Paz Dispenser

it's over!

2010-09-03T07:24:00.000-07:00

It occurs to me that I should update this to let everyone know that I'm done with the Peace Corps. My close-of-service date was May 7, and I flew home that day!

I thought about trying to document my readjustment and reverse culture shock, but, well, I didn't.

I doubt I'll update this blog again, but I'll leave it up for those who are curious about Peace Corps or who just want to look at pictures of my cat. Thanks for reading!

Development!

2010-04-14T17:38:00.000-07:00

The big excitement of the barrio was the recent arrival of pavement! Yes, the Callejón de la Loma, home to a few thousand people and roughly the same number of motorcycles, has been paved. Well... kind of. They did about half of the streets. Maybe a third. And then the giant trucks and workers and piles of gravel just disappeared one day, as suddenly as they had arrived.

One afternoon, I took a class of kids out with my camera to document the event. Here are a few of the photos they took:

(This one isn't really related to the paving, but I think it's a cool photo. Check out the large version! This restaurant has been abandoned and decaying for a while now, but you can still read the menu on the wall.)

Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of my favorite aspect of the newly-paved roads: rollerblades! Literally the day after the streets were paved, kids of all ages started scooting around the neighborhood on rollerblades. Where did all the rollerblades come from? I have never seen them in a store here. Did everyone just have rollerblades saved in their closet, waiting for the day when the asphalt would arrive? Amazing!

Thoughts on Global Injustice: My Kitty is Pretty

2010-04-07T08:15:00.000-07:00

Hello, blog! It has been awhile since I posted anything here. Here's a piece I wrote for the Gringo Grita, our Peace Corps magazine.

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When people disparage this fine publication, they often say, “The Grita is just full of articles about people’s cats and stuff.” This is confusing, as in the past two years the Grita has only published one article about someone’s cat. (It was Joanna Carman’s cat.) A few more dog stories have been featured, but still, the average number of pet-related articles per issue is very low. Too low, I believe. To correct that, I am going to tell you about my cat, Duarte.

Duarte is, objectively speaking, the cutest kitten ever. He is small and fuzzy and has adorable white boots on his feet. He is very clever and has very sharp claws, which he likes to use to scale my back. (I never climbed Pico Duarte, but I have been summitted by Duarte many times.) I found Duarte sitting on the edge of the main road of my barrio. He was ridiculously tiny and diseased looking, but I picked him up and took him with me. My mom was visiting at the time, and she took him into Sosua to see the vet, who said he was about three weeks old--far too young to be separated from his mother. (You may have met Duarte at Thanksgiving. You may have inquired about my "pet rat." Please know that I have not forgiven anyone for slandering baby Duarte in that fashion.) My mom and I nursed Duarte back to health and now he is a happy, healthy, not-even-remotely-ratlike kitten.

Having Duartecito in my life has made me a much happier person. It’s hard to stay down when a cute little cat is rolling around on you and purring. However, he has also made me contemplate animal rights and human rights. Although I love animals, I do believe in an abstract way that human lives are more important than animal lives. And in an abstract way, I don’t think humans and animals have to compete. But here, in a very concrete way, I have taken an abandoned animal into my home and spent thousands of pesos on him. Duarte is only six months old and has been to the vet four times. He has all of his necessary vaccines. I buy fancy cat food to make sure he’s properly nourished. Duarte, one might say, has a better life than some of the kids in my barrio. My mom even sent him a care package with some light-up cat toys that any muchacho would likely enjoy.

I know that as volunteers we don’t have a lot of income. But I didn’t hesitate before taking out money from my American savings account to get medical care for my cat. Taking care of Duarte has only driven home to me how privileged I am. And it raises again the question I’ve faced throughout my two years here: what can I do? I can’t take every campo kid into the doctor. I can tell people about medical missions, and I can translate for them. I can buy cat food for one small cat, and I can help sort food donations for earthquake relief. But I can’t give every Dominican the same standard of life that Duarte and I have. This is extremely depressing—and it’s exactly the reason why I need a feline companion to cheer me up.

I think having Duarte is a good reminder of one of the reasons I came to the DR in the first place: to come see poverty up close and personal. If someone asked you to donate $30 to the Humane Society, you'd probably say no, thinking, "Gosh, it's a good cause, but I'll donate when I get back to the US and have a real job," and forget about it. But if someone asked you to pay $1000 pesos to get your own pet vaccinated so you can take him back to the US, well, you'd do it, if you're anything like me. And if someone asked you to donate money to UNICEF to "save the children," it would be pretty easy to justify not donating money. What children? Why do they need money? I could use that money to purchase things that I need, like Hello Kitty accessories. But when it's your own cute neighbor children drinking contaminated tap water, it's a lot harder to be indifferent. Our experiences here, in addition to the tangible benefits we're providing to community members (including stray animals), are giving us all a better understanding of our own privileges as citizens of a developed nation and of what poverty really means. It doesn't necessarily mean naked babies from Save the Children commercials, but it might mean not having access to medical care for your children, let alone your cat.

