Saturday January 28th 4:00 PM. We have finally arrived in Saint Lucia for Pre Service Training. After a year of the most challenging process I have ever undertaken I am finally starting. I don’t remember any of the journey after not sleeping the night before, I passed out like a Snorlax on the plane. While arriving in [...]

The question I have been asked constantly since I started the process of applying to the Peace Corps is, “why?” I always give a perfectly engineered answer that leaves the asker content. However, as I am about to arrive and start training I find myself asking myself why too. I am not questioning my decision, but [...]

They Made Me a Killer: Starring Robert Lowery and Barbara Britton (1946 Movie)

DVD: www.amazon.com thefilmarchived.blogspot.com They Made Me a Killer is a 1946 B-movie directed by William C. Thomas, and written by Daniel Mainwaring, Winston Miller and Kae Salkow, based on story by Owen Franes. The film was made by Pine-Thomas, the B-movie unit of Paramount Pictures. Tom Durling quits his job and drives across country after his brother is killed in an accident. He gives an attractive girl a ride and he's forced at gun point to be the driver in a bank robbery. During the crime, Steve Reynolds, another innocent man is involved and killed in the escape. After a high-speed chase, the car crashes and Durling is knocked unconscious while the bandits get away. The police arrest Durling but refuse to believe that he wasn't one of the robbers. Durling escapes the police then later teams with Reynolds' sister in an attempt to prove his innocence. The trail leads to a small roadside diner where the two end up finding the gang hiding out in the building's basement. They go undercover, her as a waitress and Durling joins the gang. In the end, they trick the criminals into confessing their crimes. Durling's reputation is saved, and the criminals, led by a Ma Barker-type mom, get shot up. Cast * Robert Lowery as Tom Durling * Barbara Britton as June Reynolds * Lola Lane as Betty Ford * Frank Albertson as Al Wilson, Glen Grove patrolman * Elisabeth Risdon as Ma Conley * Byron Barr as Steve Reynolds * Paul Harvey as District Attorney Booth Robert Lowery (October 17 <b>...</b> From: nologorecords Views: 7147 8 ratings Time: 01:04:20 More in Film & Animation

Hi Folks!

I am so sorry that it has been such a long time since my last post. I am sure all y'all are wondering how I celebrated the holidays and I have many things to catch you up on!

This past Christmas was one of many first for me. It was my first time without a real Christmas Tree, my first Christmas away from home, and my first time spending Christmas sunbathing, just to name a few. I was sure all of these new elements would find me well, what I was unsure about was how the old and familiar Christmas wasn't going to find me.

It was hard to get in the Christmas Spirit when you are not used to a hot and sunny winter. When walking around the streets of Portsmouth, hearing reggae versions of my favorite Christmas music blaring definitely helped me put a Christmas pep in my step.

Dressed up for Town on Christmas Eve!Leading up to the big day I spent going to parties at the schools and with other volunteers. Christmas Eve is the big night for celebrations here. Practically the entire island is in town, walking around til midnight mas started. There are a number of food vendors out selling bbq chicken, bakes, and rum punch. All the stores are open with people rushing in and out and children picking out their Christmas gift. After spending Christmas Eve in town I went to spend the night with Ari and her friend who was here to visit Amy. Christmas morning we woke up, SKYPEd with our families, and had a delicious breakfast with her host family,

Breakfast with the family then headed to church. After a long church morning we went back to the families house to exchange a few presents. That afternoon we walked down to Chances, the organization Ari works with, to visit the children and give them big hugs and Christmas candy! After running around with them for a while we had to hurry back to get dressed for the big family party and dinner.

For this party everyone brought a dish, Ari and I made a chicken pesto pasta to take.

Ari and her family after Church When we finally got ourselves cleaned up we packed up the pasta and headed back down to her mom's house and that's when the party started. As we got there the rest of the family started rolling in.

Amy (Ari's friend) Me, and Ari There were lots of laughs and tons of food and drinks. At one point in the night I snuck off to SKYPE with Sara and her family back home. When I returned the music was turned up for some dancing and there was a double movie feature under the house. If my memory serves me right I think I ended the night around one or two in the morning.

mom with all the foodunder the house watching moviesmom and dad dancing the night away

Selena found a Star Fish For boxing day, the 26th, I made my way back up to Portsmouth to spend the day with my family. After passing out there presents and helping mom with some house chores I took my sisters to the beach for some fun in the sun!

Whitney and me

I must say that this was a very fulfilling Christmas and even though it was different and new (which we all know I am always up for) it was still very much the same - surrounded by loving people, good food, late nights and happy endings!

I would also like to thank everyone who sent me gifts and gifts for my students. Everything is well appreciated! All of the cards, family updates, and pictures are hanging around my house and make me smile everyday.

A special thanks to Rachel Roberts and her family for providing Christmas to two locals and sending supplies for my students.

Goodnight! A special welcome to Ben, the guest blogger for this week (additionally, my brother). Ben found his people here. So much so that he spends all day trying to look and speak just like a Dominican. The results are inconclusive. Here's Ben:

Howdy guanobloods! (thats how we say gringo in Dominica! (not really! We either say whitey or are too polite to point out ethnoculture differences!) Its guest blog.j. BenJamin spinnning your yarns coming live at ya from Delice. Id like to say a big O.K. To all folks in salisbury country and all up the west coast EXCEPT Paul. You know why, Paul.

We here at jungle bay looking at the sea and some coconuts. And some lizards. Alright alright. Early on today Israel Moses take us up to victoria falls and Bondye (pronounced BO! DE-YAY!) what a sight! Ate some soup took a walk. Its nice.

Anyhow on a more reflective note, when George Gervin and Abraham lincoln first set eyes on this fair isle they were right to dub it "Thine fairest paridise thyne world to see. Oh mine eyes the waterfalls and the people and whatnot so nice...(sic)! I think my minds totally blown and I can never go back to both of our wives who are coincidently both named Mary Todd Lincoln at Fort Sumpter."

They were mostly right! But I suspect may have gotten too far into a bottle of snake rum (a real thing! Here at least.)

If there were ever a place to inspire this many exclamation points and this much pride, its Dominica. The natural beauty is unparalleled and the citizens take selfless joy in sharing it.

Oh, one more note. If you like food at all, especially fresh food, this is probably the best place to be. Try the fruits or meats. Or sweets. Or juices. You really cant go wrong.

O.k.Soup

Jelly

Tiger

Moses

Snake Rum

Healthy Body = Functional Body. Hollywood Look Side Effect: Healthy Function

My Grandparents chose to love each other when they met as teenagers, and then, they chose to love each other every part of every day, through the Great Depression, through absence during war, child rearing, work, illnesses... Life. Finding TRUE love? They met... And That was it. Again, the true love part was a daily choice whether either was as attractive or as exciting as the day they met. True love depends on each person, not just the one you find or the one that finds you. In other words, Love is a Choice, because we are not 110% lovable 24 hours a day. True love is when each person sees that real life is not like a romance movie script True love is accepting the fact of real life, which brings creative challenges that, with the choice to love, can increase attraction. Popular novels, songs, shows, movies... Each have scripts that are no doubt, inspired. The talented people that write and act, the hundreds or thousands of people that are the list of credits at the end of a movie - from the accountants to the doctors to the musicians and screenwriters - They work on projects that, as finished masterpieces, may often have coincidental similarities to your definition of romance and the most often undefined and over-used phrase... "true love" Again, the credits behind movies, books, shows and songs... include a lot of people. Why, because such productions are intentionally crafted to touch our deepest self. So, they are edited for perfection, music and effects and colors <b>...</b> From: gainaltitude Views: 424842 401 ratings Time: 02:47 More in Entertainment

In my favorite movie of all time, Drop Dead Fred, Fred, the main character’s childhood imaginary friend asks her (I’m not sure the first two lines are direct quotes):

Fred: Snotface, what’s wrong?

Elizabeth:Nothing.

Fred: You just put a piece of broccoli in your mouth and said, "Mm, what a lovely piece of broccoli."

I thought of this while sitting at a retreat for my village Parish Youth Ministry (quite another story). Earlier that day I was having trouble putting my feelings into words. On the bus ride up I thought, “Why don’t I write a poem, isn’t that how people share emotions?” So I wrote a poem. Not as an assignment, not as part of a funny birthday card, as a legitimate outlet for my emotions. What a lovely piece of broccoli.

Before I joined the Peace Corps I wondered if this would happen. I read a book by a volunteer in Africa filled with poetry. I thought, do people start writing poetry once they join Peace Corps or do all the people who join the Peace Corps already write poetry? I never got an answer.

Please don’t interpret this to mean that I have something against poetry or broccoli. I like both of them. In fact one day recently I almost bought broccoli at the grocery store for $30 a pound because I missed it so much. Then the (choose the best answer: environmentally, locally minded volunteer OR ethnic/religious stereotype) in me chose the $5 a pound locally grown cabbage.

I just never had the urge to write poetry before. It has crossed my mind to share my feelings through poetry exactly zero times. At least it answered my question: being a Peace Corps makes you want to write poetry.

Headline News: Ben is arriving in Dominica on Saturday afternoon. I am beyond excited. He is going up to the garden and hopefully out fishing with a real, live Caribbean fisherman.

Dominican Phrase Book: Directions. Most directions involve “so”. Make sure you attach it to the end of any statement in which you are giving directions.

Erin: Excuse me, where’s the hot sauce?

Store clerk: (points down the aisle) Over so.

Erin: Where does Mister stay?

Guy sitting on the side of the road: (motions with his head up the road) Up de road so.

Erin: Where’s the bus stop?

Old lady cutting her front lawn with a cutlass: You will find. Keeping going down so.

You (when you come to visit): Where’s the white lady staying?

(Hopefully) Anyone in my village: Just so.

Next time

Myself, Anna, NateLast week I learned how to SKI! I have never been Skiing before and now I think I may be addicted! I had such a great time, even though the chair lift scared me and made me very nervous! Anna, Nate, and Myself went skiing at Breckenridge which is a popular Ski Resort in Colorado! We spent the whole day there and I am proud to say I got off the bunny hill and only fell down THREE times! Not too bad for a learner! I did have two really good coaches! :)

I am hoping to go again maybe next month and next year I may even get a pass! I can now put skiing into my list of hobbies!

Check out this rap video from a group of Peace Corps Volunteers.

For more than a year I was under the assumption that I would be going to francophone West Africa.The past couple months I have had to come to grips with quite the contrary. I will be serving instead on the small Eastern Caribbean island of Dominca leaving on January 27th, 2012 (in three weeks). Am I surprised? Yes. Am I [...]

