Here are some pictures from when Vanessa visited me here in the DR. i tried to put up some more but for some reason it only let me put up these five.

Vanessa posing with two of my neighbors

A peacock that was hanging out outside of our room when we visited some beaches in the south.

Drinking some delecious pina coladas

The beach

So here are some pictures of when my mom and aunt came to visit me here in the dominican republic. We visited Las Galeras in Samana and did some whale watching and lots of hanging out on the beach. The pictures afterwords are some of my house and the furniture that i have made, especially my new sweet bookcase. enjoy

This is my neighbors dog who bit me, how cute. Hes actually very nice most of the time.

My awesome table I made.

A picture of the group who is working on the fruit tree nursery.

Where we are going to put the nursery (a before picture)

Where the nursery will be, after having cleaned up a little bit.

The first group meeting discussing the tree nursery

My friend helping to lay cement in my new house.

Me

New house.

me and my host parents

english class

my guitar with a homemade capo

My latrine, also where i bath

Peanuts!!!

My table at its normal messy state

My bookcase and my friend playing guitar

My storage room, eventually i'll put in a couch.

My sweet fridge

well, i got 4 pictures up before my camara battery died, the rest of the pictures of my new house will be coming soon, next weekend when i am in the capital.

where i´m gonna plant my garden

working on my garden in the sun

So I have finally got some more pictures to post on my blog. I am not in any of them but I got lots of photos of the donas and also of some of my friends I hang out with everyday. This past Wednesday was the 7 year “cumpleanos” of my host mom’s mom. Basically it was the 7 year anniversary of when she died and when people die there are various fiesta type things (called a reza which means prayer as some of the people spend most of the day saying prayers, the rest sit outside talking and playing dominoes. Everyone eats). The 7 year one is the last one, so it is a bigger deal then all the rest. Needless to say there were a bunch of people over at my house for the majority of the day Wednesday. The pictures of cooking I have are from in the morning. You can see how most people cook here, they make a fire with three rocks around it and just set the pots on top. These pots were bigger then what they usually use (as this was food for way more people) but this is the same way my host mom, and the majority of the people here cook their meals everyday. The yellow stuff that the one dona is preparing, and that is in one of the big pots is called chenchen. It is a regional “speciality” here in the south of the DR. It is crushed corn that they boil for a while over the fire, then put banana leaves on top, put the lid on, then put coals on top of the lid so it cooks kinda like an oven. It basically looks like, and has the consistency of rice when it is done cooking, except that it is corn. The other pot is full of pork, and there is a third that has beans, but it has a top on. You can also see one of the donas plucking the chicken (they killed it litteraly 5 minutes before I took those pictures, so you know it was fresh).

For me most of the day I passed playing and watching dominoes, as well as my English class in the afternoon which has been going really well. The rest of the pictures are when I got back in the afternoon and went to my neighbors house to hang out with some of my friends there (and play guitar as I am sure you can guess). The kid who is holding the guitar by himself against the tree is the one who can actually play. He’s been teaching me how to play some bachata and meringue, and I teach him some stuff I know. He usually stops by my house a few nights a week to come and hang out and play guitar, which is nice to have some people to just chill with.

Thrusday in the morning i went for a relaxing run (i am up to running 7 1/2 miles now, mas o menos) and in the afternoon went to another cumpleanos afterwords where i spent the rest of the afternoon playing dominioes. Another relaxing day.

Friday, birthday time! I went for another run in the morning,only 5 miles since i wanted to take it a little easier for my birthday, and aftwerwards i went with some of my friends to eat some mangos in a field by my house. After this i went back home and played some dominoes with my host dad and some of the neighboors (in case you haven´t noticed i really like playing dominoes). In the afternoon i went to the river with my two friends to go swimming, or more like wading since the deepest part of the river was only about 2 feet deep (its pretty dry in my site right now). In the Afternoon i played some guitar and at night went to the colmado to drink some rum (they had already ran out of beer) and hang out with my friends. This was the first time i´ve drank in my campo, i just don´t think it would be good for my work if everybody thought i liked to go out drinking everyweekend, but since it was my birthday i felt like i had a good excuse. I had a lot of fun and actually got a little drunk (my stomach was not happy with me this morning, cheap rum is not the best thing for the body the day after). But overall i had a really good day yesterday, and today i am meeting up with some of my volunteer friends at another volunteer´s house to celebrate some more.

But everything at my site has been going pretty well. I am still teaching english classes, doing more interviews for my community diagnostic, and trying to get together some people in my community so we can start a fruit tree nursery. Right now i am trying to find where to get the little black bags where you plant the seeds so once i find them i hope i can move forward with the project. but we´ll see. THat is all for now but hope everyone is doing well at home. adios

So i have had a pretty busy last couple of weeks here. A few weeks ago I had creole language training, so i had a chance to go back to the capital for a few days (we started training there) and then to a batey (a hatian community) where we were at for the last few days of training. It was really nice to be in the capital for a bit. We went out to get pizza a couple of nights, i was able to go to the peace corp office to use internet and get another couple of books to bring back with me to site (which i have finished all but one at this point), and we even went to the mall to go see a movie! Walking through the mall i felt like i was back in the united states. there were all of the usuall stores, a food court, and even the people there were whiter (in my campo everyone is pretty dark skinned, as this was an upperclass mall many of the patrons were more well of dominicans, which at times means they have lighter colored skin). The rest of creole training in the batey was also pretty nice. I was expecting to be ruffing it as people keep telling us bateys are the poorest, worst off communities in the dominican republic, but when we got there it contraty to what i had though. there were two seperate dorm room type buildings, on for the guys one for the girls. we had screens on the windows (first place i have been with screens to keep bugs out), running water, a real toilet, and even showers that the water actually came down from above, i didn´t have to shower from a bucket. I guess there are lots of church groups that go to this batey to do work so i believe that is why that had such nice facilities for us. But it was pretty nice, i felt like i was back in school. we would have class in the morning, have lunch and a little time for a siesta, class in the afternoon, dinner, and then time to hang out talk and play dominoes or cards.