Although I am conscious of this disparity, I am still attached to my cat. I asked Duarte what he thought about this kind of global injustice. He said, "Meow." I suppose that's as good of an answer as any.

charming anecdotes

2010-03-16T07:56:00.001-07:00

There are some students and professors visiting from a college in Canada. On Friday, I led two students and one professor on a small trip to a neighboring town vis public transportation. The price for the bus is 35 pesos (about $1 US). Upon exiting the bus, I handed the driver exactly enough pesos for four passengers. He looked shocked and handed the pesos back. "I can't take your pesos," he said. "You're in the mafia!"
"What?" I said.
"Mafia," he said. "I need dollars from you. Twenty dollars. Each."
"I'm not in the mafia. I'm a teacher. I live here, and I don't have any dollars. You have to take these pesos."
"No, no. Too dangerous. I need dollars."
"Don't try to trick me! I know it costs 35 pesos. I live here."
"I wouldn't try to trick you! I would be in trouble with God if I did that. Twenty dollars."
I ended up just shoving the pesos at him and walking away briskly. But seriously, if he thought we were in the mafia, shouldn't we have gotten to ride for free? Lest I send my mafia henchmen out after the bus driver? I mean, really.
In English class yesterday, the kids were filling out a sheet about their preferences. A twelve-year-old girl showed me the sentence, "My favorite movie is Yanblo Bandan" and asked me if it was right. It took me a second to figure it out, but then I helped her write "My favorite movie is Jean-Claude Van Damme." (I didn't even want to get into explaining that Jean-Claude Van Damme is not, strictly speaking, a movie.)
When I ask a question, my youngest computer class has a tendency to just repeat things they remember from previous classes, regardless of whether or not their answers actually make any sense. Our class has pretty much focused on three things to date: the proper use of Google, Wikipedia, and capital letters. A few examples, translated from Spanish:
"So, who can tell me what Google does?"
"Press the shift key at the same time as a letter?"

"OK, what is Google?"
"Wikipedia."

"When do we need to use a capital letter?"
"Google."

Sigh!

cute kid story

2010-03-10T17:43:00.000-08:00

It seems like I spend too much time on this blog talking about "development" and "poverty" on this blog. Whatever, that stuff is boringgg.

So here's a story from this class this morning. I was co-teaching a class of rambunctious 9-to-11-year-old kids. And Dominican ideas about classroom management are different from American ideas about classroom management, so basically Dominican kids tend not to learn about things like "raise your hand," "line up," "don't yell," "don't yell the teacher's name while she's talking to another student right next to you," and "seriously stop yelling at me." Thus, at DREAM we spend a lot of time trying to get the kids to settle down so we can maybe, like, teach something?

This morning, I decided to try a little yoga. I taught the kids a few basic poses like mountain pose (basically just standing still), tree pose (standing with one foot on your knee and your hands touching over your head), and a modified version of warrior II pose (standing with feet far apart and arms stretched out to the side).

And then I learned that my Spanish has progressed to the point where I can do some BS meditation guidance-type stuff. ("Close your eyes... we're in a forest... we can feel the warm sun on our skins, helping us grow... helping us grow to be tall, strong, trees... we are quiet and peaceful...")

It was moderately successful, although I had to banish little David to the back corner of the forest because "It is QUIET in the forest! No one in the forest should be talking!" After class, all the kids lined up and were starting to get a little restless as we waited for the next classroom to be ready. I started asking them to do yoga poses in line. Mountain and tree were fine, but when I asked for fake warrior pose, there was trouble. One of the first few kids in line somehow fell over backwards and knocked over the entire line of warrior-ing children, like little yoga dominos. No one was hurt; everyone was delighted. It was probably their favorite part of yoga class.

FACT: this entry would be better if I had a photo--or better, a video-- of children falling down.
FACT: it's an imperfect world.

a day in the life!

2010-03-02T17:28:00.000-08:00

I just posted a day in my life in photos! Check it out, if you are so inclined.

mi fin de semana chulo

2010-03-01T19:33:00.000-08:00

Oh, hello there! I haven’t been blogging much of late. I suppose since I’ve gotten Internet in my apartment, I’ve been updating Facebook and the like much more often. Mainly I have been up to The Usual: teaching classes, hanging out at the beach, and keeping up with the demands of the cutest and most ferocious kitten on the North Coast.