Today was a Marvelous day for no particular reason. Since December 19th, I felt like I was running around like a Chicken with its head cut off! I had an amazing time in Michigan visiting all of my lovely family, my friends who are basically family, and doing some shopping with my Mom! It was an Extremely busy 10 days that left me extremely exhausted! I had two days in Denver by myself and then my great friend Anna came to visit again! We were on the move enjoying life and Denver! I had a blast!

But today, I needed today! Since coming home from the PC I need and appreciate my a lone time! To gather my thoughts, take a minute, and get life organized! That is what today exactly was for me! I slept in, got some things organized, then did Kick Boxing and Power Sculpt! After that went for walk, it was 60 degrees and Sunny! After that just settled in my house and got some chores done, did some homework and watched a little TV! Ending the day with fresh cookies and Greys! Cannot really complain about that!

Even though I have had an amazing December in Michigan and a Marvelous time with Anna, today was needed! I am grateful for all of you and I am grateful for today!

Welcome back loyal readers! I’m ready to take 2012 by storm and post every week. I made it a New Year’s resolution and tattooed it on my leg so there’s a pretty good chance it will happen. I’d like to start by thanking all of you who made my trip home incredible- and a shout out to those I couldn’t see but would have made it incredible if I did. I think I missed some people and I’m quite sorry if it was you but I’ll catch you next time I’m stateside. A special thanks to all the people (Edith, Gedo, Mom, Mr. Evans, Aunt Debbie & Uncle Larry especially) who fed me the delicious foods that I had been missing so much. Thanks as well for all the hugs, beers, champagne, cheese, meats, Friday Night Lights, real coffee, warm wishes, requests for my return to the US and good sportsmanship in absurd Hanukkah competitions. You made it hard to leave again. Luckily Dominica made it very easy to return. I got off the plane and ran across the runway into the tiny two-room airport thrilled to be done with my 13 hours of flights. My friend was waiting for me outside the airport to take me back to Salisbury and after I climbed in the wrong side of the car, reached for the non-existent seatbelt and ripped the shoes off my already sweating feet I knew I was home. As we stopped by a roadside bar for a quick beer to “free-up the ride home” (which is an incredibly long ride and many thanks to Chris for driving me) I remembered how confusing and hilarious it is to live here. Dominica phrase book: I’m going to give you a two-fer because you’ve waited so patiently. In the alphabet the letter “z” is called “zed”. I tried to bring this back to the states with me to avoid having to say “z as in zebra” but no matter how many times I angrily said “ZED!” to people they didn’t seem to understand. Another phrase I had great trouble not using at home was “good night”. Many of you are thinking, we say good night in the US, you faux-worldly Peace Corps! But in the states good night is not a greeting. At least two dozen times I saw someone and greeted him/her with a cheerful “Good night!” and then caught myself. When you come to Dominica plan on having people say “good night” as a greeting all the time.My neighbor's goat got loose. She's a good goat though and dragging her rope with her.

A rainbow for my homecoming!Just kidding, there are rainbows every day here.

Last week was VERY exciting because I was able to spend time with one of my FAV PCVs who came back to Denver for the Holidays. Mary came to Dominica a year after me and we had a lot of wonderful memories while we were serving together! She is one of my girls from Dominica and I hang out with her family here in Denver! It was great to get a little piece of Dominica from her and just catch up on the last 7 months of our lives! She is amazing and continues to do amazing work in Dominica!

Future Career?

While we were hanging out we decided to go to the Denver Nature and Science Museum! It was the first time I have been to a Museum in Denver and it was a great experience. The Museum is extremely hands on for all individuals who are kiddos or kiddos at heart. They had an exhibit all about the DINOs with Sue the T-Rex! There was also an exhibit about space, your health, and a lot of stuffed animals that Mary and I were not a fan of!

One of the best parts was seeing a 3D movie on the I-Max theater! It was my first I-Max Movie and I have not seen a 3D movie in a very long time! Maybe 7 or 8 years! The best part was, Mary and I got to be Scientist and we did do lab testing! It brought back memories of Middle School!

Last Week, two of my fav girls and myself went to the Denver Zoo to see their Christmas Light Display! It was amazing!! There had to be a 100,000 lights! The night was not too cold, so we enjoyed walking around, seeing the displays, climbing on a ox and carriage (Oregon Trail Style) and just enjoying each others company before we go our separate ways for the Christmas Season! And of course we had to stop by the 'Warming Tent' for a snack! Overall it was a marvelous evening!

This will be my last blog until the New Year! I will be far to busy loving on McKenna and Austin (Roller Skating with Santa, Reading With Santa, etc), catching up my lovies, and spending time with the family to write a blog!

I wish all of you a joyful Christmas filled with amazing company, marvelous food, and endless laughter! I hope your New Year is filled with adventures, journeys which will make you grow, and only positive surprise! Embrace 2012... it WILL be a good year!

The Cabin from the RoadI finished classes the week of Thanksgiving and have had some time on my hands! Honestly, I have enjoyed it. I love my weekends and time off! I can always find something to do and that I enjoy, rarely do I find myself bored. The activities are just sitting reading, watching TV, catching up with friends but I will always find something busy. When I heard about my 6 week long break I made a promise to myself to enjoy CO and what it has to offer! The Peace Corps has made me a lot more content with life and my activities. I do not always have to be running around like a chicken without a head, I can just be and I am OK with me!

View from my reading spotAnyways, last week I went up to a 'Cousin's' family home in the Mountains! Let me tell you, words cannot describe how gorgeous the view is during the Winter! We went for a Hike a little higher up from his cabin and sat down in this open patch of snow! I said "Now, this is the snow I enjoy! Untouched and covering the mountains!"

It was the most relaxing two days of my life! He had to go to work so I just hung out in the cabin, drinking endless glasses of tea, reading hundreds of pages of my book, taking walks, and you cannot forget about taking a nap! It was just amazing and refreshing to just Be! The air was so fresh, life seemed to stop, and I had no agenda for the day! Besides the weather it reminded me of Sundays in Dominica which are my fav! I spent those two days laying on comfy couches, lost in my thoughts, and recharging my batteries! I am extremely fortunate and grateful for my Denver Family and these moments that they have given me!

I look forward to the next time I can head up to the Mountains and maybe going Skiing! Before that I must head back to MI to see my lovies....

How Hands Is Helping

School principals and US Peace Corps Volunteers tell how Hands Across the Sea is helping Caribbean children. From: TLhandsacrossthesea Views: 9 0 ratings Time: 03:59 More in Nonprofits & Activism

Last Sunday, I went to the Red Wings Game with two of my friends! One being from Michigan and the other just being forced to cheer for the Wings! They ended up losing but it was still a lot of fun and amazing to see the Wings Play in CO against one of their longest rivals! :)

Jennie, Myself, and Nate

When Great Books Come to School

With help from Hands Across the Sea, a primary-school principal and a US Peace Corps Volunteer are improving child literacy on the island of St. Kitts. From: TLhandsacrossthesea Views: 0 0 ratings Time: 01:47 More in Nonprofits & Activism

Sorry y'all- there was a bit of confusion with my flights- there are two airlines that fly out of Dominica and the one I was booked on is having some industrial issues. The pilots have all been calling in sick for the last three days in protest of the chief pilot being fired on Monday. Leaving the island seems to be a game of chance so my mom doubled down (thanks mom!) and bought me a ticket on the other airline which only flies if there is good weather. I'm about to head to the airport with hopes of getting out today...

I promised you some body parts and I wanted to live up to my promise. In the interest of time we'll just do the best one: Boom boom. Your butt.

Common usage: Those hills doing you good. That looks like a home grown boom boom.

Miss Erin, you're boom boom is so big today!

You fell on your boom boom again?!

Can't wait to see those I'll see, to talk to others and to eat and drink like an American!

Well, sort of.

My new dog, Belly, got spayed yesterday. The veterinarian's assistant showed up at my house to perform the minor surgery around 2 o'clock in the afternoon, but only after I called to remind him of the appointment. You see, I wouldn't have minded if he missed the appointment except for the fact that I had to starve Belly for 24 hours before the procedure. Not fun! So when the man was supposed to show up at 12:30 and hadn't by 1:15 I gave him a little call. When he showed at 2:00 he cleared everything off of the table and laid down one of those blue sterile cloths over it. Then he turned to Belly and gave her two shots, one in each shoulder. As I watched her stumble around the house til she crashed on the floor and could no longer lift her head, I was on the verge of tears. Then the man picked Belly up by grabbing the skin of her neck and back, lifting her to the table for surgery. As Belly lay on her back he took a long string of gauze, tying it first to the left paw, then passing it under the table to tie to the right paw, holding her down. The assistant's assistant help prep Belly for the procedure. The man took out her uterus, then stitched her up. During the operation a tool fell on the floor, no worries though, just pick it up and continue working. And what do you do when you need something out of your med bag? Well, I can tell you for sure that you don't ask the assistant to get what it is you need. You just take your gloved hands and reach in to get it yourself. I mean there aren't any scrubs or washing of the hands before or after operating. The entire ordeal took around two hours.

I am happy to say that Belly is doing fine and hopefully will recover fast. In fourteen days the man is going to come back and remove her stitches.

This little visit from the assistant veterinarian was definitely an interesting one. There really is no way to describe it and I hope I don't have to experience anything like it again.

Last Saturday I became a PAINTER! My girls and I went to Canvas and Corkscrews! The ideal of Canvas and Corkscrews is each day the studio has a different painting and the instructor walks you through step by step of how to paint the picture. I had soo much fun even though I am not a painter! The studio provides all of the supplies, you just have to show up! Even though we were all doing the same painting it was very interesting to see how each one turned out just a little different!

I was very proud of my owl even though he is a little plumb! :)

A pretty picture of CO taken from the Internet

On Thursday, the weather changed dramatically! It became cold and snowed on Thursday and now this morning!

Anyways, I was walking to the Light Rail Stations on Thursday (about a 20-25min) and I was COLD! In my head I had a bad attitude about life and how I had to be walking right now, how I wish I had a car, and I just wanted to be home in my bed not out here where my hair is freezing!

The negative thoughts got out of hand and I decided I was going to change my thought process because a negative thought process was not going to help the matter.

This is what I was Thankful for while I was walking (Continued to repeat it in my head)...

My Keen Boots which I LOVE

(Mine are all brown!)1. That I had a warm place to sleep and go to2. My boots which were keeping my feet warm3. That I DID NOT have to clean off my car this Morning (I truly hate doing that)4. That I was not driving because I know my anxiety would of been through the roof5. That I had kind of warm tea in my hand

Today it is snowy big flakes and I will be putting up some Christmas Decorations in my warm apartment which I am very Thankful for!

... A Dominican Dog That Is!!

