Is the same as an Ashley by any other name.Anali is what I go by these days. Or Ana or Analis. Ashley worked in the Capital, but not so great in the campo for CBT. The less capable tongues of the campo turn Ashley into “Ah-see”. Which sounds a lot like “Ah-sí”, meaning “oh, yes”, something that is said quite often and had me looking for the person calling my name frequently. I couldn’t deal
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Hello all
2 weeks in our community and things are going good. I have
found out that a few houses down slaughter a pig every Saturday morning first
come first come first serve. Apparently our host mom didn’t get there first and
we (everyone but Ashley) had what was called Morcilla, my dictionary says that
means black pudding but I don’t have a dictionary to tell me what black pudding
is. So
Danilo versus Hipolito.
Those are their first names. Danilo is a new candidate of the same party
currently in power. Hipolito was
President before in the early 2000’s, I believe. I don’t/didn’t know very much about the
candidates, and as PCV’s, we’re not supposed to get involved or actively choose
sides in anyway. But I do know that
Hipolito is a little bonkers. From word
of mouth, I know
We send the happiest (belated) Mother’s Day greetings to all
the fabulous mothers out there. Without you wild, crazy, shoeless, hungry
children would roam the Earth like stray dogs.
Thank you for all that you do and the sacrifices you make.
Today, Sunday the 27th of May is Mother's Day here in the DR, so in a way, I'm right on time :)
If 25 is silver, 40 is ruby, and 50 is gold, 5 is machete.
Because that’s what we bought each other in celebration of 50 years of total
marital bliss.
la lucha
We’re also planning a 2 day trip to the beach sometime this
month for an actual celebration of our 5 years and Mr. X’s 30th
Birthday. What did I get him for this
birthday? The most romantic thing I could think of: Rubber Boots.
Como la vaca dice,
“Moooochas Gracias!” to the people out there that have been so kind to send us
goodies.
Thank you to my family
for: the Cadbury mini eggs (can’t have enough), M&Ms, beef jerky, suckers,
tampons, tissues, insoles for my rubber boots and cards of love.
Thank you to Andrea
for: the notebooks with kittens, fairys, spiderman, and Mario bro’s, Cadbury
Mini Eggs (still can’t
A 5 day event that begins with meeting your project partners
that you will be working with for the next 2 years, directly followed by ½
moving to your site for a 4 day visit.
Legend has it that Project Partner Day, or Community Entry Day (as they
now call it) is the most awkward day of your service. Mine was slightly more
awkward due to health issues.
Health Aliments I experienced during
On the 9th of May, 2012, Group 517-01-12
consisting of 40 Americans were sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers, the same 40
people that first met in Washington D.C. for the first time on February 28th,
the same 40 people that have become friends through the grueling process that
is the life of a PC trainee.
Las Mujeres
Los Hombres
Swearing in
Other than the periodic recitation
CBT Week 4
·
Learned about the construction
of spring boxes (toma) aka the structure that captures the water for our
systems.
·
Built a Toma
·
Connected galvanized steel
pipes to the toma and to the water system on a slope, in the mud, by hand.
·
Built 2 tapstands and 2 houses
·
Attended a “Somos Mujeres” (We
are Women) conference.
·
4th &
As of 8am this morning, CBT is officially over. Its been a long 5 weeks and a short 5 weeks. It seems like it just started yesterday but when I think about how much we've learned and the relationships I've made, it seems like a couple of months.
Yesterday afternoon, we had a little ceremony/going away party. Our trainer old some nice stories, especially since he is just about to move back to
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CBT Week 3
Tank Week!
This week, we built a water tank! We use a
technique called Ferrocement which involves a cage of metal and chicken wire
incased in layers of cement. It is
faster, cheaper, easier, lighter, better than stone masonry. But still a lot of work. Especially when the
tank site is up a muddy hill and the truck carrying supplies can’t make it all
the way up. Out tank is
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1st Dominican Birthday Party
It was Myra’s birthday, Simona’s host
sister. She was turning something a
little more than 15. We all chipped in to buy a big cake as a surprise. A massive heavy beautiful cake that I
expertly got to the party unharmed. I’m
sure they have regular birthday candles here, but that’s not what was
bought. Instead, we had a torch, a
firework really. I ran to the
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April 2-6
CBT Week 2
·
Learned about water
contamination & water borne illnesses
·
Learned about different types
of latrines
·
Visited current latrines
·
Built a Caseta (the house over
the hole of a latrine)
·
Lead Water Committee meeting #2
·
Lots o Spanish
·
Learned about the importance of
establishing a working water committee
General
Objective: Increase the sustainable access of
drinkable water and basic sanitation services to 404 low-income families living
in rural villages of the Dominican Republic.
Specific
Objective #1 : By FY 2013, 6 HE PVCs will
facilitate the construction of 6 gravity flow aqueducts.