About a week and a half ago i went to San Juan de la Maguana, the major city here in my region, for an emergency cordinator meeting with other volunteers in the region. We basically just talked about a couple things, we got to meet some of the older volunteers in our region, and then we had to rest of the day off. THe volunteers from the new group all stayed the night there, actually we stayed in a pueblo called Juan de Herrera where one of our friends live, but we went to San Juan for the night as they were celebrating patrinales, the festival of the patron saint John the Babtist. We also went to eat at a mexican restuarant, suppsovily the best one in the country, which was really amazing. I ate guacamole and chips (they don´t eat guacamole here usually, even though there are tons of avocado), a taco, a flauta, all of which i smothered in delicious hot sauce (something else they don´t eat here). This was for me probably the highlight of my night, probably the highlight of my past two weeks since this was one of the best meals i have eaten since being here. But later in the night we went to the park where tons of people were hanging out and taking and drinking, and then later went to a club where all of the girls went dancing merengue and bachata. i danced a bit but mostly just sat drinking my rum. we went back to our hotel at about 3 in the morning then i woke up the next morning to head back to my house.

THe only downside of this whole trip was that on the car going to San Juan i somehow mangaged to loose my cellphone, so i was having to plan a trip to go to the capital to get another, which i was not to happy about considereing it would be expensive trip and only for one night, and also that wanted to stay in my campo as i had just left that weekend. So this past wednesday i came to the peublo to attend a meeting and then was plaining on taking the bus to santo domingo. First though, i went to go buy an empanada for my breakfast. At the empanada stand a man looked at me for a minute then said I know you, i have your cell phone. IT was the driver of the car that brought me to San Juan and he had my cell phone, which he gave back to me, and which also still had all of my minutes i had put on there. I was quite suprised, and also quite happy, because i had already considered it lost and it was such a coincidence to run into him at the empanada stand at exactly that moment, and that he was honest enough to return it. SO needless to say i never went back to the capital.

So besides my traveling, i have began to do interviews with people in my community for my diagonostic. its a little slow as sometimes it takes an hour to complete just one, not because it is long but because the people don´t understand what i am asking (when i ask what is the biggest envronmental problem in the community people tell me the road needs to be paved) or else we diverge into other things. Sometimes i talk to someone who is knowledgable and gives me some usefull information but the majority of them i haven´t really learned anything new, just that everyone just wants me to fix up there houses, which i am not here to do. I have also been attending more community meetings, going to little parties they have in my community at times (they call them cumpleanos, which means birthdays, but they are really to commemorate the 1 year, 5 year, or 7 year aniversary of when someone died), and still trying to figure out what i will be doing for projects in the next month. I have also been making my own peanut butter, which is delicious, have just planted and hoping will grow some mango, avocado, and passion fruit seeds, and hanging out with my friends in the community. Tomorrow i am starting with english classes, which shoud be interesting as i think my youngest students are going to be 6 and my oldest in their 50s, with all the ages in between. It might be kinda of chaotic, i am probably gonna have to split it up into 2 or 3 classes, but i´ll see tomorrow how many people will actually show up. people have a habit of saying they will come to meetings then not showing up, or being half an our late (which i am not going to tolerate in my class).

THis weekend for the 4th of july i am going to the Samana peninsula where abunch of volunteers are meeting up in a small resort town right on the beach to celebrate. so i am exicted to see some of my friends that i havent seen in a month and a half, as well as to hangout on the beach with a beer in my hand.

But thats all for now, i need to go do some things in the peublo then i am going to another volunteers house for the night (we work with the same group in the pueblo) to write up a charla (lecture) we are going to be giving about fuel effiencient stoves. hope everyone is doing well, and ill try to post something new in the coming weeks.

some of my friends playing music at a little fiesta by my house

my dad moving the cows to water them

view of some houses from the "cell phone" hill

another picture from the loma

the enramada at my house

the garden at my house, they just planted yucca here

May 30, 2009

So all of this stuff will probably be a week old by the time you read it because i am in a pueblo now at an internet cafe but the internet is not working, so i´ll have to wait untill another day to send it.

But every has been going pretty well the past two weeks that i have been here in Yabonico. Everyone here gets up around like 5 30 to start working, either milking cows or going out to work in the fields. I don´t get up quite that early, maybe around 7 30, or days when i want to come to the pueblo i have to get up earlier (like today) to catch the truck that leaves at 6 30. My days so far have consisted of pretty much similar things but in different orders. I have either been walking around the community trying to get to know people, which can take up lots of time, usually entire afternoons since my community is rather spread out. In the part i live at there are a little over a hundred houses, and in another part that takes about 40 minutes to walk to there are 30. then there are also 3 other sections that are in between those numbers, but this ones take a little bit longer to get to so i still haven´t walked to them yet. Also, i still have a bunch of other houses i have to go to in the first two sections first. But the people are all really nice for the most part. Most of the Doñas at the houses offer me a cup of coffee, juice, a mango (they are beginning to be in season), or a mint (which everyone loves and always has around here) when i stop by. Sometimes though i just kind of sit there awkardly for 10 minutes or so without haveing much to talk about, which is a little uncomfortable, but at other houses i sometimes am talking for a while which helps my spanish and also helps me learn more about the community. I have also been asking some about the projects people want me to help with here, and lots of them have told me they want a latrines, as many houses are lacking them here. As of now i have no idea of how to make latrines, but i think the Peace Corps is going to teach us in our in service training in two months, or i hope so. If not i´ll need to be looking it up on the internet.