That's right folks, I got a puppy. She is the cutest thing ever and I love her. She is about 7 months old, very expressive, has one white nail on her right paw, has lop-sided ears, and loves for her belly to be scratched. So far she has been nothing but a pleasure to have but I have only had her for four days. While I am at work she stays on my porch; while I am at home she roams about, follows me, and tries to play catch but never returns the ball. Over the weekend I took her to the beach. She loves the sand, maybe even more than I do, and I did not think that was possible. As of now she is not so hot about the water but that is going to change with time. I am excited to take her to the river and on afternoon runs! On rainy days we cuddle and watch movies together and at night she sleeps at the bottom of my bed.

I am excited to share with you the adventures of Belly and me (oh yea, I named her Belly).

*Not to sure how long I will be able to keep her. I am hoping it will be the rest of my time here and even bring her home with me. The only thing is that I like to travel and without having a yard and no where to leave her puts me in a bit of a dilemma. Oh what to do, what to do?

As the year comes to a close (I only have one more blog post before I head home for the holidays) I thought I would share with you what was hot and what was not in Dominica during 2011 (this is also fulfilling a long time fantasy of mine to write a hot/not list.)

I In Dat

Fancy denim rompers Doe Call My Name

Wearing a wet bathing suit under your clothes

Facebook privacy by using names like “Erin ‘Yoboyfrindalwayswatchinaftermyboomboom’ Skis”

Ironic engagement photos where both people look like they may cry

Not ironing KES the band The Band

Church

Being “spiritual, but not religious”

Waking at 5 am to cook and clean

Waiting until after 9 am to call people

Step-ups (Ginger Wine and Rum)

Considering beer a booze drink Matching your shoes, earrings, bracelets and eye makeup Lota (read more about lota)

DeMarco’s “I love my life” (the song)

Erin playing country music

KFC

Girls trying to lift things

More importantly the Hands Across the Sea shipment came in! It is incredible! We’re creating an art program using the supplies and have started categorizing the books so they are all ready for the kids to check them out of the library next term. The most exciting part (from my perspective) is that we are doing a class book project- each class will be using the craft supplies to make their own book. I think Grade 5 is doing a “Magic School Bus” book! Thanks to everyone who donated! You are making a wonderful impact on Salisbury children’s lives!

No dictionary entry this week. Tune back next week for body parts.

The Group in our Hats (Minus four)AppsI hope everyone had a marvelous Thanksgiving filled with your lovies, good food, and endless conversation. I personally know that is how my Thanksgiving went this year. I celebrated my favorite Holiday with 13 of my nearest and dearest. I could not of been more excited to host Thanksgiving because I just love this holiday. To me it is about gathering with your favorites, eating yummy food, laughing until you cry, and sharing stories of the past.

More AppsI would be lying if I said I did not think of my MI and Dominican family (truly my PCVers who I spent the Holidays with) but it was amazing to provide a 'home' for these 13 people who do not have roots in CO a place to eat Thanksgiving Dinner! I love hosting parties and it went soo well! I did not want it to be stressful or the vibe to be rough, rather I just wanted people to enjoy and that is what we did!

RALPH!I made my first Turkey, Ralph! It was a teamwork effort for sure and he turned out pretty well. THANK YOU to Aunt Sue for walking me through how to clean Ralph and laughing with me as I totally grossed out! :) I did not have any but my guest said it turned out very well. One of them said it was a little dry so I told him to put some gravy on it! :) I do remember a moment right as we were about to eat and the whole group came together! There was a group of people in the living setting up the tables and a group in the kitchen making the stuffing, rolls, and craving the Turkey! I found myself with not a lot to do but just take a moment to be Thankful I have these amazing individuals in my life!

This day will always hold a special place in my heart and I am excited for next year when we can do it all over again! :)

A couple of Sundays ago three other PCVs and myself participated in an island wide event, Eat Fish Day. This event was held in Colihaut, a village about 30 minutes south of me. The fisheries department organized the event in hopes of promoting the eating of local fish and showcasing different fish dishes from different cultures. Represented at Eat Fish Day was us, the PC (however we were labeled as the US Embassy), the Japanese (JICA Volunteers), Venezuelans, Cubans, French, Haitians, and then of course Dominicans.

We made dolphin tacos. They were delicious, if I do say so myself. Complete with grilled dolphin marinated in a lime chipotle sauce, handmade tortillas, pico de gallo, lime-cilantro cabbage salad, and guacamole.

On the Saturday before the event Maggie, Arianne, and I met in Salisbury at Erin's house for preparations. I don't think we new what we were in for! Soon after we had all arrived the fisheries department dropped off 40 lbs of frozen dolphin- heads, tails and caviar included. Luckily, seeing how we were just staring at the bag of frozen dolphin, Erin's neighbors offered to help us clean all the fish which ended up taking two hours. We explained over and over again that fish tacos didn't include the eyes, the bones, the heads, the tails or the fat of the fish. They didn't understand at all what a fish taco were and/or why we couldn't use every part of the fish. They took the extras graciously which either got soaked in rat poison to kill the rats in their garden or to make a fish broth. Then we chopped up fresh ingredients for the pico de gallo. After that we awarded ourselves a break to have dinner and some rum punch! When we got back to the house after dinner we started what turned out to be hours (5 to be exact) of making 200 tortillas. We were in bed by 2 am.

The delicious Dolphin Tacos After a night of not so much sleep we got up to prepare the guacamole the cabbage salad, and the marinade. I am not sure how we did it but by noon we were on our way to Colihaut. Of course after we set up, along with the other booths, we waited and waited and waited for people to arrive. The event started at noon and maybe around 3:30 people started filling in! We sold about 120 tacos at $5 EC each and we maybe gave about 20 or so out for free. After reimbersing everyone back for their spendings the net profit was $4 EC.

Since none of us are certified here to serve food the fisheries appointed someone to sit with us at our booth, but only after Erin made a bunch of noise. You see in a meeting they told Erin we didn't need anyone but after she heard there was going to be a lady from the food and health ministry she thought it be wise we had someone. When the lady from the ministry approached us at our booth we let Ina (our appointed food certified lady) handle it all. The ministry lady was not very nice, although just doing her job, went around pointing a thermometer gun at all of our food and quizing Ina about everything. Ina was amazing! She now calls me once or twice every week to check in and see how I am doing.

Most of the Dominicans liked our fish tacos but we did get several comments asking where the fork was and puzzling looks when we told them to pick it up and eat it.

This was a great event and I am very glad we got a chance to participate. It also fulfilled goal number three of the PC, which is to share the American culture with our host country (even though tacos aren't really American).

This was a big hit and very successful. Can't wait to see what next year brings!

40 lbs of frozen Dolphin Ready to Chop!

Cutting/Cleaning Fish Still Cutting/Cleaning

Still cooking tortillas at 1:30 am Erin, Menke, Maggie, Ari

Gangsta Robba on the bus with his Hennesey and champagne glass. Sorry its so blurry.

Saturday night at minutes to midnight I was riding in a coaster (a big bus) with Gangster Robber (my long time enemy turned acquaintance) and his friend/my ex- suitor Kwai Kwai as they drank Hennessey out of stolen champagne glasses and yelled out the windows at American Medical students asking if they were lesbians or if they understood the jibberish Chinese these men were screaming at them.

This was real life.

In April, just after moving into my own apartment, I was walking home one evening when a man yelled at me from in front of a snackette across from my home to come over and talk to him. I approached hesitantly as he seemed drunk. When I got there he started berating me about not treating him with enough respect and how I need to come when he calls me. I felt as though this was overstepping some boundaries so I bid him adieu. As I walked away he screamed after me “you need to respect me! I’m Gangsta Robba, watch out I’m Gansta Robba!”

I ran home, locked all of my doors and turned all of the lights on as I hid peering out the window to make sure he didn’t come to my house to attack me.

I went to help in the Reunion Bar that night and tried to find out if he was someone I should worry about. My description of a drunk man with big sunglasses and locks (dreads) did not serve well in identifying him as it could be a plethora of drunk men with locks and big sunglasses. One of my friends walked me home around 9 pm and again I double locked all my doors and prepared for bed. When I looked up at the snackette he was still sitting outside drinking. Alarmed, and afraid of dying, I called our Dominican director who was unfortunately out of town. After a long internal debate I decided to call the security officer in St. Lucia who I get along well with in hopes that she could shed some light on the situation. When I rang her phone our Country Director (who is in charge of the entire Eastern Caribbean) answered the phone as she too was out of state. I was too embarrassed to tell him that I just wanted someone to tell me that no one would kill me so I muttered something and hung up. (A month later I found out that earlier that same night the Country Director had told the older class at their mid-service training that people should not call him late at night to ask about non-essential questions, hopefully he thought it was a well timed joke.)

The next three nights I slept with all my lights on and tried to tactfully inquire about this man, fearing that he was someone’s son or brother.

Eventually I learned that he was my neighbor and while a little crazy quite harmless.

On Saturday night I couldn’t get over that 7 months later Gangsta Robba and I had sat together at a wedding and he was now offering me Hennesey out of stolen champagne glasses. Until Kwai Kwai decided that it was a fun game to throw everything glass out the window of the moving bus and then Gangsta Robba went to sleep. Integration. Ma Clem dressed up for the wedding.

Dominican phrase book: “Don’t call my name” I broke the cardinal rule in this post by calling Gangsta Robba’s name in this blog. Hopefully he doesn’t spend a lot of time on the interwebs. Calling someone’s name means saying his/her name, regardless of whether it’s good or bad, whether the person is present or not. Calling someone’s name is always a bad thing. Ex. Vexed woman: “She called my name in the meeting saying that I organizing snacks. I’m not in it anymore. She’s always calling my name and we don’t even deal.” Erin: “But vexed woman, I thought you were making snacks? I’m sure other lady whose name I won’t call didn’t mean anything by it. Everyone is happy you fixing snacks.” Vexed woman: “But I’m not in it. She needs to know not to call my name. She always calling names. I’m not in it anymore.”

This is where I spent the week.

Dominica has made me certain that I have a fairy godmother.

I’m spending the week at the Waitukubuli Entrepreneurs Leve (WEL) Emerging Entrepreneur Retreat at Jungle Bay Resort and Spa. I got pulled into working with WEL by one of the older PCVs as the program is national and not directly affiliated with Salisbury. The program was the brainchild of the owner of Jungle Bay, Sam Raphael and a previous PCV who was assigned to the community Jungle Bay is in. The organization works to encourage entrepreneurship in Dominica by training young entrepreneurs in both hard skills (cash flow, sales and marketing, cost calculation, etc.) and soft skills (personal motivation, efficiency of time, leadership, etc.) during a one-week retreat and quarterly “re-connects” focused on participant requests. All of the presenters and speakers donate their time to the retreat. Sam spends all day with the participants teaching and coaching them.

