I am trying to catch up on my PC life paso a paso!

Last month my V-ball girls participated in a 3 day Volleyball tournament with other Peace Corps teams. It was such a great tournament. We held it in the South East part of the country in an Ecological friendly camp site called Rancho Ecologico Campeche. There were 1o teams competing.

It was pretty intense, Dominicans can be pretty competitive. My team did very well even though they did not win first place. They advanced to the finals. It was a great learning experience for all the teams. Here are some pictures of my team, their coach and their PC Volunteer (me):

Wow, it's been a long time since I have written. Well during my last year in the campo of Los Limones de Pimentel I installed some water filters, participated in many youth conferences, finished an HIV prevention course with youth, taught lots of English, had another reading book club, and formed an all girls volleyball group. I decided to extend another year in the Peace Corps for many reasons. I mainly had no idea what I wanted to do in the U.S. I extended for a whole year with Peace Corps to be a Regional PCV Leader in the city of Santiago. Basically this last year I have helped out with sites who want a volunteer, checking out the security of houses where a volunteer will be living and volunteer support. It has been a great year with so many accomplishments. On top of being a RPCVL I have also been working with my volleyball girls on a bunch of tournaments as well as a library in the school of Los Limones. It's been so great! My Spanish has also gotten so much better. I will be putting up some pictures later of my library and my v-ball girls.

So I have had the wonderful luck of getting this weird infection under my right armpit. Ok so first I thought it was a pimple but then it just kept getting bigger and bigger, until it was well a quarter size. I actually had to walk around with my arm on my waist because it hurt to have my arm down. I didn't know what it was. However, the people in my community did. They kept giving me advice about how to cure it. One guy told me I should talk to it and tell it good night in the morning and good morning in the night. Haha, another person told me to put gasoline on it. Well that didn't sound very safe. Someone else told me to put a lemon leaf on it. Hmmm.....I was told by the Peace corps doctor to press a warm towel on it, that sounded about right....so I did and the next day i noticed that it was draining out from two holes. Right, it was so disgusting I almost threw up. I spent the whole day in pain squeezing out crap from this "infected pour". It was too gross. Appartently this happens a lot in tropical climates. Great!! So 2 weeks later after this one kinda cleared up I felt another one coming out. Shit, well this time before it could get any bigger I put a hot towel on it to keep it from getting big. So for the next 10 months this will probably reacure many times, but now I know what to do...

Last month in November I saw Juanes, the love of my life in Santo Domingo. The concert was amazing. It was inside a medium sized stadium. Our seats were all the way in the back, yes nosebleed seats. Juanes and his band looked like little ants, but the 2 large screens helped us see him better. Of course this is not part of my Peace Corps job but hey, ya gotta live a little right?

It's been a while. Well I've been really busy dealing with my really intense youth group and some mini projects in the community. For about 2 months I have been helping my youth group give presentations to 8th and 7th graders about healthy decision making. It's been a blast for the most part. However, I've had to battle it out with some very strong youth personalities. I've got one youth that I am always struggling with (I think she is bipolar). One day she thinks I am the coolest person in the world and the next day she hates me. I've realized that sometimes you just got to let things go. Can't change someone that does not want to change.

So I spent another birthday in the Dominican Republic. The youth threw me a surprise birthday party. It was great. There were a lot of pictures taken and lots of dancing. Since I have arrived in my site I have felt very welcomed by many people. It is such a great feeling. Here is a picture of my birthday. Dominican kids are crazy fun!

October 12, 2008

Softball shots

I love going to softball games here whether it’s the men’s team or the women’s team. People get so into it. I’ve asked the men’s team why is it that they play softball and not baseball. Well they told me that baseball is played by the professionals. I guess my facial expression gave away my confusion because some of the guys were like, that’s just how it is. Also, they don’t just play one game they play two. At first I remember I was so tired once the second game started. Now I actually enjoy it. The reason why both teams play 2 games back to back is because Dominicans do not like to lose. If they lose the first game they at least have another chance to win the second game. However, no one ever seems to care who won the first game. The second game is always the one that counts.

