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