It is an absolutely incredible project. Today is the last full day of the week long retreat; tomorrow we have an incredible speaker coming from St. Lucia to address this year’s graduates. The participants are incredibly diverse ranging from a grandmother to 18 year olds, participants who have studied business administration overseas or only have a primary school education, entrepreneurs who want to screw and nail manufacturing companies and those who want to develop their custom cake decorating businesses. Each and every one of them have blossomed during the retreat. They talk about their businesses during breakfast, while relaxing at night and on the daily morning hikes we take. They explain business concepts to each other and discuss collaborations. They love the human knot game.

The retreat has been a week of seeing the absolute best side of Dominica. Jungle Bay is the most beautiful place I have ever stayed. It is located right on the Atlantic coast in a jungle. The entire resort was built using local, natural resources. I’m staying in a cottage with an outdoor shower in the jungle and a porch with a hammock overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

Beyond the physical beauty of the resort its existence is inspiring to the entrepreneurs. Jungle Bay is built on what was considered unusable land. The idea of an upscale eco-tourism resort was unheard of. Jungle Bay is now easily one of the most successful businesses on island.

It seems that Jungle Bay inspires everyone to be at his or her best. The participants have told me repeatedly that one of the best aspects is having incredibly successful and busy entrepreneurs and business people come and spend time talking to them. Reversely the people coming to speak love working with the entrepreneurs. There have been a number of speakers who hung around the rest of the day hoping to have a chance to answer more questions and spend more time with the emerging entrepreneurs.

Dominican Phrase Book: “If I plant you, will you grow?” When Nicole and Aaron were here we taught my friend “nose goes”, the “game” in which after someone says something that needs to be done, ex. going to Ma Clem’s shop to buy ice, everyone touches his/her nose and the last person to touch his/her nose must go to buy the ice. “If I plant you, will you grow?” is the Dominican version.

Erin is relaxing on the couch. From the kitchen: Erin’s man friend: “If I plant you, will you grow?” Erin: “Sure babes. The soil in Dominica is quite fertile.” Erin’s man friend: “Watch in my wallet for coins for soap.” Erin: “What?” Erin’s man friend: “You said you’d grow babes. That means I need you to do a message for me.” **A “message” is any kind of errand. Buying rum can be a message. Erin: “That doesn’t even make sense. Is this payback for nose goes.” Erin’s man friend: “Yes babes.”

“If I plant you, will you grow?” I really want someone to mail me a new pair of sandals. I’ve burst three pairs of sandals in the past two weeks.

Thirty three years ago on 3 November 1978 Dominica gained it's independence from Great Britain and became an independent republic within the Commonwealth. In addition to celebrating independence Dominica incorporates celebrations of it's unique Kweyol culture thus making this time of the year Independence Season. With colorful events, starting six weeks to the day, such as World Heritage Day, Kweyol in the Park, Kweyol Music Festival, National Flag Day, Kweyol Dress Parade, (and this is just to name a few) it is hard to dodge the music, traditional garb, and joy that the people of Dominica have surrounding them.

Kweyol in the Park

Ari, Me, WilThis is a Monday through Thursday event that draws together and displays the culture's music, arts and crafts, food, and people from all over Dominica and those living abroad.

This is by far one of my favorite events. It takes place at the Botanical Gardens in town and runs from 12 pm to 7 pm and is good for the whole family.

Kweyol in the Parklook at the rainbow!

During the six weeks leading up to the day every Friday and every Sunday people wear their traditional Madras. I had a lady, Mrs Velma, in the village of Salisbury to make me an outfit. I went and picked out my material and then helped her cut the fabric for the skirt....she did all the sewing! The Friday before independence is Jounen Kweyol. It is where everyone is dressed in their Madras and the schools march around the village, perform songs and dances and indulge in delicious traditional food.

Seamstress Velma I spent the morning with St. John's Primary School and marched with them around the village. When we got back to the school I watched some of the performances before heading over to CALLS. When I arrived at CALLS I was soon put to work helping prepare the traditional meal of green banana, plantains, yams, codfish, dasheen, roasted breadfruit, calilou soup with crab, and fish. After the meal the trainees had a fun time teaching me the traditional dance (maybe next year I will compete with them!). This was by far one of the most fun and spirited days I have had in Dominica. I felt so lucky to be a part of it all.

Students at St. John's Primary

Lining up for the Parade at

St. John's Primary

Parading down the Bay Front in Portsmouth

Homemade grill used to

prepare the meal

Shem (first year student)

cooking fish

Pealing a roasted Breadfruit

I was demoted from pealing to just holding the pan!

Me and my little man

one of the first year students

the CALLS Gang eating!!!

Market Day with a Difference

This is an event where farmers and vendors are recognized for there hard work, devotion and contribution to the production and distribution of food over the years. The fresh produce is arranged on top of beautiful sheets of Madras fabric. Cultural groups come and perform along with speeches given from community leaders.

These are just a few of the events there are many many more.

Here is a video of one of the competitions that I went to....

Dominica doesn’t have daylight savings time. From April until October we’re in the same time zone as the East Coast and the rest of the year we’re an hour ahead. This morning I was calling the States and I realized “fall back” happened. It explains a lot of confusion in my life this past week but more importantly made me realize that I still thought it was September. The past two months disappeared.

Highlights: · The Bills are a real team this year!

· The Sanquezes (Nicole and Aaron) came for an incredible visit to Dominica! We hiked to boiling lake, which is the hardest hike in the Caribbean (I’m not sure how much that is saying though as one generally does not think of the Caribbean as a hiking destination), swam under beautiful waterfalls, snorkeled amongst volcanic underwater geysers, almost died when I led us down a mud covered cliff into a ravine with only hand ropes to climb on (at about an 80 degree incline), ran a Creole game show, went to a Caribbean music fest and ate a ton of delicious food. Ma Clem was so upset when she found out I had not cooked them any real “food” that she prepared a meal for their final night that was easily 50,000 calories. We ate sancoche (a spicy fish stew with coconut milk), breadfruit, yams, green fig, fried fish, steamed vegetables and avocado salad.

I didn’t want to believe that I am a stereotypical PCV who would fall apart when visitors left but I absolutely am. Having them visit was so amazing and I forgot how easy it is to hang out with them in complete comfort. When they left I spent at least three days crying about everything. I cried one night when someone didn’t laugh at my joke.

· While the Sanquezes were visiting I ran a Creole Day celebration at my school. My school hasn’t done a celebration for the past few years so I channeled my Cradle Beach Camp energy and planned a Creole game show. The show, “Sa ou sav, sa ou pa konnet” (What you know, what you don’t know) was incredibly fun and incredibly long. There was a question and answer section, a flag drawing competition, a Creole poetry competition and a singing competition. I had invited Grades 4- 6 to perform as “special guest performers” but I was not prepared for the outcome. Every grade wanted to perform and each class wanted to perform all 3 of the traditional dances and sometimes a song as well. The 1 hour activity I’d prepared quickly became a 3.5 hour recital. Miss Jno Baptiste and I hosting Sa ou sav, sa ou pa konnet. I'm the white person.

My favorite part was the band. Three boys played music for all the classes to dance to. The band sounded awesome and comprised kids playing a metal cylinder, a chair (which was later replaced by a bucket) and a PVC pipe. The Grade K girls dancing to the band on Creole Day.

· The following week was Independence Week. On November 3rd Dominica celebrated its 33rd year of Independence. I joined the primary school at the National Youth Rally. I was incredibly proud watching the students march across the field in traditional march. Every school across the island sends a group of 10 – 30 students to march across the stadium and salute the Prime Minister. Salisbury students marching.

The day after was National Day of Community Service. About 50 children and adults came out to help clean up the community.

· Sunday was Eat Fish Day in a neighboring village. I had been asked to organize a Peace Corps booth to sell fish cooked in an American way. We decided on grilled mahi mahi tacos. Mahi mahi is called dolphin in Dominica. I love telling people that we were serving dolphin tacos. Using the interwebs and George (thanks!) as resources we prepared about 150 tacos made entirely from scratch! They delivered 40 pounds of dolphin on Saturday afternoon and thank goodness Ma Clem’s grandson saw us staring at the huge garbage bag of frozen fish (heads, skin and cavier included) and offered assistance. We went to the back of Ma Clem’s house and cleaned the fish like Dominicans- right on the concrete ground. We were short on cutting boards so Ma Clem’s daughter found a piece of wood, complete with rusty nails, washed it off and bam! a cutting board. The whole fish got used- we used all the meaty parts to grill, the skin and fat got soaked in rat poison to kill the rats in the garden and Ma Clem made a yummy dish with the fish heads. Tortillas are stupidly expensive here so we made our own. It took around four hours for the four of us to make 200 tortillas but they were delicious. We topped the tacos with a yummy chipotle lime coleslaw, guacamole and pico de gallo. The festival was a perfect Peace Corps experience- explaining fish tacos was an adventure but totally worth the 20 hours of prep time when people came back for seconds. Our net profit was $4 EC.

I’m back to weekly posts! Check back next week for Erin’s adventures at a fancy resort. Dominican Phrase Book: “Check your scene” in honor of Nicole who took this phrase home with her. “Check your scene” means do what you want and don’t worry with me. Proper usage: Erin: “Babes, do you want to go to Mero this afternoon with the Peace Corps?” Erin’s man friend: “Check your scene babes.” (meaning “I’m not going”) Erin: “I’ll check you when I get back.”

I owe the interwebs a plenty long blog entry but until then (hopefully I'll write it on Friday) I'd like to share some great things I heard this week:

I'm working with a Peace Corps Volunteer from the 1960's who lives in Dominica and served in Liberia on a project. We had lunch the other day and he began a story, "The man was absolutely objectionable- to any culture at any time." The story was about a man in Africa with 3 wives who was terrible. He was so awful that his wives would beat him up monthly. They would get tired of his ways and beat him up as the village gathered around to cheer them on. He would spend the next few weeks quietly nursing his wounds and then begin to bother everyone again. After a week of being terrible his wives would get vexed and beat him and the cycle would begin again.

I had a 3 hour bus ride home (it should take 40 minutes) due to construction on Tuesday. The woman sitting behind me was making plenty of noise. The two best lines were, "I was well far when God was sharing patience" and in response to someone telling her to plan for having children (she has one son and said she wants more), "I have it well planned. One to clean the house, one to move America and send my boxes, one to drive a bus so I don't have to wait on Sam (the bus driver who could hear all of this) to learn to drive."

I'll share more soon- when God shares some motivation to write!