So today was the start of a big tournament between the men’s teams from different surrounding sites. It started off wonderful even though the team from my site lost the first game. I guess it’s not that different from games back in the states, people drink beer and cheer for their team. Well...there are no hotdogs, you have to sit on the grass or stand, and not only do the fans drink alcohol but the players as well. By the end of the last game most of the players are always drunk. Somehow they still make honruns (homeruns) and never pass out from heat exhaustion. The second game was played by two other teams. The team from my site played the last game but weren’t able to finish it. There were 2 more innings left. A 20 minute argument broke out about the way the ball was pitched. Well finally they started playing again. Again, the ball was pitched wrong and some one pointed it out. As I’m sitting on the grass I see the guy on first base pull out a gun from his back pocket. This guy is crazy, all this time he was running with a gun in his pocket. He shoots it up in the air and I see others from that team start pulling out their guns and shooting them too. People scattered and ran out of the baseball field.

October 11, 2008

Saturday Morning

I woke up at around 7am to the familiar noisy motos whizzing by my house. Off to the parselas and konukos (rice fields and platano farms) I think to myself. An image came into my mind of 3 men on a small army green moto wearing stained worn out work clothes, a baseball cap and knee high black plastic work boots, the last man holding a shovel looking as though he might just slid off soon. I don’t need an alarm to get up, these noisy motos do the trick. I pull open the mosquitero and roll out of bed. UV, my dog, instantly crawls out from underneath my bed and starts licking my hand. I open my front gate door and watch UV dart out to chase the dirty white ducks. I’m still not sure who owns them and why they still haven’t been run over by a moto. The sun is out and the Haitian couple who own the colmado (grocery stand) across the street from me have just opened. A few neighbors are collecting water from the pipe coming out of the ground next to my house. There are 2, but only one pipe works and the water always comes out slow because the pompa (pump) has been broken for months. I walk to the back of my house into the kitchen and open my back door to take a look at the view of cows grazing. The owner of the house I live in decided to build the shower outside although it is still attached to the house. Before heading off into the dirt and pebble streets of the campo I take a bucket shower. I have come to enjoy these bucket showers. They are very refreshing. I have this huge green trash can that I fill up with water. There is a pipe outside the shower that shoots out water whenever I tell the neighbors to turn it on.

This Saturday morning felt so familiar, maybe because I almost have a year in site. Everything felt so normal. By 8 am mostly everyone was up doing some kind of work. The women with their oficios (chores) and the men working in the fields. I can here 3 different batchata songs blaring. In one house a young girl is dancing and singing to a batchata song will moppiaring (mopping) at the same time. My host sister once told me tu conoces a todo el mundo that I know everyone. In the campo if you pass by someone you must say hi out of respect. So that’s what I do, however that doesn’t mean that I know everyone’s name. But everyone definitely knows my name. I don’t know how many times I said hola or adios just this morning alone. People even say hi to my dog. Well, I think because to them I treat my dog like a person. As I walk through the main carretera (road) I can hear the local discoteca blaring a batchata song and I hear someone say diablo que batchata!, translation damn what a good batchata song. This Saturday morning people are busy, everywhere. Motos and camionetas pass me by, every now and then with a man sticking his head out and hissing at me, ha. In every small building I see people immersed in some kind of conversation, all people that I know. I wonder how they can have any kind of conversation with the music so loud. As I get closer to home my dog takes off in front of me to beat me home. Now it’s time to start lunch. Well I guess it’s gonna be rice, beans and chicken again. Hopefully the veggie man on his large tricycle passes by.

yup, that´s how volleyball is spelled here in the dominican republic and that´s what I have been playing since the youth and I cleaned up the court. These kids are crazy but fun. They are really good and really enjoy playing as a co-ed group. Of course everyone wants to play at the same time and there is no order. Oh yeah and the boys only come when the girls decide to play. So yesterday there was this huge argument that broke out because the boys and the girls wanted to play. I feel like it can be descibed as chaos, kinda like the first time I got on a bus in Santo Domingo where the buses do not have a destination written above the windsheild. You just kinda have to work with it. No one left upset though, to my surprise.

July 3, 2008

Cleaning the “cancha”

Last night as well as tonight I rallied up about 10 youth to clean up the almost demolished basketball court in the elementary school. Apparently the school was being remodeled last year but the engineer mysteriously disappeared (with the money I’m sure) halfway through finishing up. Well, actually it doesn’t look like they did much but put up a wall made of huge cement blocks around school. They left an unfinished classroom with just the walls up and a torn up basketball court. The workers were using the floor of the court to mix up the cement and decided to leave the rocks and pieces of cement on the court. Which means that throughout the school year kids were playing on that court, sliding on the rocks and sand and grating their skin off. An image would always come to my mind whenever I would see these kids fall, a cheese grater, but only it’s not cheese being grated but skin. Gross.