Specific
Objective #2 : By FY 2014, 6 HE PCVs will
facilitate the orientation of 404 families.
Walker, another volunteer has a flickr site and takes pretty sweet pictures. He's in the same program as Mr. X so you might catch a glimpse of what they're doing in their CBT.
Walker's photo Stream - http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkerb104/
Heather, is another volunteer. She is the unofficial photographer of our group. She's in the education group so her pictures will provide the 3rd side of
Prepared and executed
introductions and a game for World Water Day including performing a song
as a reward for the winner. We have
this on video… you just try to take your eyes off the dancing girl.
Learned how to do a
community diagnostic
Community diagnostic –
interviews of 10 families, community maps, and more!
Presentation of Community
Diagnostic… In Spanish
Happy Birthday Gerry, Kevin, and Dave!
Happy 40th Anniversary Mom & Dad!
Happy St. Patty’s Day!
Happy anything else I may have missed.
Writing down all important dates was on my February to-do
list….
CBT #1
Most of the pictures... the internet was slow and not all got up in time. But here's my current house and some of the stuff we've been doing. Sorry for no captions, I'll try to get those up sometime!
I now live with my 2nd of 3 host families. I’ve been here a week and almost everything
is very different than it was in the city, except for a still have a pretty
sweet house.
Mi Casa
My family consists of my Host mom and dad, they’re both in their
60s. One of their sons also lives here,
but works as a handyman and has been in Jarabacoa (the nearby town) since my 1
full day here.
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Volunteer Visit
The volunteer visit is part learning how to
travel around the country, part experiencing a day in the life of a real
volunteer. Each time, the administrators
hope that 1-everyone comes back alive & 2-everyone still wants to be here
after seeing some of the conditions out there.
I’m pleased to say that we satisfy both of those hopes. We are even more committed than we were
PCDR Training Part 2
The endless lectures that scare us into
using our mosquitero and helmets are over.
The first 2.5 (or so) weeks of training is what they call “core
training” which covers safety and security, illness and injury in any form
those can take and giving us all the knowledge and tools to prevent anything
bad from happening. And more than you
ever want to know about diarrhea
Community Based Training. The core of the 10 week training
program. This is when each sector:
water, environment, education, splits up and heads to a community for 6 weeks
for hands on training. Myself, the other
5 water volunteers, our trainer, Mark, and 2 language teachers, will be heading
up into the main mountain range in the area of Jarabacoa – you can google
that. Mr. X, the swarm of
I’ve been writing a lot of posts, mostly because everything
is still new and there’s a lot to tell, but also because I have frequent access
to the internet… The same with emails and facebook, since I get that on our
kindle through 3G. But I’m really just spoiling you right now. Water volunteers are sometimes referred to as
the Marines of the PC because they send us to the remote places, the
At the end of this week, Mr X and I will set out on
transport to hopefully end up in a small town West of the , about 40 km from the Haitian border. The purpose, a visit to 2 current
volunteers. If we were both Environment
volunteers, we would probably be visiting a married couple, however there are
no water-environment married couples, currently, and the greater purpose is
work related –
Click the links below for some pictures!
PCDR-Training Part 1
Zona Colonial
During the first 2.5 weeks of training, and the last 1.5
weeks, we all live with our host families in a barrio. A barrio is just a neighborhood of a
city. We’re, more or less, in the
suburbs of Santo Domingo. The barrio is
interesting. Some people live very close
together, and some have large green spaces.
There is even a small green space on the way to the training center that
has 3 cows.
Some volunteers are already receiving packages so I have some tentative travel times. Large packages like boxes seem to take 6 to 8 weeks to arrive where small packages such as smallish envelopes and normal letters seem to take 2 to 4 weeks. I just bought some stamps, so if you send me something I will hit you back!
Besos!
Foooooood. Before we
left, we went to Jungle Jim’s in Cincinnati
with Mr.X’s family. Jungle Jims is a
GIANT food store with food from all over the world. To say they have everything would not be an
understatement, we were there for 3 hours and still didn’t see everything. Anywho. While in said store, Madre de Mr. X
was talking about how every country has their own starchy root vegetable
While here in Santo
Domingo for training, we are staying with a host
family. Families here in the DR come in
all shapes and sizes…. Most being large. However, our family is mostly just our
Dona, Julia, who is super awesome. Her
husband also lives here, Cesar, but we hardly see him. Here, like many other countries, it is
customary for young women to marry much older men. I feel like this
Hello! We made it to the DR alive and safe! We’ve actually been here a week already. In some ways it feels like its been much longer than a week and in other ways the time has flown by. Everything is going great. This country is very beautiful and so are it’s people, and I know this is only the tip of the iceberg. And I can already tell this is the most amazing thing I have ever done.
Please
Today, with the submission of some paperwork, we transformed from Peace Corps Invitees to Peace Corps Trainees!