Mr. Evans sent hard copies of the Buffalo News article which I received on Saturday and passed along to Ma Clem and Glen John. Ma Clem's daughter is a secondary school teacher and read the story aloud at the secondary school assembly. I'm not sure if this will give me more or less street credit.

I've been stocking up on my Dominican specialties in preparation for my first non-Peace Corps visitors. I was trying to buy cacao sticks to make cacao tea (the hot chocolate like drink that is traditional here) but cacao is scarce now. (Things being scarce secretly makes me happy, because I can say things like "You doe find soursop now- its scarce," although I join in with everyone else making noise about it.) I asked Ma Clem about where to find some and today when I went in the shop for flour she gave me a little bag of her own homemade cacao, cinnamon sticks, some type of leaves and a whole nutmeg! Have you ever seen a whole nutmeg? I wish that I had a working computer so I could show you.

When I told Ma Clem I have guests coming next week she responded by saying, "Sir kills his pig this weekend. You'll have stew pork." Best I never rent an apartment again because all landlords will pale in comparison.

Dominican phrase book: "You'll" You'll is used here as a question word. It took me a long time to figure that out and I used to just assume everyone was very bossy. "You'll call me in the morning." But in fact the person is asking a regrets only question. An answer is only required if you won't be calling in the morning. My speech is now heavily seasoned (as opposed to lightly peppered) with "you'll" statements. You'll all think I'm quite bossy when you speak to me.

Proper usage:

Me: I want to go to the action at Macoucherie today.

Friend: After I prepare lunch I will go.

Me: You'll call me before you bathe to go.

My seamstress finished my National Wear this week. I wore it to church. Pictures to come.

**Some adult language is included.**

1. I am almost 1/3 done with my Peace Corps service.

2. My computer black screened on Friday while I was trying to upload pictures of adorable barefoot children running around a track and noone on the island fixes Macs. (I find this particularly humorous because I had played with the idea of creating an entirely tongue-in-cheek blog where I would complain endlessly about all of the things the develloping world is lacking- mainly Mac stores and large cheese selections- and post sad videos about how I couldn't buy 90% cocoa dark chocolate anywhere. Now I have the perfect opportunity to do so legitimately.) So my posts for the next two weeks will be limited to using other people's computers and thus quite short. But the short posts will culminate with my first American visitors, the Sanquezes, and Independence celebrations which I'm sure will produce posts so long that noone will be able to bear to read to the end.

3. This morning I woke at 6:00 am (late for Dominican standards- people often call me before 7:00 am or just show up) to two men arguing next to my house. The one man was screaming at the other man, "I'll cut your Mom's pussy!" while weilding a cutlass (machete). Both of the men's mothers are 70+ years.

4. I bought several pounds of yellow fin tuna out of the back of a truck yesterday and then realized I didn't have any money with me so the fisherman drove me home to get money.

Today I went to the Northwest Division Athletics Competition with the Grade 4, 5 and 6 students at my school. It was a track meet for the schools in our division to decide who will go to the National Competition. I brought my inner camp counselor today. I walked with (brought with me) poster board, markers, face paint, snacks and plenty of cheers. The setting was gorgeous- a field right on the Caribbean Sea in a village about 10 miles north of Salisbury.* I'll try to put up pictures this weekend.

I had a wonderful time, especially as we were the only school cheering. My favorite moment was after we all prayed together (every meeting, school day, meal and class begins with a prayer here) the kids were sent to run a warm up lap. It took a minute to begin because they all bent down to take off their shoes. Most of the children performed all of the track and field events barefoot. I laughed at our culture when I thought about those glove running shoes and how people take classes to learn how to run barefoot.

I want to share with you some of my observations and thoughts on love, marriage and family life in Dominica. The easiest description of the differences in “love” was when I was talking to my host mom and the Pastor we teach with. The Pastor asked me if I “love” the young man I’ve been dating (about 3 weeks after we started dating), I had a look of panic and replied that I “really like him”. The Pastor stared at me in a confused manner for a moment before my host mother explained that, “Americans don’t love like Dominicans, they ‘really like’.”

The structure of romantic relationships here are very different as well. It is quite common for a couple to have children together, buy a home together, and be together for 10+ years before getting married. A couple I know, who have a 16-year-old son and an 11-year-old son, who are active members of the Catholic Church, are celebrating their 10th Wedding Anniversary and 20th Anniversary as a couple next week. One of the American stereotypes here is that we “love getting married”, that we get married quickly and often before we’ve actually started a life with someone.

This post was inspired because I read a description online that claimed Dominica has predominantly single-mother families with absentee fathers and no family structure. That is entirely untrue. Dominica has an incredibly unique situation. Some families are constructed exactly like a traditional nuclear family in the US with a mother, father and children. But often children are raised in a single parent household however they are not raised by a single parent. You’ll see children living with their mothers but because their fathers live in the same community they have strong relationships with their fathers. Even when a child was conceived in an extramarital affair his/her father is actively involved in the child’s life. It creates a fascinating web in such a small community of siblings through the mother who live in the same home, siblings through the father who don’t live together and siblings who are not biologically related but their parents are in a relationship. My favorite family web is the two brothers, Fred and Mike*, who have the same mother. Fred’s sister (through his father) is Marie. Mike’s brother is Greg (through his father). Greg and Marie are now married. Sometimes the family tree reminds me of the song, “I’m My Own Grandpa.”

*Please note that we are NOT discussing the Bills loss this week. **Names have been changed- the real names are much more Dominican.

Dominican Phrase Book: How to describe your relationship: “Loving”- In a relationship with, ex. “She’s loving that black partna in Layou.” “My man”/”My woman”- Your boyfriend/girlfriend “Going behind”- Chasing after a woman, ex. “He’s going behind that big girl with the butt.” “Make a break on”- Having someone else set you up with a person, ex. “Make a break on your nice friend for me”, translation “Tell your white friend that I like her” “Fanm de wa”- Woman on the outside, ex. “His wife must know his fanm de wa.”

Huge week for the Buffalo Bills and the Bills Bar in Dominica! I hope everyone enjoyed the Buffalo Bills making Tom Brady cry like a little girl as much as we did in Dominica. The only thing that came close to rivaling that this week was being quoted on the front page of the Buffalo News about Tom Brady’s girly hair http://www.buffalonews.com/incoming/article568402.ece

That’s right. The Buffalo Bills Backers Bar in Dominica was featured on the front page of the Buffalo News on Saturday morning with a big picture of Ma Clem, Glen John (my neighbor) and myself. I am still quite excited about it. There will be nothing better than giving Ma Clem a huge framed picture of herself on the front page of the newspaper!

Since I wrote this on Tuesday I have not had electricity or water. Dominica was brushed by Hurricane Ophelia and it was ugly. Flooding, landslides and unpassable roads were the norm for the past two days. Being incredibly lucky I didn’t have to leave my village and avoided spending countless hours stuck in a bus or walking through knee deep mud.

I have been better about storing water for times when the water goes out (about once a week for around 18 -24 hours) but I was absolutely not prepared for 48 hours. I had plenty of drinking water but no cleaning water. I had to step up my indoor survival skills by doing things like collecting rainwater and manually pouring it in the toilet tank to flush my toilet, screaming at anyone who approached my refrigerator to make sure NO coldness got out (luckily I have a Dominican style refrigerator which has an icebox that has to be defrosted which I whine about but because of it the 5 pounds of chicken wings I purchased are still frozen), putting up a mosquito net at 3 am while holding a flashlight, and most importantly making sure that your faucet is closed even when the water is off lest you come home to an entirely flooded kitchen that makes the straw mat, handmade by your landlady, smell like a moldy barn.

Luckily everyone is safe in Dominica and all of the damage was to property and not people.

But still- this is some rough damage: Stolen photo of Massacre- a town south of me

Dominican Phrase Book: “Current” is used instead of electricity and it is referred to as an object.

Example: Adorable Grade 3 student when the lights went out: “Miss! Miss! They took the current!” Neighbor: “Air-een, did they give your current back yet?”

I had both a Buffalo miracle and a Buffalo whatever-the-word-for-uncertainty-about-whether-it-is-a-good-or-bad-thing this week.

First and foremost, the Buffalo Bills Backers Bar in Dominica had access to NFL on NBC for the first time ever for exactly 32 minutes on Sunday afternoon. Those 32 minutes were the crucial 4th quarter of the Bills embarrassing the Raiders. For clarification, that was the miracle.

The uncertainty was on Monday afternoon when I got a call from a number I didn’t recognize. I have not “topped up” my phone this month so I have almost no credit. Dominicans don’t leave voicemails so call screening is irrelevant. As it will cost me money to call people back, I now answer every phone call regardless of whether I know who is calling. The gentleman calling was none other than the towel guy (TG) from my post about networking in March (to refresh your memory he came out to a networking session in just a towel and mimed to sit down at us before he returned to yell at everyone about their Godlessness and only liked me because his children live in Buffalo). He informed me that he had a project to be written up and had requested assistance from a Peace Corps. He was directed to me by the Peace Corps office and was “pleased that is was the girl from Buffalo”.

I met with TG on Tuesday and while I was more prepared for the meeting it was still just as ridiculous. He showed up in a full boy scout uniform. I complimented him on how nice the building looked, windows and doors had been put in and it had been painted. This was the wrong thing to say. The group that owns the building had decided that they want to use it again after TG and his group repaired it. The project TG wants to work on is building a new rehab center because they have been asked to leave the building. I asked if they needed to leave soon, TG told me they need to leave in March. I explained that there was no way to get funding and build by March. He informed me that they had to leave by March 31, 2011.

The project he wants to work on will be incredible if he is successful. He donated a plot of land adjacent to a river in the south of Dominica and wants to build an eco-friendly, organic farm/sustainable rehab center. His idea is to have a center, which improves and protects the land around it while providing a rehab program. He wants to clean the river and reintroduce native species that are endangered, plant trees to increase the water level and maintain an organic farm, which will provide work therapy for the clients and sustain the center financially.

The need is extreme (there is not a single alcohol or drug rehab center in the nation) and his program is already quite successful (they have reintegrated into society 12 out of the 60 people who have come through the program). The project will be enormous though. The land is not yet “accessible by transport” thus a bridge will need to be built before anything begins, there have been no surveys of the land and while he wants a building that “flows with the landscape” no such building prototype or architect has been identified making it impossible to produce any sort of budget.

So the idealist in me agreed to come on board of the now two-person team as the grant writer.

No Dominican Phrase Book this week. Check back next time.

Let’s go BUFFALO! The Bills Bar in Dominica was open this week (although the bar did not actually have access to the Bills game but I wore my Bills shirt and booed for every team on TV). We kicked off the season with the Dominican equivalent of chicken wings- spicy chicken back stew. It was delicious.