Anyways, we spent hours cleaning all that rubbish. So now that we have a semi clean/ and not so dangerous basketball court I can start my youth volleyball team. Just another project I can add to my project list.

July 4, 2008

4th of July Peace Corps style

Umm....ok this was a Mana concert last month but, who has fireworks after a concert?! I have spent this independence day in the campo, teaching english, cooking rice and beans, drinking coke/brugal and dancing Batchata and Mernengue. Well, not in that order. It’s been a good day.

Mangos

So many mangos. It is mango season and I have been eating mangos like it’s nobody’s business. My frigde is full of mangos. The mango trees are full of mangos. I've been hit by a mango falling off of the tree several times. They fall hard. The pass time here is eating all the mangos that have fallen off of the tree and then watching and waiting for more mangos to fall down. Yeah sometimes that can get pretty boring for me. I am pretty lucky because people come to my house to give me bags of mangos. I'm sure they say something like, the Americana loves mangos.

For the last 2 weeks it has been raining off and on in my village. I kinda, secretly hate when it rains because the streets here are made of dirt and rocks. I am slowly learning how to walk in the mud here. It's pretty gross, actually sometimes I choose not to go oustide. Well, I don't have much of a choice because my street gets flooded since sewers do not exist in small villages. It looks like a small river infront of my house when it rains a lot. Most people stay at home until the rain stops and the sun come out to dry up the mud. Yeah it's weird, it rains and soon after it stops the sun comes out and it's hot again. I never complain about the rain to the people in the village because most people here collect rain water to drink, wash and/or bath in. I myself was bathing in rain water when I was living with my host family. It's not smart to drink it though if it is not boiled. Now I get water out of a pipe outside of my house. But most people do not have the luxury of having a pipe sticking out of the ground in their backyard.

May 12, 2008

Rolling Blackouts?

I guess that’s the term. I still haven’t gotten use to these blackouts. Its sucks. I have to plan my life around them. You really never know when the government is going to turn off the lights.

May 11, 2008

Campo Life

Lately I have been taking 2 showers a day, one in the morning and one right before dinner. I have to because it is so hot and there is so much dirt flying around. Many Dominicans who live in the campo where there are no paved roads take 2 to 3 showers a day because of the dirt. So... maybe I am turning Dominican.

I am gradually creating a schedule for myself starting with my showers. Monday through Thursday I teach English in the evening. My adult class is on Mondays and Wednesdays and my youth class is Tuesdays and Thursdays. I teach in the elementary school, sometimes the light goes out so I have to end class. There are rolling blackouts everyday here. I enjoy both classes, it has been a really great way to get to know the youth and get them involved in other things that I want to do. On Saturdays I teach a sexual education/HIV prevention class for the same youth kids that are in my English class. I have just started teaching a 2 month Business Plan class that teaches the students how to create a business plan. After the class is done the Peace Corps selects the best business plans and the students who are chosen get to present their plan in front of the judges in Santo Domingo at a National Conference. The winner/s get/s money to help start up the business. I am really excited because I have a really smart group of kids. Yeah, I don’t really know much about business but the Peace corps gives out manuals for classes like these and they train us. You just have to be up for it. Monday through Friday I go to the primary school and sometimes give presentations to the parents when they meet, I also help out during PE and other classes. Really, I’m just trying to see if I can start some kind of after school study program but that is going to take some time. So basically things start happening for me during the afternoon. During the mornings I have to clean up after my puppy, prep for my classes and sometimes go to the next site to check my email or buy stuff. So far my schedule rocks, my Fridays and Sundays are free (well , kinda, sometimes I have plans to visit other volunteers in their site or go into the capital). I also end up visiting people in my community when I don’t have much to do. It is a must that I visit my host family everyday at least once a day if not more. People get upset here if you don’t visit them on a regular basis. I really enjoy my Sundays because there is always a baseball game, so that’s fun. However, I only have energy to stay for one game, yeah they have like baseball marathons on Sundays.

So for now this is my life in the campo. It’s nice and chill. The times when my life isn’t chill is when I decide to leave for a few days and get together with other volunteers. It always seems like college again.

