especially because we are all back together again! even if only for a few days, it is just so great to see everyone again. i'm pretty lucky with this crew i came to country with. don't worry, i'm not going all sappy on you guys, i'm just saying that i lucked out. i can't wait until we all know where we are going and what we will be doing!
So one final more somber note before i wrap this up: i had such a cool conversation with Dona Patria yesterday. i feel so lucky that i am able to get by when i talk to her now because she has such cool things to say. she reminds me of kahlil gibran in how she can take profound and important themes and make them seem so simple. we were talking about always living with love and peace in your heart. about how you won't have pain in your heart when you live in love and peace. and the truth is i need to remember that sometimes. i definitely forget sometimes and those are the times i do things that i don't like. that eat me up with guilt for days and make me not like that part of myself. and here my little dona in my seedy little barrio starts talking to me about just living with love for the world inside of you, and it just seems so simple somehow. I am so glad she is my dona. 
and on that note, i'm done! over and out.

maybe i could inject bug spray intravenously

i am so sick of mosquitoes. i think one of my incredibly personal secondary project here will be to start the war of the mosquitoes. they fight all guerilla style and i am gonna walk in with my deet and bug bomb the daylights out of them. that's the plan at least. i would be a hero...

anyway sorry for the delayed post, i have been very busy and important. well, the busy part is true. we have youth groups formed and it has taken a lot of work to throw together a project with them in the short amount of time we had left. that said, i am very excited about the project we have created. it's gonna be a night of merengue when the jovenes will talk about the history of merengue, read poems they have written, talk about the traditional clothing, and read a biography of a famous merengue artist, fernando villalona. and they are gonna dance. we somehow ended up with the leader of a local dance club in our youth group, so he got all of his friends in our youth group and what was a 4-5 person youth group became 12-14. it's gonna be great, they are fantastic dancers! and the best part is that all their stuff is already choreographed so we didn't have to worry about preparing that part of the presentation. the other cool part is that the volunteers are just supervisors and the jovenes do most of the visible work. i mean, we wrote the letter to the mayor and i stalked him until we thought he would be in his office (its really hard to actually catch him in the office--the mayors here spend a lot of time out in the town and in santo domingo) so we could deliver our letter requesting space for our presentations. and he said yes! so we do a lot of the background work, but the kids are the ones taking the reigns on the projects. i am very proud of our kids. also there is one, Adolfo, who is an aspiring writer which makes me so happy. yesterday another volunteer, Alex, and i spent hours typing up some of Adolfo's stories so he can have hard copies. there are computer labs here, but you have to pay to use them, so Adolfo just had a giant folder of all his hand-written stories and a memory stick that our jefe had given him. just reading his stories, and understanding what i could, was interesting. he has a very strong voice, and his stories almost sounded like fables. he has a very strong writing style and i hope he keeps writing because i think he could really be successful. we are going to teach him how to set up a blog today so he can "publish" his stories for free, and if he does end up doing it i will post the link here. but i'm not sure if he will be able to, because, like i said, the computer labs aren't free and if he couldn't use them to type up his stories, i doubt he can to update a blog.

Let's see, what else...OH we went to the beach last weekend! it's the first time i had been to the beach since coming here and holy cow it was awesome. first of all, we were all pretty stressed from the week and working ourselves so hard with our jovenes, so we kind of had this unspoken agreement to check all peace corps related anything at the door and just enjoy our time at the beach. which we so did. it was beautiful with the giant palm trees and the incredibly blue water. and the white sand. and the sand dollars. and the gentle waves. jealous yet? well get this: after the beach we went to our leader's boyfriend's land aka his coconut farm! and i ate coconut straight off the tree. now i'm not the biggest fan of coconut, but that was delicious.