School started again last week. I had a double ear infection (both of my ears had swimmer’s ear that became an infection because the water stuck in them was dirty and then infected my ear drums) so I only went on Thursday. I’m working on many of the same projects I was doing last year; tutoring children who are very behind in classes, working with Hands Across the Sea (you can still donate to get us more books and art supplies for this year!) to set up the library, cleaning up the computer room, etc.

I’ve added on two projects that I am incredibly excited about. I’m working with a young woman in Salisbury to set up a resource center in the unused building above the school. There are some Salisburians living abroad who came back for Reunion and offered to collect donations to send down for the center. We’re envisioning a big open room with a reading corner, tables for tutoring and homework help, a craft area and using the stage that is already in the room to have some theatre programs. Currently there are no consistent after school activities (there are sports that happen on and off one day a week after school) and its clear that some structure would behoove many of the children. I’m hoping to incorporate a peer tutoring program (like the one I had last year) into the after school program as well.

My second project is expanding the House competition. The students are divided into four houses that currently only compete on the biannual Sports Days. They have house assemblies once a week, where instead of coming together as a whole school they meet by house. The summer camp lover in me saw this as a waste of potential competitive spirit. Where are the cheers? The songs? The inappropriately serious rivalries? Most importantly, why are we not using this to con children into cleaning and participating in activities that they would otherwise not care about? Thus I have worked with the principal to create a much expanded house competition system to encourage academics, cleanliness, school spirit, sports and active participation in all my future projects. If you know any good cheers please send them this way! Next week I’ll begin teaching house chants and the Bear Song.

Dominican Phrase Book: Waist pain. When I was a child I was painfully dramatic, a hypochondriac and a whiner. Apparently everything that came out of my mouth was in a whine until I was around 7. My mom still teases me about my waist pains. I used to complain that my waist hurt all the time, which was due to my waist cancer. I’ve found my people. Dominicans all have waist pain and they talk about it incessantly.

Strong, grown man: “Air-een, my waist is so bad. I been taking rum all day and the pain in my waist not leaving me.”

Middle-aged woman: “You know when you start bleedin’ and you waist does hurt you all the time.”

Small child: “Miss Air-een, my waist is broken!!!”

Adorable children anecdote: The children have begun calling every interaction they have with me a “club”. Some children came over and played UNO the other day, everyone wants to join the UNO club. A little girl borrowed a book and I have had many requests to be part of the book club. There is also a baking club, a bay club, a slinky club and, my favorite, an essay writing club.

EMERGENCY UPDATE: I completely forgot to mention that last week I ate accra, a pancake made out of tiny fish without bones, and over the weekend I ate black pudding, sausage made out of congealed blood. I am using these as my two biggest integration steps for my Peace Corps report. BLOOD SAUSAGE!

Most of the moments when I want to laugh out loud by myself happen on the bus. This is quite troublesome because there is nothing to pretend I am laughing at. I’ll table bus stories for a couple weeks after this.

Yesterday morning I heard the bus pass up the hill so I grabbed my partially packed bag and a banana for breakfast. I got on the bus and ate my banana before we left Salisbury. The bus was not full and I had nothing to put my banana peel in so I held it curled up in my hand. As we left Salisbury the woman next to me who I have never seen before yelled at the driver, “Aaron, stop a while at the trash!” Aaron pulled up alongside the trash and I thought, how lucky, now I can throw away my banana peel. Before I had a chance to the woman next to me strongly advised, “Throw that ripe (as opposed to green bananas with are a starch Dominicans eat) banana peel in the trash now!” I threw it and turned to see if she wanted me to throw anything but she did not. She stopped the bus to allow me to throw away my banana peel. I was not sure if this was incredibly kind or rather rude that my banana peel was so offensive to her and she was so bossy.

During training the Dominica Associate Director (Patrick- who is outstanding) told us a story/joke. Two men leave their respective villages, separately, to find a new place to live. The first man reaches a new village and finds an old man sitting at the entry to the village. He asks the old man, “I’ve left my old village in search of a new place to live. What are the people here like?” The old man responds, “What were the people in your old village like?” “They were all a** holes, that’s why I left!” The old man spends a moment thinking, “They are exactly the same here!” The man mutters about jerks and walks off. A bit later the other man looking for a new village to live in sees the old man and says “I’ve left my old village in search of a new place to live. What are the people here like?” The old man responds, “What were the people in your old village like?” “They were wonderful! They were so kind and generous. Leaving my village was very hard.” The old man doesn’t hesitate and says, “They are exactly the same here!”

I try to remember this story whenever I’m unsure about whether I should be offended or not.

Dominican phrase book: “Where da road be?” The Chinese Government has a large rather complicated agreement with the Dominican Government to donate/lend the money for several big infrastructural projects. There are many political issues that I do not completely understand but if you like developing country politics be sure to look into it.

One of the projects is the repaving and building of a road down the west coast of Dominica. The road before was painfully terrible, with so many potholes that you weren’t quite sure what level the road should be at. The repaving has just reached Salisbury. Salisbury is perpendicular to this road with one main road and 2 feeder roads coming off of it. Starting last week each time I leave Salisbury and come back someone asks, “Where da road be?” meaning “Where are they currently paving the road?”

Favorite usage: Teacher at my school: “Air-een, where da road be now?” Me: “Ummm… in front of the school? Which road? What?” Other teacher: “The road is just so, I saw it this morning. Where Frederick for Sylvia’s son lives. Just so by the church.” 1st teacher: “Frederick’s son with the green van?” Other teacher: “Wi. Air-een, you must have seen that coming down from town.” Me: “Oh yes, it was just so.” (Just so is the correct answer for any direction question. You point in the general direction and say “Just so.”)

Here are lots of pictures of my friend Kyle’s visit. Luckily he takes pictures.

Kyle in front of the waterfall we will climb tooth and nail to reach.

The treacherous ascent to the waterfall.

Kyle made it to the waterfall!

Kyle trying to heal his scrapes and bug bites in a natural, hot sulpher pool. I'm not sure why he looks so uncomfortable. Maybe because this was the 7th picture I took trying to make him not look blurry.

Bubbles coming up volcanic fissures in the Sea at Champagne Beach

A fish

Scott's Head- I think I've already included a picture but we snorkeled to the shelf (where the water gets darker is a HUGE underwater cliff) that day

Me- snorkeling at Champagne, although it also looks a little bit like I've drowned

Coral snorkeling at Scott's Head

I had my first real cry, during my time in Peace Corps, this morning. I checked my Peace Corps feelings schedule and sobbing uncontrollably at 7 months was planned which reassured me that my feelings are not unique. It was a mixture of homesickness (feeling so sad about missing Charlie and Sarah’s wedding, seeing a beautiful picture of Nicole and Ashley’s garden, missing throwing a faux-hipster engagement party for Emily and Greg, not being able to hug Kristen on her birthday and missing pizza and beer with my family in Columbus- I also miss the rest of you a whole lot!) and feeling exhausted by living in a constant state of confusion. One would think that with all my Dominican colloquialisms and booze recipes understanding simple daily plans would be… simple.

In the beginning of the summer the lady who took me out for Carnival asked me to teach her 13-year-old daughter to swim. I was thrilled because Peace Corps taught me that the summer would be painfully boring which would lead me to make bad decisions that would impair my ability to change the world. Fortunately my summer was not at all boring (check out the video of me scuba diving http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?v=10150277669768892) so today was my first free morning to go to the beach with the young lady.

I pulled myself out of my cry fest (with some help from a Dominican friend who made me a delicious breakfast that did not involve cold, canned cornbeef or hotdogs- as most Dominican breakfasts do) and did like the Peace Corps instructed and went about my day instead of wallowing in my misery. I walked up to the girl’s house and her grandmother was outside peeling grapefruits. Her grandmother is in her 70’s and has been back and forth between the hospital and bedrest since I arrived. She instructed me to go in and start squeezing juice. I stared blankly until she brought me a knife, a juicer, a strainer and a pitcher and then she left. The girl came out almost ready to go followed closely by the grandmother- in her bathing suit (called bath suit in Dominica). We were at approximately 1 mile and 1,000 feet elevation from the beach. I started panicking. Was the grandmother coming swimming with us? How was I going to get her down the enormous hill? How was I going to get her back up the hill? Should I be teaching her to swim? How much sugar do I put in the juice that she keeps telling me “not so much sugar” before I’ve put in any sugar?

Granny finished dressing and the three of us headed down the hill with Granny taking the lead (apparently the past month she has been doing p90x- that is a joke but I have no idea how she went from bed rest to a speed walker). As she passed her friends on their porches she mocked them for their sicknesses that prevented them from going for a “sea bath”. Then Granny hailed a bus, told the driver “I vex with you for not having a drink by me” and “best you drop us at the sea” which got us a free ride down to the bay.

We reached the bay and before the girl and I had our towels out Granny was in the water swimming. She ran into some of her friends, arranged a ride back home for us and pulled down her bath suit to bathe topless while giving her granddaughter pointers on swimming back stroke and complaining about lazy Salisbury fisherman in kweyol.

The morning did not quell my feelings of absolute confusion but at least it changed my self-pity into comic relief.

Dominican Phrase Book: Words regarding the beach and swimming The Bay: the beach and the sea Bath suit: bathing suit Sea bath: going swimming in the sea Sea bath: the cure to any ailment

Test your knowledge: Ma Clem: Best you go by the bay for a sea bath to come back. Doe wet your hair. You lookin like you take too much stress. Erin: Just now. De lady is goin to make noise with me and den I go.

Sorry this is so late but nothing happened this week. Not a single thing. Just kidding. My friend Kyle, a Peace Corps Volunteer in St. Lucia, came to visit and it was awesome. We visited some beautiful places, I snorkeled for the first time, I lead us into a terribly dense, un-navigable forest where we got covered in ant bites, Kyle taught me to make homemade flour tortillas for our fish tacos with guacamole, and we visited another village’s feast and danced on the beach in a Tropical Storm warning (for Hurricane Irene before she became a hurricane) which reinforced that Salisbury is hands-down the best village in Dominica. Only about 150 people turned up for their feast (more would have shown up in Salisbury even if there was an actual hurricane) and they opened the night playing songs from Salisbury’s Reunion.

I’d like to use this opportunity to talk about riding the bus. The buses, as I’ve described before, are actually 15 passenger vans (pick-up trucks here are called vans) with flip-out seats in the aisle. One would think that people would file into the bus filling in all the seats to allow for ease of loading new passengers. When I first arrived in made me furious that instead people do not fill the bus in any logical way. People sit in the aisle seats before the rows are filled and for the 10th – 15th people getting on the bus half the bus unloads to let them on and reloads back into their seats. I sat balling up my hands and chewing on my cheek as what could be a 40-minute bus ride became an hour, in a non-air-conditioned van with 15+ people. Then I sat in the back row a few times. It is treacherous. There’s no air circulation, they cram 5 people into a row and every pothole feels like it is throwing you through the roof. So now I also climb in and out of the bus 4 or 5 times each morning to avoid the back row.