April 19, 2008

Living on my own

I finally moved into my house. My own house. After 5 months of pestering and stocking people in my community for available houses. It was tough because people don’t move a lot in the campo. Also, it is very rare for someone to live on their own, especially a woman. People kept saying ‘are you sure you want to live on your own, aren’t you scared?’ It is a decent house. The house is made out of these big ceramic blocks and the roof is made of tin. The walls do not reach the roof so I hear pretty much everything that is going on outside, for instance the cows mooing, snoring, farting, peeing ( oh that is because there are cows that live right behind my house) and the chickens/roosters. I also get interesting bugs crawling into my room. It is a good house, the landlord left the house with Dominican couches, a table with chairs, a set of rocking chairs for the porch in the front, and another set of rocking chairs for the house inside. I rock a lot. Also, the house has electricity always, even when there is a black out because this Dominican who lives across from me did some kind of wiring and connected my house to the house next door. They have this big battery called an inversol that allows them to always have electricity. Most people in my community do not have an inversol because it is expensive. So it sounds nice but there’s a few things that bite. First, the shower is outside. Well that’s not so bad because it is connected to the back of the house. But, there is something wrong with the pipes so sometimes I don’t have water. So I have to fill up a big bucket with water just in case I don’t have any for the next day. Okay so that isn’t too bad, what really sucks is that I have to use a latrine. Ok, so not only do I have to use a latrine, but I have to share it with another house. The owner of my house built a beautiful gazebo but forgot to build a latrine or just didn’t feel like it. Of course latrines are never nice to use but this one is really bad. I don’t think they ever clean it and there isn’t a lid so there are mosquitos flying out of the hole. I used it once and decided I would never use it again. Lately I have been using my host families latrine. It’s tough, supposedly the owner is going to build one with the money I give him for rent but that sounds unlikely. I knew this before moving in, I just felt that I could tough it out. I can tough it out but it just sucks. I also have a 3 month old puppy that likes to pee all over the floor during the night so that means I have to mop every morning. That takes up lots of water.

Ok but all in all, it is really nice to live on my own again and not to have to tell my host mother where I am going and when I will be back. It’s also nice to know that I will be able to cook and clean for myself. It’s great, especially now that I have a cute female puppy named lluvia which means rain in Spanish. My host sister named her, it was raining today when I brought her in. She also has blue eyes. I’m not sure if I am a fan though.

April 11, 2008

How are the platanos?

Yes, yesterday I found myself asking this exact question to my host father, well it was more like “Como estan los platanos”? Like nothing, we just started having a conversation about his platano farm. I wasn’t even trying to figure out what to say to break the awkward silence that sometimes occurs. I was actually serious when I asked this question. My host father has a platano farm close by and apparently his platanos are doing better than others. Also, he made more money off of his rice field than anyone in Los Limones during this growing season. So, of course the rice and platanos are doing well because there’s not a day that goes by without rice and boiled green platanos as the main dish. I do have to admit that the rice is good. People who own rice fields are now cutting the fields, drying the rice and putting the rice into sacs to sell. It seems like most people in my campo made a good profit. Whenever I sit down and start talking to someone they always bring up the rice as well as the bananas. Bananas are always in season so there is always room for talking about that.

The rice fields look beautiful...but the mosquitos suck. Up in the north, rice is what people live off of. It is their main income for many and they eat it like Mexicans eat tortillas. Everyday for lunch we have rice. For a while (a month maybe) I couldn’t even look at rice, I started getting grossed out whenever I saw someone else eating it. Then I started imagining that this would be my life for the next 2 years, eating rice everyday....for lunch. I couldn’t stomach it. I’ve also gained a lot of pounds eating rice everyday since August (like 10lbs, that’s a lot). Everyone in my house thought maybe I was sick because I kept refusing to eat it. I kept telling them I needed to give it some time. Eventually I started it up again. Now I’ve come to appreciate it. I look forward to eating rice for lunch. I just don’t eat as much as Dominicans eat.