The drive to the beach was also great. we were all loaded into two pickup trucks and i was in the bed of one of them with Brendan, Ben and Paul. We got jostled around quite a bit, and i have a beautiful shiner on my knee from a particularly mean speed bump, but it was the best ride ever. we went through the mountains to get to the beach (it was over a 2 hour drive on not always so very paved roads) and it was just so gorgeous. we actually all stopped to get out and take pictures once. On the ride back we had a bunch of coconuts back there with us which was an interesting experience because a bunch of bouncing coconuts can actually be a bit dangerous. we almost lost some shoes to the bouncing (which in hindsight is probably my fault for taking my shoes off...) i did develop a handy tactic for going over particularly large pot holes or bumps in the road: hop into a squat position as fast as possible so that you just bounce on your toes and don't ram your tailbone into the bed and your spine into the side every time the car bounced. winning.

Anyway it was the longest day maybe ever, but also one of the best i've had since being in the country. and that is really saying something because i've had more than my fair share of fantastic days. i do have a peeling back because, being the genius i have proven myself to be (remember the rain situation?) i forgot to put sunscreen on my back. i remembered the rest of me though! so at least the rest of me is burn free. i've actually gotten obsessed with my sunscreen because the sun is so strong here, and i've gotten so tan, that i feel like a walking warning sign for skin cancer. i've even taken to putting sunscreen on my legs which, i am not exaggerating, i have never done in my life. even when i was a kid i never put sunscreen on my legs. but now? SPF 50! i am not leaving this country looking 10 years older thanks to sun damage. no sir, not happening.

In other news i got proposed to (this is a very mild way to describe the situation). by "got proposed to" i mean this incredibly drunk man begged me to marry him and take him to the states while he was practically falling over. actually he did fall to his knees once. it was a pretty uncomfortable situation, and nothing happened, but i have never been confronted with such a persistent person before. no matter how many ways people told him to leave, he just wouldn't. so we left and that was that.

And then last night we all american-ed it up. first the girls came over to my house and we painted our nails, chatted, learned a dance from Yaazi, and threw popcorn into our mouths. that took two and half hours. Then the guys came over and we attempted to watch a movie, but the volume on my computer wasn't working out, so we listened to music (ranging from nsync to mumford and sons, what?) and played spoons with pesos instead.

So now it's sunday and so far it's been a pretty great last weekend in El Seibo!

The gods must be crazy part 41

so remember that last post when i mentioned not following rule #2 often enough? yeah. busted again. this time was awful! i had just finished playing dominoes with my friends at Don Garcia's house and knew the storm was coming but was hoping i could beat it. as if the storm was gonna wait 20 minutes for me to get home. please. about 3 minutes into the walk it started to rain. but did i turn back or go to a nearby friend's house? oh no. that would have been giving up. it also would have been way too smart. no, i decided it was only sort of raining and i would keep on keeping on. oops. a few minutes later the sky opened up and i found shelter under an awning of a closed colmado. and i stood right under the electrical box until the other lady who was there pointed it out to me. so that was my third great decision. after a few minutes i thought it seemed like the rain might be letting up so i decided to try to make some headway on my journey home. luckily maybe 2 minutes after leaving the awning the rain got even worse than before. men started yelling at me that i was gonna get the gripe and i just smiled and said "i know" which made them laugh. at least i could find humor in my soaking wet, chilled situation. i decided to take shelter again under another awning but that didnt work because the rain went full on horizontal on me. at that point i dumped out my waterbottle and put my phone in it in the vain hope that that could save it, even though it had already gotten pretty gosh darn wet. and it worked! so yay, i'm not phoneless. about 800 motoconchos offered me bolas home, but i figured at that point i couldn't get wetter, and it was probably safer walking and risking the gripe than to ride 3 to a moto sans a helmet in the crazy rain. i saw one guy riding and using both of his hands to shade his eyes. so that made my decision for me. No motos. by the time i finally got home my skirt was so wet it probably weighed 10 pounds and my shoes were slush. gross, i know. believe me, i know. Dona Agueda took one look at me and was like "get in the house! get in dry clothes! dry your hair! do you want to get the gripe???" so despite my protests about drying off a bit first, i was hustled into the house dripping wet, not even allowed to leave my disgusting toms outside. don't worry though, i did take a picture. someday i will put it up. (edit: i put it up)

so yeah, i basically foretold this event and yet did nothing to prevent it. you know why? because i am a genius. want further proof of said "genius"? the sky is still falling at this point, and i'm hoping it lets up so my friends and i can go dancing tonight. you're right, i will never learn.