Buses are privately owned here. Usually on my bus home from town (I only go into town about once a week) someone on the bus will yell “Stop a while” in one of the villages we pass on the way to Salisbury. Sometimes he/she gets out of the bus to relieve his/her bladder on the side of the road. Sometimes another person runs up to the bus and collects a bag of chicken from a passenger on the bus. Sometimes the person gets out of the bus walks into the village and we all wait on the bus with no indication of what is happening for 5 – 10 minutes. Well, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. About a month ago I was walking up the road to drop something for a woman when a bus was passing down. I got in the bus and asked (questions here sound like demands which is an entirely different sense of confusion) the driver, “Reverse up the road a while for me to drop this for Auntie Connie.” Sure enough he proceeded to reverse 50 yards up the road to Connie’s house and made all the passengers wait while I went into Connie’s house to drop her package.

Dominican Phrase Book: Doe (pronounced like a female deer) means don’t. Sometimes I still have trouble figuring out if people are asking me a question, “Doe you go there?” (Do you go there?) or yelling at me, “Doe you go there!” (Don’t go there!) Patron at the Reunion Bar: Bush rum and I doe wan’ ice.Confused Peace Corps Volunteer: You do or you don’t want ice? Patron at the Reunion Bar: (louder) I DOE want ice. Confused Peace Corps Volunteer: I’m sorry I just don’t understand- do you want ice or not? Patron at Reunion Bar: Titus, gimme a bush rum and I doe wan’ ice. Titus: In a while. (Immediately brings the man a bush rum with no ice in it.)

Post-reunion Salisbury is in mourning. In the past week and a half two young boys have died in dangerous accidents. The first accident was during the second week of Reunion when a boy of 15 slipped to his death at a cliff named soloma (in kweyol: if you die, you die) where many young boys jump into the sea. Just hours after the boy had been buried another young man (around 23) was riding a motorbike that went out of control and ran into the house below my apartment. The boy died on the spot but ambulances in Dominica are not allowed to collect bodies of people declared dead so his body was left there for 2+ hours on Saturday night. My porch overlooks the steps the boy died on and I haven’t been able to sit on my porch since. It was the first dead person I have ever seen.

Salisbury is swarming with rumors. According to the bef (gossip) in the village the first boy to die was responsible for beating up and stealing the gold chain of a Haitian woman who attends my English Language class. The second boy who died allegedly bought the chain from the first boy. Thus the Salisbury’s “Curse of the Gold Chain” was born. The boy who bought the chain from the second boy buried it in the cemetery and a round the clock prayer circle for him has been formed.

I have many opinions about this but best (see below for grammatical problems) I do not share them with the internet. To sign up for the “Curse of the Gold Chain” mailing list email me.

Dominican Phrase Book: starting thoughts with “best”. “Best” is used in place of “Would you please…”, “I would appreciate if you…”, “I think you should…”.

Usage: Someone calls me on the phone to request that I deliver a Reunion T-shirt to them by 8 am.

Said person: Best you reach by 8 am when I make for work.

Erin: It would be better for me if you didn’t go to work today and instead passed by my home for the t-shirt.

Said person: That does sound like the best idea. You are such a good problem solver Erin!

Just kidding. I would never say that. Also I love the way “best” is used so much that when people use it I’ll jump as high as they want.

Your first Dominican recipe:

Peanut Punch:

1 bottle of cask rum (local rum that is not bottled that will burn your nose hairs off which you buy by bringing a container to someone’s home or a small shop which they fill up. Appropriate containers include: gas cans, Nalgene’s, empty rum bottles, to-go cups, etc. If you don’t live in Dominica best you use the cheapest, strongest clear rum you can find)

18 oz. of creamy peanut butter

2 cans of evaporated milk

2 cans of condensed milk

Vanilla essence

Nutmeg

Cinnamon

Water

Brown sugar

Blend whatever quantities you so desire until it is a creamy texture (like a melted milkshake) and tastes delicious. Bottle and serve over ice.

A picture of me and a guy I work with at the Oldie Goldie party (he is also a customs officer so you may see him when you reach Dominica):

Reunion is over. It feels a bit anti-climatic as it has been my only project since the end of June but I also feel incredibly relieved. Last night I woke up in a Reunion Event panic, feeling certain that there was an event about to happen that I had not yet prepared for. It was actually an earthquake, just a little tremor. Nothing to worry about according to my neighbors. We are sitting on 9 active volcanoes which makes it a bit scarier. I’d like a statue of me in a Bills t-shirt on the site if I die in an earthquake.

Describing Reunion is almost impossible. Hundreds of people from Salisbury, or whose parents were from Salisbury, came down from the rest of the Caribbean, the US, and the UK. Salisbury is a village of 1,800 so the 300 – 400 people who visited made a huge impact on the community. I loved meeting the Salisburians living abroad and it was fascinating to think about them having the opposite experiences I am having. Realizing all the cultural adjustments they face, without 2 months of training, was very humbling.

Friday night (July 29th) we hosted a Calypso show in our community- the show started around 10 pm and I left early at 3:30 am before it was done. As Wilmina (a Peace Corps visiting me) and I headed home we passed dozens of people heading down the road to get ready for Jouvert (a parade starting at 4:30 am that is a big moving party that follows a truck playing music). Around 5:00 am we woke up to hear Jouvert passing up the hill and at 6:00 am woke again to hear them passing back down the hill. We left my apartment around 6:30 am to head down to the Market Day event, which showcased the agriculture in the community. It was a hilarious experience. People had been up and drinking for 12 hours were dancing in the road alongside pious farmers who had set up booths to sell produce. After Market Day I headed into town to shop for the next three events (Saturday night’s jam, Sunday night’s jam and Monday’s beach day) as stores are closed on Sunday and Monday was a holiday. I was put in charge of buying 600 pounds of chicken thighs and wings, 15 pounds of goat, several rabbits and 2 gallons of local rum, which is bought in containers that we use for gas in the US. I didn’t realize that the next logical step would be skinning and cleaning the 400 pounds of chicken. Meg, Kelly and Jenna will remember when I moved in and asked how to cook boneless, skinless chicken breasts. That was about 2 years ago. Until Saturday I had still never cooked chicken that was not boneless, skinless chicken breasts. It was trial by fire as 4 of us cleaned and seasoned hundreds of pounds of chicken (please note that I was the slowest and least useful so I should not be complaining). Once everything smelled like raw chicken I returned home to shower and prepare myself for the party. Another Peace Corps, Jeff, had come to help and we headed to the party at around 9:30 pm with no idea that we would not be returning home until 7:30 am. At 9:00 am we were woken by a text message from the Peace Corps that a storm was headed right for Dominica and we should prepare ourselves to consolidate (gather all of our important possessions and head to a hotel in town). Jeff headed home and I prayed for consolidation to avoid an afternoon of cleaning chicken and a night of serving drinks in the bar. My wish was not granted but I had a wonderful night and made sure to “free myself up” that evening.

Luckily the rest of Reunion was a bit less hectic.

Dominican Phrase Book: “Making noise” “Noise” is a complaint or an argument. “We have noise” means we have a disagreement or “I’m angry with you about something”. Men are always telling me they have “noise” with me, generally because I don’t chat with them enough or dance with them. I’ve taken my Outward Bound training and now respond with “thanks for your feedback” which is confusing to everyone. “Making noise” is complaining loudly and angrily. During the first 4 days of Reunion we ran out of food at every event. People were always making noise at me about it.

Usage: The Chairman of the Reunion Committee and I were walking down to the last celebration of Reunion, a Block-o (block party) and the music truck had still not arrived. It was 9:30 pm and the party was scheduled to begin at 4 pm.Mr. Chairman: “Air-een, I’m not going down until the truck arrives, everyone’s going to be making too much noise.” Erin: “Wi, I’m not taking any noise. I’m going to tell them I didn’t know Block-os had music.”

I’m walking home from a meeting and the man I had yelled at months ago for trying to sell me fruit late at night stops me on the road. Angry man: “Air-een, I have noise with you!” Erin: “Yes?” Angry man: “You saying hi to me but never stopping and you never say my name, you say good afternoon, you making me vex (angry).” Erin: “Thanks for the feedback.”

I’ve been in Dominica for 6 months! This is the longest I’ve ever been away from Buffalo.

Reunion is still happening. I worked from 6 am on Saturday until 7:30 am on Sunday- almost 12 hours of that was serving drinks at a day-break (an all-night long party.) That was the first daybreak I made it through. On Monday we had our first emergency drill when Tropical Storm Emily passed us.

I have so much more to share but not enough time. Look forward to a mega-post next week!

For your Dominican phrase book: “Teefing” is stealing. It’s a derivative of thiefing (which I’m pretty sure is not a word). “Teef” is the noun, a stealer. Also involved with teefing is “touching.” Touching is not quite stealing but taking what is not yours without asking and giving it back eventually, maybe. Touching seems to be a less bad thing than teefing. People who teef and touch are not ostracized from the community which is fascinating to me.

Dominican lady: “He always touching things. He touched DaDa’s ring and the DVD. Every time he come by me he touching tings.”

Dominican man: “He a teef. He teefing my partner’ computer but da police not doing noting about it. He getting thumped (hit).”

Reunion is in full swing. I’ve been working from about 8 am until 1 am everyday. I finally got ants in my apartment. I’ve served booze at a Gospel Concert, stage managed a Beauty Pageant and just spent an hour on the phone trying to rent portable toilets (see Week “You just have to tell it like it is” to understand the humor in this). Regardless it is still an amazing time to be here. I’ve met hundreds of Dominicans living abroad and their pride and loyalty to Salisbury is remarkable.

For your Dominican phrase book: “Say chups” (sounds like “say chewps”) means sucking your teeth. People who have skyped me recently have probably noticed that I have begun “saying chups” a lot. Reunion has made “saying chups” a part of every conversation I have.

Best usage: My friend and I were talking about her car having problems, a man walked up drinking a beer at 11 am and watching us work. Man: “You needs a real man in yo’ life, like me.” Erin: Sucks teeth loudly Erin’s friend: “Awa (never), you even made the Peace Corps say chups.”

The Miss Salisbury Reunion 2011 Contestants in their evening wear.

The pre-Reunion lyme (party) at the Bar next to my apt, I said chups to a lot of people while bartending that night.

Check out one of the Reunion Songs here (we are making a cd that I will be sure to share!)