Ayyyy Hombre. This weekend I went to La Vega for carnaval. The whole month of February is carnival which is a celebration of....well I don´t really know what they celebrate. I know it has something to do with Lent. Carnival is the most traditional popular festivity of the Dominican Republic. It goes back to the colony, on the eve of lent, when people in Santo domingo disguised themselves to imitate the European Shrovetide. It is celebrated on each Sunday afternoon with a parade of people dressed up in a very shimmery and c0lorful suits with very scary masks. It´s kinda like a masquerade. The part that I did not like was that these people dressed in colorful suits had these football things that were attached to a string and they were hitting people on there butts, very hard. I don´t know who came up with that but yeah, that´s part of the parade. Each masquerade group had a number of security guards to make sure chaos didn´t break out. At first I made sure that my butt was not facing the street. They only hit butts that were facing the street. Like I don´t think I´ve ever been so afraid of walking. I did notice that older people weren´t getting hit. Some of the masqueraders hit harder than others. At one point my sweater fell on the ground and I bent down to pick it up, securing my ass with my hands but that didn´t stop them. The first hit wasn´t too bad, but then I got 3 hits, one right after the other. Oh my goodness I almost cried. Like I was paralized, I think I stopped breathing for a while. There were so many people and it lasted until the sun went down. I guess for the most part it was fun, it was kinda chaotic at times. That same night Omega played. He is the mambo king in the DR. He is amazing. It was so much fun. It was a great weekend getting to know the city of La Vega, however, I don´t know if I will be back next year for carnaval. My butt is pretty brused up.

So I finally finished my community diagnostic. I had my 3 month In Service Training Session. It was great. Each volunteer had to bring at least one project partner. I brought the 2 that Peace Corps had assigned me to. We left at 5am on Monday on a moto. Then we caught a bus to Santo Domingo. From there we met up with the other volunteers and their project partners and headed to the conference. It was like an all exclusive gated area. The project partners stayed for 3 days. During those 3 days we presented out community diagnostic and worked on planning for this year. My presentation went well, I started off giving a brief discription about my community and then went into the methodology I used to collect data. I´m a rock star, I went to 100 houses and had my informal interviews with these families. I also drew a map of my community, ok well some people in the community helped to. I created a priority matrix to figure out what projects to start. I collected a lot of info from just talked to people, visiting the school and various meetings. I also did this one activity with the youth group where I split up the girls and boys and had them draw a map and put the places that they liked going to. I also gave them stickers to show what places were a threat to the community. Well......i found out that there are some really strong personallities. Some people stared arguing while others became very competative. Each group wanted their map to look better. They spent so much times getting the lines of the streets straight that they never got around to drawing the places they liked to visit. We ran out of time and I ended up not using the maps. I learned a lot that day though, like to put a time limit and start off with rules. Anyways, back to my 3month IST.....The plannification was the hard part because I was working with 2 youth kids. It was intense so we had to keep taking breaks. After all the project partners left we continued our training for the next 3 day. I was a little worried about sending my youth kids back by themselves but they called me when they arrived. I received so much info that I feel like my brain is about to explode. I want to do so much in my community but I know that I can´t do everything. I think I need to create another priority matrix on my community as well as my life! I´m about 30 minutes away from my site now, I know that I am going to start an english class and an after school study program.

Funny thing: when i walked into the computer lab the guy who works here totally smirked when he saw my big ass bulto (backpack). I really need to start packing light.

So I am really enjoying my site. No joke. Ok so sometimes I get really homesick but that is normal. I realized I haven't written about my site much. I am living in the north east part of the Dominican Republic. The Dominicans call the North the Cibao. The province is called Duarte. The campo is called Los Limones. You won´t find it on the map but it is in the middle of two pueblos called Pimentel and Las Guaranas which are on the map. I live in a pretty big campo, with over 3, ooo inhabitants. Paved roads do not exists, and most people here drive motos. The streets in this site are all made of rocks and dirt. So when it rains it can get pretty muddy The campo has a clinic, 2 churchs (Evangelical & Catholic), some tiny colmados where people buy juice, eggs, and such and a public elementary school. The main road that I need to use to get to the main city is really rough. I have to hold on tight to the motorist. There has been talk of getting that road fixed for so many years that it doesn't seem like it will ever happen. When it rains this road can get pretty slippery....which is why I try to stay home for fear of slidding off of the moto.

There is a lot of agriculture in this area, which makes for a pretty scenery. There are lots of coconut, guyaba, guanabana, banana, and palm trees. It looks very pretty from a foreigners perspective. There is also a rediculous amount of rice fields, which means lots of mosquitos. Most of the men start their days early working in the rice and banana fields while the women stay home to cook and clean.