The past Wednesday i actually helped one Doña make a compost pile at her house, which i was really excited about as this was the first project, albeit small, that i have done here. A lot of kids also want me to teach them english, but i think im gonna wait another month before starting that as i still wanna get a little bit better grasp on spanish first, and also im just not ready right now to teach a class. I hang out around the kids a lot too, playing hackey sack, trompo (its a spinning top they make out of wood that they throw/start by using a string, its pretty cool actually), or they like to try playing my guitar even though there is really only one kid who knows how to play anything. He did teach me a little merengue though which was good as the kids are always asking me to play merengue or bachata which i don´t know that well. They do get a kick when i play this one mariachi/flamenco song, they always say ¨play antinio banderas¨ because it sounds like a song he plays in the movie Desperado. It sometimes is a little annoying though because i can´t just sit and try to practice or learn songs by myself as it always attracts a crowd and i have to pass it around to everyone, but they are always sharing with me so i should be sharing as well.

I also go over to one of my negibhors house some nights because when there is electricty they are usually watching some sort of movie. Some of them are american movies, some are ones from here, and they also really like martial arts movies. We watch some Thai movie last night be couldn´t understand anything as they weren´t subtitles or translation from the original language, but there were lots of fighting scenes so i guess you could kinda of understand what was going on.

Other times though, i am just sitting around at my house not really doing anything, or wating for lunch so not wanting to get anywhere but then it takes an hour longer than i thought so i kinda of waste my mornings. But whenever i am sitting for like 2 hours or me i usually eventually just get up and walk around some, even if i don´t visit a house there are some cool trails through the forest and by the river. Yesterday after walking up to that one part of the community 40 minutes away i took the long way home, walking back along the river and enjoying the nature and all of the trees. When i was passing by a mango tree a ripe mango fell to the ground, which i retrieved, and it was probably the best mango i have ever eaten, it was super sweet and perfectly ripe. This is the second time i´ve walked by a mango tree to have one fall right at my feet, i feel like its gotta be a good sign or something.

But i also have attended a few community meetings the past two weeks, and a couple other random things. Today i bought a machete in the market, as they are probably the single most useful tool you can have in the Domincan Republic. The are used to chop wood, cut down trees, sharpen stakes , cut the grass, make toys, and more that i can´t thing of right now. I had to borrow one to cut sticks to the correct length when i was making the ¨fenced¨ area for the compost, but now i have my own for all the compost piles i´ll hopefully be making in the future.

But that is about all for now. I´m sure there are some things i´m forgetting, but hopefully i can touch on some different things the next time i write. Take care all.

Saturday June 6, 2009

Hey everybody,

I know it has been a while but the past two times i have come to town to try and use the internet, it hasn´t been working. I had actually wrote a blog post one of these days to post, but of course i forgot to bring my usb drive, and camara, with me to town today. So i´ll probably just be writing about the past week, and post the older blog later (I´m going to be in la capital sunday and monday so i should be able to get internet) But life has been pretty good here in Yabonico for the past 3 weeks. I have been doing lots of walking around trying to get to know the people in my community better, as well as the general geography and layout a little bit better as well. As my campo is made up of a bunch of smaller regions, i have been doing a lot of walking, but it is really nice scenerio walking through the hills, crossing the river, or exploring some of the forests so i don´t mind. All of the people i visit are always nice and welcoming, they usually offer me coffee, juice, or some sort of food (i usually turn down the food though as i am full most of the time).

This past week i did get sick though which was a little bit of a bummer. When i went to bed on Monday night i sudennly didn´t start feeling that well and i had a fever for the entire night and hence didn´t get much sleep. On tuesday morning i just layed in my bed in my room for a while as i still wasn´t feeling well. The only bad part of this is that my room gets really hot durring the day because we have a tin roof, and i don´t have that great of ventalation in my room. My parents here kept telling me to go sit outside where there was a little bit of a breeze, but that meant i would just be sitting in an uncomfortable chair when all i wanted to do was lay down, so it was worth it to stick out the heat. Later in the afternoon i was feeling a little bit better so i was sitting outside under the enramada where the breeze felt nice, when my project partner stopped by my house to tell me that the saftey and security officer for the Peace Corps had been trying to call me (i don´t have signal at my house) and that i needed to call her back immediatly. So i walked up the hill by my house where i go to use the phone. I tried calling her (the security-saftey cordinator) but her phone was busy. But after looking at my phone i saw that i had 4 new voice mails, which is quite a bit more than usuall for me in one day. I had messages from my emergency cordinator, a receptionist at the peace corps office, the security lady, all saying that the pork flu had arrived in the Dominican Republic and that if you had a fever over 100 (mine was 101.6) you needed to call the Peace Corp medic immediatly. So of course i was thinking to myself why did i have to choose this day to get sick, i wasn´t so much worried that i had the pig flu as that they were gonna make me come in to get checked out. But i called the medic and she said that i just had to call her the next day to tell her if my fever went down (which it did) and that since i had only one of the symtoms (the fever) i was proabably fine. So after calling all of the people i needed to call, i walked back to my house and just kinda of relaxed for the rest of the day to try to get better.

Wednesday i woke up early to go to a meeting for CODECAS, an environmental origanization i´m going to be working with that meets in the pueblo here in Las Matas. Only 4 of the members showed up, which i think is a normal thing since the week before when everyone showed up, the other volunteer who is working with the group told me it was the first tiem in 8 months everyone was there. But i was more there just begin integrating myself more into the group, as i don´t have any projects to bring to them at the moment. THey are currently working on stove projects but in different communities than the one i live in. In the afternoon i was waiting around my house because one of my bosses was coming to visit (he was visiting all the new environment volunteers these two weeks) but I didn´t know at what time so i didn´t want to be far from my house. He ended up coming at 5, and stayed for a bit making sure that everything was fine for me at my house and the community, so by the time he left it was a little to late to go try to do much else, so i just stayed by my house and went to one of my neighboors house to watch a movie.

