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 1st
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.