Hey y’all,

Reunion (the 16 day celebration my organization is planning) begins next week so I don’t have much time to write but I want to share a couple things.

On Sunday night in a meeting I was referred to as “Sister Erin” by several people. It was awesome. Dominicans use the prefix “Teacher”, “Auntie”, “Uncle”, “Sister” and “Brother” when referring to people in the community (or people they are actually related to which is almost everyone). This was my first time being called “Sister Erin” and it has a nice ring to it. Wouldn’t it be a great twist if I became a nun?

I saw 2 night rainbows this weekend! What’s that? Night rainbows can’t exist because science? Wrong. Night rainbows only happen during a full moon and they are much weaker than day rainbows because moonlight (or sun light reflected) is much weaker. This weekend was rainy and there was a full moon. My first night rainbow was coming right out of the sea on Friday night and on Saturday night while I was sitting on my porch a night rainbow came out just three houses below me. I didn’t get to take pictures but I’ve stolen a picture on the interwebs to show you how spectacular they are.

Finally for your Dominican phrase books: “Go to come back” I just figured out what this means on Friday. My host mom and sisters use is often but I never understood. It means “go quickly”.

Host mom: “I went to town to come back today for bills.” Erin: “Don’t you always come back from town?” Erin and Host mom: confused stares

Once I understood:

Host sister: “I’m going for the baby by Dana.” Erin: “I’m hungry, go to come back.”

And the rum shop under my home is officially a Buffalo Bills Backers Bar- check out the website

I want to tell you about my weekend but I’m pretty sure you are going to think that I’m on vacation and not actually in the Peace Corps. I promise you that I’m also doing plenty of work. It is just not very interesting most of the time. One of my tasks was to get permission from the government to have a monument built for reunion. I have spent 5 weeks writing letters, calling to follow up on the letters, sending new letters, delivering letters and being told to call non-working extensions. I gave a status update at a meeting last week and it was decided that we will just build a monument without getting permission.

On Friday I went into town and stopped at a new restaurant with a group of other PCVs. I don’t cook meat here because it seems too hard (you have to clean the meat yourself) so I was thrilled to order a hamburger. The menu had both ham burgers and beef burgers. When I asked what the difference was the cashier told me the beef burger was “bare” so I ordered the ham burger assuming it had lettuce, tomato, onion, etc. on it. Imagine my surprise when the ham burger came and it was a normal hamburger with a piece of fried boloney on it.

Later that night I was working at the Reunion Fundraising Bar when a Dominican friend came to hang out. Our conversation veered into opinions about homosexuality (his argument involved nature and holes in our bodies). It progressed into a long discussion about biblical law, interracial marriage and the separation of church and state. One of his friends walked up to join us and my friend introduced this young man as his “bum partner” (which sounds more like “bum pardna” and means your closest friend). I laughed a little bit and asked him to repeat himself. Sure enough he repeated that this is one of his three “bum partners”. When people make homophobic comments from now on I’m going to remember that they probably have a couple “bum partners”.

Saturday night I went to a Calypso show with one of the other PCVs (Arianne) and her host family. The show was wonderful and I really enjoy her host family. Dominicans don’t seem to pee very often. I’ve never seen any of the teachers use the bathroom at school. People will spend all night at the Reunion bar (4+ hours) drinking and never go to the bathroom. It was no surprise that for the 400 people at the show there was one port-a-potty. What did surprise me was that when we walked up to use the port-a-potty there was a line- to pee outside the port-a-potty. I went into the port-a-potty and it was pristine but stepping into it was treacherous as upwards of 30 people had been using the port-a-potty as a blocker to use the bathroom.

The show was a competition in which the audience decides the winner. There were 10 performers and at the end they had us cheer to decide the winner. Two of the performers were clearly in the lead but as Arianne’s host sister told us, “you have to tell it like it is.” Eight performers were loudly booed and screamed “NOO” at. It was nothing like America where everyone would just receive various levels positive applause.

Sunday we went to the West Indies v. India cricket test match. I didn’t realize how much I’ve missed watching competitive sports. It was awesome. A test match lasts 5 full days. They start playing at 9:30 am, play until lunch time at 1:00 pm, pick up again at around 1:30 pm, play until tea time(!) at 3:30 pm and then play until the light gets bad. I can’t imagine standing in the sun for 5 days in a row. A lot of the players wear zinc all over their faces to protect them from the sun.

The game ended at around 5 pm because the captains decided that it would most likely end in a draw so they may as well just stop playing; “it’s a gentleman’s game.”

My best friend, I’m not sure that he is aware of having this honor, is a 74-year-old man who lives just down the road from me. From the first time Norris invited me up for a rum and coke after I sat through a 45 minute discussion about how to divide into cleaning groups for my cooking class I knew he would be my best friend.

Weekly he and his wife call me up to sit on their porch overlooking the sea, have a drink and share some wisdom with me. I love when people share wisdom with me. Norris loves sharing wisdom. He also loves Johnny Cash, questionable jokes (imagine the second time I visited him he told me what ended up being a rather PG joke about a 40 year-old woman and her vibrator) and telling stories about Dominica in the 1950’s.

On Thursday morning I left school around 11 am because the boy I tutor was absent. On my way home Norris and Velma invited me up to join them for a coffee break. I sat down on the porch and Norris asked if he could fix me something, I said “yes” and was looking forward to a cup of coffee. Then I noticed that both Velma and Norris were drinking rum and cokes. Just like that Norris brought me out a rum and coke and I was drinking hard liquor before noon.

The three of us sat on the porch and Norris gave me one of the best pieces of advice, “When you’re a 20 year-old you can only think like a 20 year-old and when you’re a 50 year-old you can only think like a 50 year-old” in reference to feeling regret about decisions one has made in the past.

Right after this a woman in her 90’s stopped on the road in front of the house and started angrily yelling in patois (kweyol). The porch is perpendicular to the road so we could see her but she didn’t turn to face the porch, she just yelled up the road. Norris responded and it appeared they were having a conversation except that she was yelling as loud as she could but didn’t seem to be angry at Norris. The only words I picked up were “pa twavay” (not working) and “manje” (eat). After about 5 minutes of yelling she left and Norris looked at me and laughed. He then explained that she is in a fight with her niece who lives just behind Norris. She won’t talk to her niece so instead she has loud conversations with Norris to express her anger at her niece who can hear everything she is saying as she yells up the road.

Since that was explained a whole world of loud conversations has begun to make sense to me. Why the woman across the street yells over to the shop below my house to complain about the builders while they can hear. Why people yell out their windows about their neighbors leaving trash out. Why Sheriff stands a foot away from guys and loudly tells me all about them. Culture.

Additionally Norris saw a ripe soursop (a fruit that tastes remarkably similar to juicy fruit gum) 10 feet up in a tree and proceeded to climb up into the tree with his knife and cut it down. I hope I can do that when I’m 74.

A very special thank you to those who have donated to Hands Across the Sea on Salisbury's behalf! When I come home I promise to loudly yell at your neighbors about your generosity.

Understanding Dominica: "God willing" is used here to close any statement about action.

Me: "I'll see you this evening for the disaster preparedness meeting."Other person: "God willing I'll be there."

Me: "Can you call the Ministry tomorrow?"Other person: "God willing I'll call tomorrow."

Other person: "Air-een, come awhile."Me: "Just now, God willing." (That means I'm never going to come- God just wasn't willing it)

The Buffalo Bills Backers group has finally gotten back to me regarding the prominent fan base in Salisbury. See below:

On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 8:17 AM, BUF-Bills Backers <BillsBackers@bills.nfl.net> wrote:

Thank you Erin, We will update our map. Please allow a day or two for the system to refresh. Go Bills! Bills Backers International

On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 8:29 AM, BUF-Bills Backers <BillsBackers@bills.nfl.net> wrote:

Erin, Do you have a more specific address for this location? We need a physical street address to add your group to the map. Bills Backers International sozanski to BUF-Bills show details 8:58 AM

Hi,

Unfortunately most of the roads in Dominica don't have names but below is a google map with the exact location- hope this helps!

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?authuser=0&vps=2&jsv=352d&ie=UTF8&hl=en&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=213234211959371524298.0004a6dbc8333037b70b1

Please let me know if a different mapping format would be better. Go Bills!

Thanks,

Erin

I was quite hungry this afternoon but I’m almost out of stove gas so I wanted to cook something quick. I had a box of Macaroni and Cheese that was my only “easy” meal. I checked the expiration date, because it is kosher here to sell things past their expiration date, and I still had 3 months to eat it. I turned on the water and it ran a murky shade of beige. I left the water on for a while hoping it would clear up. It didn’t. I figured as I’m just using the water to boil pasta its fine if it is a little dirty, besides I’m boiling it first. So I used the murky water and cooked my pasta. Then I had a big internal debate about milk. I get condensed milk here and you’re supposed to mix it with equal parts water- what about dirty water though? Unfortunately my decision was moot because when I poured the cheese powder on my noodles it was the color of rust and smelled of dirty, moldy, chemical cheese.

I considered it but ultimately could not bring myself to eat this appalling mixture, which created a huge problem. Garbage is picked up on Fridays here. There is not an outdoor garbage bin. On Friday morning I walk my bag of trash to the pile on the other side of the road. If you put it out on any day other than Friday* and someone sees you you’ll be mentioned at the next SEC meeting (the group I work for). As there is nowhere to store my garbage outside of my apartment during the week and Dominica is quite warm I quickly learned that I can’t actually throw away food (I’m in an apartment and don’t have access to compost but I appreciate the suggestion in advance) except on Fridays. So the disgusting Macaroni and Cheese went into a Tupperware container in my fridge where it will mock me until Friday morning when I can throw it away just before taking the garbage out.

This weekend a group of PCVs, a couple Dominicans and two French guys who no one seemed to know visited the 2nd largest boiling lake in the world. We all patted ourselves on the back for seeing this but to be honest I didn’t know boiling lakes existed until December. The boiling lake was just what you would imagine (see below) a big murky lake with rolling bubbles and an enormous cloud of steam above it. My favorite part was the Valley of Desolation. It appears to be right out of a science fiction novel. We trekked through a rain forest and began to descend onto a barren rust colored dried creek bed which led into a grey rocky wasteland. The volcanic activity underground causes small puddles all around to steam, bubble and hiss. The rivers flow white and bright blue and are opaque. The water changes between hot and cold throughout the streams with no noticeable rhyme or reason. It is incredible. (see below)

*I tried once to wait until really late at night so as not to be seen but the paro (homeless guy) who sits in the parking lot next to my apartment seems to be awake all night.

Soaking our feet in a hot sulfur stream.

Can you pick out the french guys?

See how it boils?

Approaching the boiling lake.

The creepy Valley of Desolation.