Our bags weighed in right at 80 lbs, but I have yet to have to carry all 4 of my bags at once, and I'm not sure I could for more than 20 or so feet. Luckily, for both of today's flights we had the option of gate checking our carry on's, otherwise I'm not sure I could lift mine into
Currently, DR is 1 hour ahead of EST. We will be on the same time, when time "Spring's forward". Then, the DR will be 1 hour ahead, when time "Fall's back". Get it?
It's like EST without the daylight savings. For those of you on the west side, you'll either be 3 or 4 hours behind us.
= this and that
1. We'd like to announce the birth of our first nephew: Elijah James (on 2/20/12) The world now has one more ginger. Welcome little one! You will be much bigger the next time we see you!
2. Happy Birthday Joeline!
3. I've changed the layout & title of the blog, hope it doesn't confuse anyone.
4. Some people have asked of a way to send us money, for birthdays or
{Paraphrasing}
Homeless lady : Oooo, you got a funnel cake, can I have a piece?
Mr. X : Uh, no, this is for me and my wife. {Subtext: I'm not sharing a funnel cake with a homeless lady}
Homeless Lady : Well then can I have 5 bucks?
Mr. X : No.
Mr. X (to me) : Did she really just ask for 5 bucks? whatever happened to 'chaaaaange?'
And that is why you don't want to walk around Venice Beach
I have added a new page tab on the top of this blog for contact information. It contains details for sending up letters and packages. I will expand on this once we have more info. Also there is a link to a google doc that lists our emails, skype names, and eventually the phone number of our cell phones we'll have down there.
I will also eventually set up a tab for requests, favorite candies
Ahh, Purdue. Good ole Purdue. We spent 5 years here learning and turning into adults. Purdue is where we met. We were both in Freshman Engineering and met early our first semester in the Class of 1950 Lecture Hall. Our crossed paths grew thicker as he also lived on the same dorm floor as my then best friend, Jake. I became friends with the majority of that whole floor : Harrison 8South. And
We fly out of Louisville at 7am on February 28th and arrive in Washington DC at noon. Staging starts at 12:30 on the 28th (to which we'll obviously be late, but they scheduled it so whatever) and continues till 7pm that night. And, even if we went to sleep right at 7pm, we would only get 6 hours of sleep before we have to be up to check out of the hotel at 1:30am, flight to the DR leaves at 6am.
We've been in Indiana for 11 days now. We've been spending some quality time with everyone here and it seems we always have something to do whether its shopping for our remaining supplies, celebrating birthdays and a baby-to-be, crocheting a baby blanket, studying spanish, or working on pictures. The time here has gone fast so far and I don't see that changing. It only took us 44 hours total to
Day 23 is about where I stopped journaling, so it seems appropriate that it will also be where I stop blabbering so darn much about the trip.
Part 12 - North Carolina & Tennessee
'Merica - Part 12 - The Dragon
Day: 23-24
States: North Carolina (#16), Tennessee (#17)
We met up with the rest of the brothers, rode the Dragon - famous motorcycle ride with 318 curves within an 11-mile stretch.
At this time, on February 29th, we will be in the Dominican Republic. This 2.5 year process is almost over. Things are getting real.
This last month will kick off with a final goodbye to OB, our dearest friends, and Pizza Port. With a side of stuffing the rest of our belongings in a truck and trying to erase 5.5 years of dirt in our apartment.
Tuesday morning, we will set off on our 2nd cross
'Merica - Part 11 - The South
Day 20 - the Ark in Arkansas
Ferry #3, crossing Bull Shoals Lake. Northern Arkansas was hilly and green with winding roads, then it flattened out. We're officially in the South, which means people speak a different language than they do in other parts of this great country.
The detours and leaving Carla & Ronnie's later in the morning left us searching for our
Listen up friends and family!
We have just over 6 weeks left in the US, and just over one week left in San Diego. Here are some key dates for your information.
January 21 Going away party in Ocean Beach
January 25 Departing San Diego in a moving truck
January 27/28 Arriving in Southern Indiana
January 28 Miss O's 2nd Birthday
February 3 Ashley's 29th Birthday
A couple months back, I contacted several seed companies asking for seed donations to use in the PC-DR, for a garden project I'm planning to set up. All of the companies responded with (1) they have a formal request process or (2) no. Only one, the first company I contacted and my favorite place to buy seeds: Territorial Seed Company responded with "Yes, we'd love to. Expect a package in the new
'Merica - Part 10 - Missouri
Day 19 - Family in Missouri
In Kansas City, Missouri (there is a Kansas City, Kansas as well) we met up with X's Aunt Dee for the beginning of our BBQ tasting tour: Gates BBQ. X got a full rack and I got a KC Specialty: the burnt ends sandwich. We stuffed ourselves but still had half our meals to go. It was awesome meeting Aunt Dee for the first time and it
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