This weekend was a little more eventful, though! On Friday, we had the day off at DREAM. I spent the morning giving a workshop to some Dominican pre-school teachers who got some subsidized laptops. Most of them had very little experience with computers and were sooo excited to get laptops. I was nearly as excited to have the afternoon off and visit friends at their friend’s swank condo. They had fast Internet and cable TV, so we spent nine hours watching the Olympics and reading Wikipedia articles about winter Olympic events. Curling raised many questions, all of which we were happily able to answer, thanks to the power of the Internet. By the end of the women's curling gold medal match, we were all rooting for Canada, half in-love with Canada's skip, and tossing around curling lingo like we were actually Canadian. ("Wow, I thought she was going to burn that stone, but it's in the house!")

Saturday--February 27--marked the DR's Independence Day! We made a day trip down to La Vega to celebrate in style at the country's largest Carnaval. I wrote about this in more detail last year, but it was fun to see all the elaborate costumes. Less fun: constant fear of getting hit in the butt. I only got one hard hit and few playful taps, but still: ouch! On the way home, we stopped at Kentucky Fried Chicken in Santiago and I made an excellent discovery: Dominican KFC has biscuits! Legit biscuits! I haven't eaten a biscuit in months and months, and it was delicious.

Sunday morning I got up and went surfing with a few friends, but the waves were too big and crowded with real surfers for the likes of me, and I got out after about 45 minutes. I am pretty sure that I have maintained the exact same skill level (extremely low) since I started surfing in August. Whatever. I'm definitely not going pro any time soon, but it's still fun. And something I definitely won't be able to do once I return to the landlocked states, so I need to aprovecharlo (take advantage of it)!

counting down!

2010-02-21T07:14:00.000-08:00

MySpace-Countdown-Clocks

75 days, apparently. 75 days left in the DR. I'm sure when I get back to the US and start transitioning, there will be things that I miss about being here. Certainly I'll miss all my Peace Corps and DREAM friends. I'll miss being so close to the beach. I'll miss egg empanadas.

But mainly, I'm ready to get home. What I miss most isn't material things--although there are plenty of those that I do miss, like hot water, a non-flood prone living space, and paved streets/sidewalks--it's just American culture. I'm not going to make a case that American culture is better than Dominican culture. But I'm used to American culture. For example, if many people are waiting for a service, such as asking for goods from behind the counter in a small store, who should get that service first? If you said, "the person who was there first," you are probably American. Or European. If you said, "the person who is loudest," you are probably Dominican.

If there's a dog in the neighborhood that you don't like, what should you do? If you answered "confront the dog's owner" or "call Animal Control," you are probably American. If you answered, "put out poisoned meat," you are probably Dominican. (Now, if you are Dominican, you definitely do not have an Animal Control line to call. And if you are a Dominican whose dog is accidentally killed by some poisoned meat, you are probably not too worked up about it--you probably thought of your dog as a security measure, not as a beloved family pet. But this is one of the reasons Duartecat isn't allowed outside.)

And I guess the benefit of two years here in the DR is that I really do understand where Dominicans are coming from, and I'm not like, "God, Dominicans KILL THEIR PETS." I mean, Americans have semi-arbitrarily chosen a few animals, like cats and dogs, that are "pets" and are taken care of, while others, arguably about as cute, like sheep and chickens, are kept in gross factory farms and eaten. But I still am American, and I'm looking forward to getting home and waiting in line for things, letting Duarte outside, and letting myself outside in a tank top without hearing every passing male's thoughts on the subject (which, granted, are invariably favorable).

Soon enough I'm sure I'll be complaining about how people in America are overly litigious and obsessed with their lawns, but for now, I'm pretty happy to get back to the devil I know.

culinary delicacy

2010-02-10T18:16:00.000-08:00

So, lately I've been really excited about leaving the DR. Granted, I've been here over two years; it's fair that I'm ready to go home. But still, I have three months left and I want to take some time to focus on the positives. There must be some things I will miss, right?

Yes there are, and here is one of them:

Mmm! Egg empanadas! Empanadas are awesome little fried things sold on the street for around 15 pesos (about 50 cents). They come with a variety of fillings, but the best kind is egg.

They are very best when they are fresh out of the oil. Some places will sell cold empanadas. These are acceptable for eating, but nothing compared to the warm crispiness of a freshly fried empanada.

Dominicans: maybe not the best at getting along with their neighbors, but excellent at frying things.

haitian-dominican relations

2010-02-10T12:55:00.000-08:00

I was running a little late for work this morning, like usual. I turned the corner to get to our side entrance--our front door is blocked off because we're constructing an extension to the building. I turned the corner and saw most of the other volunteers in a little gaggle outside the door. "Whew," I thought. "I must not be that late." They were talking to a couple Dominican men I didn't know. It turns out that someone hung themselves behind the community center I work at. When I found out, I said, "Wow, how sad!" And the random Dominican man said, "No, it's okay! He was Haitian! He left!" and made a "get out" hand gesture.