Yesterday though i did get to go do something a little more interesting. I went to go watch this little plays that some kids in my community and also some kids from another community (they traveld to mine by car) performed for part of the community. The little theater group is supported by plan international, which is a big orginization that works with development who i will most likely be working with as well. The skits where about social issues such as the rights of children, communication within the family, and about fighting ignorance and intolerance in the community. I was really happy that i went and it was also good to see that the youth here are already motivated to form groups and talk about these important subjects that are often overlooked, especially in smaller campos. IT makes me feel like i will have an easier time once try to form some youth groups of my own that there is already a base of kids who are motivated to work.

But thats about it for now. THis upcoming week i´m going to the capital on sunday to begin Kreyol language training on Monday at the training center there, and then we are going to go to a batey (a small hatian communit, which usually form to work in the sugar industry) in the south to do more training there untill friday. So hopefully monday i´ll be able to put up the few pictures i got and try to take some more this week. Hope everyone is well back at home. Adios

So last week I finally figured out where I will be spending the next few years here in the Dominican Republic, and visited it over the weekend. I am in the region of San Juan and am locatated in a campo that is a little bit north of Las Matas de Farfan, the closest bigger city to me. My host family there is really nice, I live in a house with a host mom and dad, and one of their neighbors, an older women who lives alone, always is at my house helping with the cooking. My site is pretty dry, it doesn't really rain to often there, and its hot, but at least i am used to the heat from living in Florida. My community is pretty rural, most people have some farm land where they grow, sugarcane, yuca, juandules (they are pea like things that grow on little trees), and other root vegetables. Also a lot of people have cows and cow pastures, there are "gangs" of sheep and goats that roam the street, and tons of chickens at almost every house. Also most people have either a horse or donkey as their main mode of transportation (as well as the occasional motorcycle). I have electricity pretty regularly (but there are no internet cafes, its pretty remote place) and also water coming from a hose because a former peace corp volunteer helped to build an aqueduct there in previous years. I have cellphone signal when i climb up a little hill, but not in my house. I use a latrine for my bathroom, and also bath ouside in a little shed thing using water from buckets. I like my site but i think it'll take me a few weeks to get used to life out there, especially being more isolated than i have been the past 2 months. But there is a lot of projects i'll be able to do there.

Today we are going to be graduating and tomorrow we have an all volunteer conference where all the volunteers in the country come to Santo Domingo, which will be fun to get to meet all of the other volunteers. Then on Friday i go back to my site. But we are about to start the day, so thats all for now. Hope everyone doing well back home.

So we arivied back in Santo Domingo this past Tuesday. It was kinda sad to leave La Cumbre because i really like it there and like my family a bunch, but now we are one step closer to arriving in our actually sites. We actually won´t know what we are doing or where we are going untill tuesday, then we will go there for 5 days starting wednesday, then come back to Santo Domingo for a week, and then go back to our sites to live for two years. I really want to know where i´ll be going, i wish they would tell us sooner then the day before we go there... but what can you do.

This week we have been going to visit a volunteer who lives about an hour out of Santo Domingo and works with a national park trying to promote tourism. The park is on the beach and also includes a coral reef in the sea, and so the main revenue for the park is getting people to come in to go Scuba Diving. We actually got to go snorkeling one afternoon, but it started raining about an hour into it which didn´t make it quite as fun as it could have been, but it was still really cool. Also at the park they have some burial remains from the Caribe indians so we got to see some of the bones in the ¨museum¨ they had there.

One friday we went to a cave that was by his site and walked around in there for about 2 hours. The caves were cool but there has been lots of damage done to them on account that people go in to take the stalagtights to make carvings out of them to sell. That night we also went camping, but not in what i would consider in the traditional sense becaus we basically just set up our tents on the driveway of a person who lived by the cave. But it was still nice since all of us evnrionment volunteers were all haning out together for the night by the fire. But i´m gonna try to put up some more pictures now and will try to update again when i know where i´ll be living the next few years.

This is us during a trip to Santiago to visit one of the host sisters who went to the university there. We are at the momonument of heros.

Picutre of us in front of a map mural we painted at the school in La Cumbre

Picutre of my host mom in La Cumbre making cheese

finished product

Picutre of me and my host family

April 12, 2009

So I had another full, busy week full of activities. We had to do a mini-diagnostic in groups based on the communities we live in (there are 4 communities with a total distance of 9 kilometers between the first and last) that we have to present on Tuesday. I am pretty much finished with my part but we are meeting tomorrow as a group to go over all of our stuff one more time. We made a map of our community, which was fun because we went exploring down some of the roads that I might not otherwise have ventured down. I also did a family tree of my household, which was quite extensive considering the large size of family here. My mom has 9 other siblings, and my dad has I think around 17. So I fit in as many people as I could but there was not enough room on my poster to go back to far. I also had to do interviews with 3 people in the community which went alright, I sometimes got answers that were a little odd or lacked some depth but I think that’s how it is with people everyone. It reminded me of working at the survey lab and asking questions and getting responses that did not quite fit the question I had asked, but I still think I learned some things I can present for Tuesday. We also have to do the presentation in Spanish as we are also being evaluated on our Spanish at this point, but I am not to worried about this. I feel like my Spanish is doing pretty good. I can’t always think of the word I want to use or always use the right tense but I can usually get my point across at this point.

