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.