For the most part it is a really peacefull area. The people are very nice and always willing to help.

People in the North East eat rice, beans and green bananas that they boil in water and salt. Sometimes after they boil the green bananas they mash it up, kinda like mashed potatos.....it´s okay, sometimes I try to trick myself into thinking I´m eating mashed potatos (it never works). It´s a lot of carbs, this is why I have gained so much weight here, about 12 lbs. Sometimes I think the way that they cook bananas here is kind of a waste because they taste so much better yellow. My host mother usually serves me a salad made of lettuce, cabbage and tomatos which makes me happy. I never realized how great salads are. The food isn´t great but it´s livable. I do enjoy the tostones which are made out of green bananas that are cut into thin slices and fried in oil. It´s similar to a potato chip.

I finally visited 100 houses ......yes I am that person who walks around with a clip board with a questionaire. The difference here is that people actually want to talk to me and don´t close their curtains when they see someone in their neighbor hood walking around with a clip board like in the States. I basically created a census and now have to present it with my project partner in a few weeks infront of other volunteers. I actually enjoyed the awkward moments I had with some of the people who had never been asked questions like ¨what do you think your community needs¨. Ok no I didn´t but I learned a lot about the community and it has helped in figuring out what projects I can start.

Leticia Hinojosa, PCV

Cuerpo de PazAvenida Bolivar 451, Gazcue

Apartado Postal 1412

Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Christmas is over, but I don't feel like it happened this year. Christmas in the DR was a big kick in the ass. It was very hard being away from my family for the holidays. Christmas Eve was nice because I spent it in church (I know, me in church crazy huh) and then had 2 dinners, one with my host family and the other with my project partner and her family. Christmas day was the big kick. I spent most of the day sitting around and playing cards. My family was very nice and tried to make me happy but it just wasn't working. It just wasn't the same. Instead of spending time with family people go out dancing and drinking. Sounds fun but it just wasn't Christmas.

News Years on the other hand was awesome. I spend it with many other volunteers on the beaches of Cabarete. It was great waiting for the new year on the beach. 2 days of laying out on the beach was like paradise. I was ready to get back to my site on the 2nd day though.

For the last 2 weeks I have been working on a community diagnostic. My life consists of going house to house and asking questions pertaining to what the community needs and what types of jobs are available to the people in my site. I am also attending every single neighborhood, youth and women's goup meeting as well as going to church. It is a great way to get a feel of what already exists in the community and what it needs. In mid February I will need to present this infront of other volunteers. It's interseting to see how people react to me, some will talk a lot while others have no idea what the community needs. I have realized that I actually enjoy aqward conversations. On Friday I woke up with a really bad sore throat, fever, chills and body aches. Ohh and a little diarhea. Hey this is my blog alright. I had a pretty rough week. I decided to come into the Capitol on Monday to see what was up. Not sure yet but I am on penecilin and am still feeling sick. I'm still here because it has actually turned out to be a nice get away even though i'm still sick. This in a nut shell is what has happened lately.

SO it stopped raining and now all the mud has dried. Now it´s not so dangerous to ride on a motoconcho to the next site to use the internet.

Since I got back to my site from Santiago things have been going well. It´s been kinda slow. This is mainly a catholic community. Every nite until Christmas eve there are ¨posadas¨ where a group of people get together and sing, each night at a different house. I have really been enjoying that. Last nite was a longer ¨posada¨because they used drums and more people showed up.

I am working on my community diagnostic (census) and am shooting to visit about 100 houses but we´ll see how that goes. I only have 15 so far and this is because when I visit a house I end up staying for like 2 or 3 hours talking.

Ok I finally started a blog. I don't know how often I will be updating this. It is kind of a challenge to get on the internet. I have to find a moto to take me to another site 20 minutes away and the road is kinda tretcherous. I gotta hold on tight to that driver.

On Tuesday morning I received the call to consolidate. I had to go to a hotel in Santiago. It was actually more dangerous to get to the hotel than to stay at my site. Oh Peace Corps. But it was fun to see others. The storm is over now but I am not allowed to go back to my site yet. I am one of the few who had to stay. I guess it's dangerous to get there. I'm hoping tomorrow I can leave. I really can't wait to get back to my site.