me with the neighborhood kids

I also started another project we have to do with my friend Sarah in making a compost pile at the conuco of one of the kids who lives next to me. We finished making the enclosed area we are gonna put the compost (it took a while with having to collect and chop the wood to length) and are going to collect everything to fill it up later this week hopefully on Wednesday.

compost pile with me and sarah, my host sister (on left) and another neigbor

On Thursday night our Spanish class met up our teachers house here to make an auyama pie. Auyama is like a type of squash so we basically were making pumpkin pie. It was a lot of fun and it turned out good, but it was kind of funny because all of Dominican women at the house at first were trying to tell us how to make it, even though they didn’t really even know what we were making. I think they had a hard time understanding the concept of a pie because they don’t really have pies here. We had to keep explaining that the crust was not supposed to rise, and that it wasn’t like a cake which is what I think they thought we were trying to make. But it all turned out well and I think everyone who tried it enjoyed it.

My spanish class, my spanish teacher (one on the far right bending down, with white shirt and green sweater), and other locals at Dona Nena's house (one in pink) with our finished auyama pie

On Friday we had a day of from class so I worked some on my part of the diagnostic project and in the afternoon some of us walked to one of the other communities about 3 kilometers away to hang out at one of our friends house there and drink tea. Overall it was a pretty low key day.

Yesterday me and two of my friends, Woodley and Andrea, went on a little hike down to look for a lagoon and a river that is somewhat close to my house. When we took a wrong turn in our search for the lagoon we stopped to ask some people who were outside eating lunch for directions. We ended up sitting down and talking with him for like a half hour, which has become a very common thing here. It is almost impossible to enter into someone’s house without them asking you to sit down and have some coffee, a soda or some juice even though they have never met us before. The people here are just super nice and friendly. After this we continued down to the river (we went to the lagoon after the river) and followed it down for a little bit. The river wasn’t that big, its more like a little stream. I don’t think there was much more than a foot of water in depth. Later that night all of us met up at the plaza where we had a few drinks and just sat around to chat. It is always nice when we can all get together as a group since we are all more spread out here. I think tonight we are going to go to the plaza because people want to go dance (last night the part upstairs where there is room to dance was closed). The people here will dance meringue and bachata for hours one end. I haven’t been able to escape it either, everytime I go out I have to dance with at least one or two people. The Dominicans think I’m crazy when I say that I don’t dance very much, so I guess I’m just gonna have to learn in order to fit in a little better here. But at least meringue is easy to dance, you don’t really have to move around all the much. But that’s all for now. Feliz Dia del Resurecion!

Saturday April 4, 2009

So first off, I have not had internet here in La Cumbre as much as I had originally thought. I actually haven’t been able to use internet at all since I’ve been here but am writing this in the morning at my house and am going to post when I am in Santiago later today along with the other post I wrote earlier this week but didn’t have internet to post it. So you guys will have lots to read!

But I have really enjoyed it here in La Cumbre. As I had mentioned it’s a smaller community so it is easier to just walk around and get to know everyone. My family here is really cool, I have a younger sister who is 11 years old who is usually around the house when I am and then 3 brothers who are 19, 21, and 23 (I think I’m not exactly sure about the middles age) but they are not usually around the house and I haven’t met one of them because I think he is away at the University. But my Dona and Don are really nice as well and there are always other people coming and going through my house. The town is super beautiful as it is on top of a hill and has a view of the valleys and mountains around it. La Cumbre actually means “the highest point on a hill” so is very fitting.

I also like the technical training here more so in Santo Domingo as we are doing more hands on projects and what not. So for example we went on a tour of a coffee farm and learned some about how to grow coffee, what trees are good to provide shade for the coffee, and a little about pest control in coffee fields. We also have walked through a bunch of conucos, which are mixed tropical gardens. At first when looking at the conucos they look just like a random collection of trees and bushes but in actuality ever plant/tree provides something to the farmer. The plants on most the conucos I have seen here include bananas, platanoes, coffee, cacoa (chocolate), pineapple, yucca, tayota (a vegetable that grows on a vine, I think its called the Mexican pear in the states), citrus trees (orange, lemon, and grapefruit), avacodo, these pea like pods called juandules (sp?), sweet potato, other root vegetables, celery type plants, and others all of which I can’t think of now. But it is really cool because at any given time of year there is something to harvest to eat for food and helps to balance the eco-system it creates due to the variety of things that are growing.

Another day we learned how to make living and dead barriers on the slopes of hills in order to help prevent soil erosion, as this is a big environmental problem here in the DR. We learned how to find the contours of the slope and either plant things such as lemon grass to help retain the soil or even just use dead wood and rocks to create a barrier along the contour that helps retain the soil when it rains. We practiced these two techniques at the coffee farm as well as at a conuco of one of the people of the town.

Yesterday we learned how to make and manage a compost pile and made two of them at the coffee farm for practice as well as learning how to make some other types of organic fertilizer using manure and the leaves of certain trees that are rich in nitrogen. I have also been slowly learning about different types of trees, plants, and vegetables such as how to recognize them and what their names are in Spanish which is something I’ve always wanted to know (being able to identify more trees and plants).

Besides the technical we still have Spanish class every morning to continue helping us with our Spanish. We watched a movie earlier this week, listen to music, and just have conversations to help us all learn. Its still really nice because the classes are small (my class has 5 volunteers and our language facilitator) which I think really helps the learning process. But one of the mornings our class walked to the monument for the Mirabal sisters, Las Mariposas (the butterflies), who were three sisters who lived under the dictator Trujillo and are well known for their part in the revolution to overthrow the dictator. They were eventually killed by Trujillo’s henchman in 1960 along a mountain road as they were returning from visiting their husbands in jail. Even though they tried to make it look like an accident (the henchman, after killing the sisters and the driver, pushed the car over a cliff) everyone knew they were murdered which increased the anti-Trujillo sentiment throughout the country. The place where they were killed is about 4 kilometers from my house here, and this is where the monument to commemorate them lays. It was really cool to see this especially since I had just finished reading “In the time of the Butterflies”, which is a book by Julia Alvarez that is about the Mirabal sisters, before I arrived in the DR.