In other news, i am liking this town quite a bit. apparently for safety reasons i'm not supposed to say where i am. i might have already. i can't remember. anyway el seibo is great. oops i said it. stalkers keep away! This morning my friend and i scoured the town for jovenes we could practice our teaching skills on. actually we were more trying to practice our "assessing the reading level of the children" skills. we weren't being annoying for fun though. it was homework. anyway i bribed the kids to help us by promising to take their pictures afterwards. those pictures are also pending. sorry, but i'm lazy. no getting around that. It's a risk carrying my laptop all the way to the internet source without knowing if the sky is gonna go nuts on me. because, take my word for it, you NEVER know. case in point: today.

Anyway, i'm all dry now and, si dios quiere, gripe free. suck it rain.

rule #2: never leave home without your raincoat

I've broken this rule more times than i would like to admit. especially considering how many times it's backfired for me. there's really nothing like walking home in toms that are soaked through...mmmm good times.
so yeah, it rains here a lot, but don't let that fool you: it's still hot as hades. and it's just gonna get worse. luckily last summer prepared me for anything the DR can throw at me. heat-wise at least. the hurricanes and tropical storms will definitely be new experiences.

let's see what else...it's semana santa here, which basically means the town shuts down and everyone goes nuts drinking and having a grand old time for 5 whole days. so i'm looking forward to seeing what happens this weekend!

In other news we have had our first case of dengue. my friend got taken into the capitol for a few days to rehydrate and get his fever down but he's coming back today. Dengue sounds kind of like mono...but from a mosquito. they are awful here by the way. my ankles are constantly one giant red blob. but anyway about dengue: people react to it in very different ways. some people just feel like they have the flu, and some people hurt so badly that it's called "breakbone fever" and you feel like your joints are breaking and all sorts of fun stuff. the best part is, there isn't really medicine for it. universe:1, PCDR: 0.

Training is going well. ehhhh, well...it's going. just kidding, it's cool. i'm really liking the tranquilo training here as opposed to the incessant onslaught of information that was core training. CBT (community based training) is way better. we have youth groups we are supposed to be working with, but (back to that whole it's semana santa thing) they keep on not showing up. i think 6 kids came last time. that works out to 1.5 kids per group. i think we can do better. anyway once we actually have kids we are going to have a technical project for them that we will complete during our time here. Like, making a recipe book, or a children's book, or a youtube video or radio show. i'd be down with any of those ideas by the way. especially the recipe book, because i want to make a recipe book of dominican food anyway. so i could basically cheat and make the kids do it. it's called winning, guys.

ooh other news. i have a resident mouse in my kitchen. i have named him hewie. giving him a name makes him cute and not gross. once again: winning. actually he is really cute though. he's little with great big dumbo ears. i'm not saying i'm excited about having a mouse living in the kitchen, but i am definitely making the most of it!

To wrap up: i finished the last of my peanut butter tonight. bummer. looks like its rice, beans, veggie stew, and friend bananas here on out! until i buy more peanut butter.

ok that sounds ungrateful. my dona's food is great, just sometimes unvarying. she actually sat me down the other day to ask me what kind of veggies i do like since apparently i'm not eating enough. and here i thought i was. clearly i'm wrong though and it was time for a serious conversation about it. i tried to explain to her that i really do like her food, but i don't like eating until i'm stuffed because i feel sick. at that point she thought i had the big D once again and started to basically mime it telling me she will start serving me less fat again. (by the way last time she served me "less fat" i had fried bananas and fried cheese for dinner. what?) anyway i told her no no no i'm not sick anymore, i just get full quickly. that seemed to make enough sense to her and she accepted my explanation. only after many protestations that i like her food though. i think we are good again though, because she finally let me do the dishes! this is big news guys. i haven't had enough confianza yet to get into the kitchen, much less to actually wash the dishes. but now i do. WINNING.

ps, i totally understand that it sounds weird to be pumped about washing a sink full of dishes. but believe me, this was a giant step.