Yesterday was the birthday of one of the volunteers here so we all went to his house last night and his mom made a cake for everyone to share. There was also a guitar there so people were playing guitar and singing for a lot of the night. It is another one of the volunteers birthdays today, as well as another one tomorrow so I think we are gonna try to do something else tonight and tomorrow as well, but I’m not exactly sure what yet. I think the plan for tonight is to meet at the play (baseball field) and then maybe go to a colmado to hang out. But we’ll see. But this is about all I can think of to write now. There are still some things I haven’t gotten a chance to tell you all but I’ve done so much since being here it would be very hard to write it all down. But hopefully I will have some more internet next week where we have our classes in the evening but as of now it’s not looking to promising. If nothing else hopefully I’ll be able to make it to Santiago again next weekend to do so more updates and check my mail. To everyone, take it easy and I’ll talk to you all later.

Tuesday March 31, 2009

So I have a lot to write about so we will see how far I get. This past Friday our two groups in training, the environmental group (I’m in this one) and the Information technology group split up. The information technology group went to the city where they are doing their technical training, I think its called el cebo but I’m not positive. Us environmentalists on Friday morning went to the Eastern regional conference of a group called Brigada Verde in the region of San Cristobal, a little to the west and south of Santo Domingo. Brigada Verde is one of the projects that the environmental development program here works with. Basically volunteers try to start and environmental awareness group in their communities (called Brigada Verde) that learn about the environmental issues here in the Dominican Republic as well as participate in community service activities such as trash cleanups at beaches, rivers, or along the roads. This conference had different Brigada Verde groups from the eastern region, and the focus of the conference was on how to run a summer camp in hopes that the groups would be able to start their own camps this upcoming summer.

Us new volunteers showed up at the ranch where the camp was being held, it was like a summer camp type place. When we got there we split up into different groups based upon our Spanish class and set up our “stations”. Half of us were going to set up an “obstacle course” the groups would have to go through before entering the camp that where supposed to encourage group strengthening, and the other half were going to do activities at night with the kids. My group was with the obstacle course so we had to set up quickly when we got there so we would be prepared when the kids arrived. There were I think 8 different stations/activities and each had a volunteer overseeing that station. The first station was to make nametags, the next the group had to use objects to cross a “river of fire” (they couldn’t touch the ground but had a chair, a board and some other objects to stand on to go from one side to the other), the next was a activity where everyone got in a circle and grabbed the hands of someone else in the circle (not next to them) and then had to untangle themselves without letting go so the persons whose hands each one was grapping was on either side of them. The fourth station, which I was at, we divided the group in two teams and one person on each team had a blindfold on, and their teammates had to take turns giving the blind folded person directions to find an object I had put on the ground. Next they did a jigsaw puzzle of the different regions of the Dominican Republic, after that they had to do a relay race where they ran to a stick, had to spin around it 8 times, and then try to run back to tag their teammate and they repeated until everyone had finished. The last activity was a drawing game where someone drew a picture then covered most of it, then someone else had to expand on the part that was uncovered then cover their drawing except for a little part, and so on until at the end there was a non-sensical drawing made up of 4 or 5 different little drawings. All of the games we tried to teach a lesson or have elements of group strengthening. So for example, in my activity, when it was over, I would talk about how sometimes we have to rely on others, our teammates, in order to obtain a goal. The person who was blindfolded had to have confianza (trust) in his/her teammates to not run him into a tree or other obstacles along the way, and the people giving directions had to be clear and concise or else their teammate would end up moving farther away from the ultimate goal: the object. But we had to do all of these activities in Spanish so this also helped with our language and was just a lot of fun because we would do these activities along with the kids. It was also a way to give examples of activities they could implement themselves if they were to start their own summer camp, as this was the overall theme of the conference.

After everyone had gone through the obstacle course we all ate lunch and afterwords everyone went to one of the pavilions where we had a couple presentations from volunteers and our technical trainer about how to funding for summer camps, issues that can be addressed, group strengthening techniques, how to recruit members for a Brigada Verde group and so on. By the time we had gone through all of the presentations it was time for dinner so we all ate and after dinner the other groups who hadn’t done the activities earlier split up the kids and did their activities with them.

The next day we had more presentations throughout the day, but also had a little bit of time to hang out and play with the kids. In the afternoon some of the volunteers and some of the kids got a game of ultimate Frisbee going which was a lot of fun. I also gave a presentation to the volunteers (we all have to do one about one subject or another and present it to each other) about interpretation. Basically it was supposed to teach techniques on how to interpret trails and other things for such activities as eco-tourism and I was able to used examples of when I volunteered at the museum of natural history at UF to explain how I interpreted exhibits and tried to keep the kids interested. Later that night there was a bonfire that everyone went to and where we made smores. We also were playing music together and singing as some of the kids from the youth group had brought some drums and other instruments and had a little meringue/borchata band going on and I had brought my guitar along. It was a lot of fun and another great way to interact with all of the kids who had come to the camp.

The next day we left before noon to head back to Santo Domingo but stopped by the beach for a little bit before returning back home. I was really excited to see the beach since I hadn’t been there since I arrived. It was super pretty and a relaxing activity to do before returning to the big city. On returning to the city I ate lunch at my house and hung out a little bit with my friends before I had to go back home to back because on Monday we left Santo Domingo to go a little town called La Cumbre where we are going to be living for 4 weeks for our technical training. I left early Monday morning and arrived here in La Cumbre for lunch with my new host family. They are super nice and I think I’ll like it here better than Santo Domingo because it is a super pretty town up in the mountains and is much smaller with much less noise and hustle and bustle. But I will write more later this week. Oh and I got a camara last week so hopefully I’ll be able to put up some pictures soon. Hasta luego.

So I got back from my volunteer visit yesterday, and I had a really awesome time. The volunteer I visited, Ryan, lives in a place called El Rubio up in the mountains in the region of Santiago. The first day I got there (Thursday) we just ate lunch in San Jose de las Matas, a bigger city near his site, before we continued on to his house in El Rubio. That night I went with him to a meeting he was having with two of his project partners where they discussed some of the plans such as the river clean up with the local school kids they had planned for the next day. After the meeting we went to the store to buy some food and make dinner at his house. He didn’t have any electricity that night, it kinda of comes and goes at will, so we had to cook by lantern light and a candle. It was really good dinner, we made carrots and beets, this wheat rice like stuff, and soya with curry spice and onions. It was nice especially since curry has been the biggest food I’ve missed since I’ve been here.

The next morning we woke up, and it had been raining the whole night before so they had to call of the river clean up that was planned because they feared the river would be too dangerous because of all the extra water that would be fueling the currents due to the large amount of rain; especially since it was with the kids. Instead he took me on a little tour of his town which took quite a while since he knew almost everyone there and we would stop to say hello to everyone we saw on the way. For lunch we went to his “host moms” house where we had rice, beans, and fried eggplant, and then started to go to a couple peoples houses because he had to find a host family for the new volunteer that will be going there after him. At each house we had were offered coffee or juice and at one house this really awesome coconut cake pastry. It was also interesting because in this particular town there are many people who have either lived in the US for a number of years or receive remittances from family members who live in the US. I think this made them especially friendly to Americans and loved just talking about day to day life here and there. We went back to the volunteers house in the evening, it had started raining again, and I took a nap for a little bit.

Later that night we went to one of his neighbor’s house were we just hung out and made plans for the next day. His neighbor was one of the owners of a radio station in a nearby city called Mao and we were going to spend the day with him there. We had a few drinks at his house before returning home to eat dinner and go to bed.

The next day we met up at his neighbors house, his name is Don Percio, and he drove us to Mao which is about an hour and half way from where we were in El Rubio. Part of the reason why it took that long to get there is that for about half the way the road was not paved so it was a pretty bumpy ride. They are actually gonna have a huelga (a strike) this Wednesday to try to get a stretch of road paved. When we got to Mao me and the other volunteer walked around the city a little bit and got some lunch then went back to the radio station where Ryan spoke on the radio a little bit about some environmental issues in his town and the broadcasters actually, on the spot, decided to go to El Rubio the following weekend in order to do a live broadcast about the environmental issues there, which is super cool. After that Don Percio, his brother, the brothers wife, 2 other guys that worked at the station, and me and Ryan went to a little bar where we hung out, drank some beers, and chatted through the afternoon. We left later in the evening and Don Percio took us back to his house where he cooked us dinner, and then we returned home to go to sleep.

When we woke up on Sunday we and walked out of the bedroom we were surprised to see that the rest of his house was covered in an inch or more of water. There was a leak in the ceiling in one of the back rooms and since it had been raining pretty much non-stop all weekend, and the door to that room had been closed, they water was probably building up until it finally went under the door and infiltrated the rest of the house. We spent the next hour or 2 trying to bail out his house. We got a lot of it out but there was still almost an inch of standing water in the back room when I left that he was going to have to continue to build up throughout the day. I was supposed to take a carro publico to get back to San Jose de las Matas but since it was raining everything was shut down so they were not running. I ended up having to take a bola, basically hitchhiking with a random guy that was going in my direction, in order to get to San Jose de las Matas and take the bus back to Santo Domingo. The guy was super nice, and I actually went to mass with him because he was stopping in another town first on the way to go to church, so it was that or not get to where I needed to go. It was actually interesting to see what a mass was like here, I am always interested in different religious practices, and it only took about an hour. After mass we finished driving the rest of the way and he dropped me off by a park and then I walked to the bus stop where I was going to meet my friend who visited a different volunteer in a nearby city so we would travel back to Santo Domingo together. When we met up I wanted to show her the picture of Ryan’s flooded house but when I looked for my camara in my bag it was not there. I realized that it had probably fallen out of my bag when in the car of the guy who gave me a ride because at one point I pulled out my notebook to write something down and wasn’t thinking that this was the pocket my camara was in. Looking back I can just see it happening and I just was clueless, I’m sure its just sitting on the floor of his car, and since this was just a random good sumaritan giving me a ride, there is no way to get in contact with him. But asi es la vida, I’ll just have to try to buy another camara at some point, whenever I have free time which probably won’t be for a few weeks but I’m sure I can bum some pictures from other people.

But on returning to Santo Domingo I just ate dinner, did some of my homework, and then went to bed early. This weekend our group is going to a Brigada Verde regional meeting, they are a youth group here in the DR, and our going to be doing activities with them all weekend then come back to Santo Domingo on Sunday. Then on Monday morning we leave for community based training which is in a smaller campo (town) where we are gonna be for 5 ½ weeks learning some more technical skills for our sector (environment), improving our Spanish, and also integrating with a new host family. I don’t know what my internet situation will be like there but hopefully there will be an internet café or something so I can stay in touch with everyone. But until then hope everyone is doing well. Bye for now.

So to continue… This past Saturday I woke up and went to go do yoga at a church near one of the volunteers house. There are a couple of people here who wanted to do yoga and one of the girls leads us through the exercises. I did yoga the first time last week and Saturday was my second time. It was definitely nice and it should help me with some flexibility and to stretch my back some, as well as just be some good overall exercise. I hope to continue doing it even though I have slacked off the past two days, but I think we are going to have a session this afternoon, so hopefully I’ll get back in the groove. After that me and 3 other people went into the city to a street that a couple music stores on it, and I bought a sweet new guitar! It is a classical guitar so it has vinyl strings which should make it easier to try to learn flamenco style guitar, which I had decided I would attempt to learn a few weeks ago. I have also been trying to grow out the nails on my right hand to aid myself in plucking the strings, which has been somewhat hard since I tend to pick my nails whenever they reach any type of length. But right now they are the longest they have been in a long time so I’m doing alright. The guitar and the case costed 3000 Dominican pesos, which is a little under 90 US dollars so it was a pretty good deal. I could have gotten one for half that price but this one is better quality and has a nice sound, so it was worth paying the price for it. I had also brought a little extra money just for this.

On Sunday we went to the Ciudad Colonial where a professor who lives in the city of Santiago in the Dominican Republic, whose specialty is in the history of the DR took us on a tour around the old city. We walked by the cathedral, the fortress, old houses, the house of the Diego Columbus (casa de Colon), and other old buildings as she told us some of the history of the sites, the city, and the country as a whole. It was nice to learn some more about the history of the city especially with our guide being an expert on the subject. After the tour a couple of us ate at a vegetarian restaurant close by before returning to our barrio where we relaxed and played some dominoes.

Monday and Tuesday were pretty normal days at training, we had Spanish classes and more orientation type things. For example, yesterday we learned some more about the different regions of the country and characteristics of these regions as well as some about the diversity of ecosystems and climates that are found here. We have sunny beaches, mangrove forests, tropical forests, arid land, valleys, mountains (including Pico Duarte, the highest peak east of the Mississippi and above the equator in this part of the world, I think its like 10,000 feet above sea level), and some others I can’t remember at the moment. I am actually going to a city in the mountains tomorrow to visit a volunteer who lives and works there (all of us trainees are visiting a different volunteer) in order to see what life will be like once I am a volunteer. It is apparently somewhat cool up there as I was advised to bring long sleeves or a jacket, but I am really excited to get to see another part of the country. Today we also got issued a motorcycle helmet as I think we are the only country that PeaceCorp is in that are allowed to ride on (not drive) motorcycle taxis because for a lot of sites people work at the only way to reach them is by motorcycle. Needless to say we are required to wear the helmets at all times when riding a motorcycle, or else we get sent home. To reach the place I’m going this weekend I will not need to take a motoconcho (the motorcycle taxis) but am sure I will need to sometime in the future.

But that is about all for now, I’ll try to get up another post next week to talk about my weekend and hopefully to take/put up some pictures. So far I have forgotten to bring my camara to all of the places we’ve been, such as the ciudad colonial, so I don’t have very many pictures. Hope all is well with everyone in the states and elsewhere. Ciao

So I finally got around to making a blog today in order to keep everyone updated a little easier instead of trying to write tons of emails. So i arrived in the Dominican Republic on the 5th of this month. The first night we went to a retreat (i think it is usually a place nuns/priests go for a break) and had some orientation information given to us, met our nurse here at the training center, and then blayd a dinamica (ice-breaker) in order to get to know each other a little better. Then next day we all came to the training center here in Santo Domingo which is gorgeous. There is a lot of open space, its nice and quite which lends to the learning atmosphere, and there are lots of fruit trees all around the yard including a giant mango tree in the center. Sadly though they will not be ripe untill june, which is after training will have finished. We have our classes (spanish and more technical type training) in these enramadas ( gazebo like things) outside which is super nice. All the locals here think it has been unusually cold the past two weeks but i think its the perfect temperture right now, i'm defenitly enjoying the more mild tempeture as i know the summer will be extremely hot.

Later in the day on that first friday our host family's came to pick us up from the training center and bring us to our main home for the next 3 months. My Dona is super nice and lives with her niece in a nice little house about a 15 minute walk from training. The niece is in school and works so she isn't at home a lot but one night we did watch "From Dusk Till Dawn" on the spanish movie channel, which is just as good as a movie in spanish. My Dona feeds me huge meals in the evening and mornings and always makes sure i have a cafecito (little coffee) when i get home. Here coffee is drinking in small amounts, about the quantity of an expresso shot, but is very strong and they put in tons of sugar. It defintly has helped me get through the day, i have coffee in the morning, with lunch, and when i get home from training. Two other volunteers live on the houses to either side of me and there are 7 of us total in our barrio. The rest of the volunteers live in other neighboorhoods that aren't too far away either.

A normal day for me is to wake up around 6:30, eat breakfast around 7, leave for class at 7:30 and training starts at 8:00. We have an hour of lunch from 12-1 which is nice to relax and use the computer (the training center has internet!) During the day we have a mix of presentations about various topics, for example development, or dominican culture, as well as spanish class which are nice because we are split up into small groups (4 people and a teacher) so i get lots of practice listening and speaking spanish. after training ends at 5 a couple of us usually walk to our neighboorhood colmado (its like a corner store where people hang out) to get a coca cola and play dominoes, which is my new favorite game. I usually eat dinner around 7 or 7:30 and then go to my room 9ish to read a little/do homework and have been asleep by 10 everynight. The only bad thing so far is that the gallos (roosters) start to go off around 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning and continue to be loud and annoying untill i should be waking up. It doesn't help that there are like 5 or 6 around my house and when one starts they all go off.

But i have to go to class now, i'll continue with another post later today or tomorrow.