Needless to say, he was a little confused about why we were still upset, even though he was Haitian.

Later, in my computer class, I had the kids look at this page of photos after the Haiti earthquake and choose one, and then write a description of the photo and how the photo made them feel. One student chose a picture of some men digging out a building. The English caption said, "Residents search for victims after an earthquake in Port-au-Prince January 13, 2010." But of course the kids can't read English, so this kid wrote that it was "Dominicans helping Haitians out of a building." I asked him how he knew they were Dominicans. He gave me a "Well, DUH" face and said, "Look at them!" I gave him a little lecture about how not all Haitians look the same, and neither do all Dominicans, and Haitians work hard, blah blah blah.

I think I have more to say on the topic, but I am tired.

No es fácil, no.

beginnings and endings

2010-02-02T12:30:00.000-08:00

Oh, hello there! I'm back from a pretty exciting week in Santo Domingo. Wednesday through Thursday we had our COS (close of service) conference. This was exciting for several reasons: we got to stay at a nice hotel with hot water and buffets, all the members of my COS group got to hang out, and it meant that we're ALMOST DONE! The COS conference is three days designed to prepare us for returning to the US, which we can do on May 7th! We talked about resumes and interview techniques, we learned about our health insurance plan, and we took some rad group photos. Here is the COSing group of IT volunteers, minus Keane, who got tuberculosis and couldn't come. (Like that's a good excuse.)

By the way, yes, it was incredibly nervewracking to hold my laptop that close to the pool. You can see I have one hand lamely curled around it.

Some environment volunteers are COSing too, but who even cares about them?

Anyway, I am getting excited about leaving! The past two years have been a rollercoaster, and I'm definitely glad I did Peace Corps. But I'm also looking forward to first world conveniences, speaking English, not being stared at all the time, not worrying about people killing my cat all the time, and eating delicious, delicious American food. Ohh, yes. America.

After the COS conference--which ended up being somewhat of a plague zone, and most of us left with either a cold (I did) or food poisoning (I did not, gracias a Dios)--we all stayed around the capital for the weekend, because Stephanie got married on Saturday!!

She kissed her new husband!

We toasted her!

Hoorays all around! There are more photos at my Flickr, featuring many PCVs looking suspiciously well-dressed.

my week of soirees!

2010-01-25T07:53:00.000-08:00

My social calendar this week has been fuera de control! Everyone in Cabarete has been scrambling to do what we can to help out in Haiti. It seems that everything there is still too disorganized for more volunteers to be of much help (especially non-Creole speaking, non-medical professional ones), so we've been focusing on fundraising efforts. Here in Cabarete there are enough tourists and expats that there are plenty of funds to be tapped, unlike in a lot of Peace Corps sites.

DREAM held two events. We had a pulga (flea market) here in the barrio--a bunch of people donated used clothing to us, which we sold to the residents of the Callejon. They got cheap clothing, we raised 25,000 pesos for Haitian relief. I myself spent $400 pesos on a new wallet, purse, and T-shirt. Everyone wins!

We also had a fancier event downtown, aimed at tourists & expats. We sold art made by the students, as well as a lot of jewelry donated by local businesses. There we made $40,000 pesos. Wow! (To put this in perspective--my entire monthly salary is $13,000 pesos.) In total we raised over $5000 US.

Remember my T-shirt tote bags? Here are some, after being decorated by the kids.

Here's some of the donated jewelry. I ended up buying the white button necklace.

Me and Lindsey, both wearing hot pink and posing in front of the donated higüero lanterns. Also, I'm wearing my new button necklace!

We also had a groundbreaking ceremony at DREAM. We got funding to build a few new classrooms for our center, hooray! And Celines Toribio, a Dominican actress/model, came to be our celebrity guest. She was really fun with the kids and, claro, extremely pretty. (I didn't bring my camera that day, alas.)

On Sunday evening, a few friends organized a FUNraiser (get it... because it's fun) at a local bar. There was a silent auction, and all of us DREAM volunteers made out like bandits! I spent $600 pesos on $1000 pesos worth of gift certificates at the two restaurants we always eat at. Hooray! Plus, I'm helping Haiti. I am a hero! A hero entitled to $1000 pesos worth of pizza and mojitos! This is the best kind of hero to be.

tote bags for haiti!

2010-01-16T19:31:00.000-08:00

DREAM is having an art show/fundraiser for the Red Cross next week! One thing we're planning to sell are these awesome tote bags made out of old T-shirts! We're planning to get kids to decorate them, but let me show you some of the plain ones I made this afternoon. It's soo easy, you don't even have to sew!

Step one, get a box. I mean, a T-shirt. And turn it inside-out.

Step two, cut the sleeves off of it, one inch-ish in from the seams. (If you do this a lot of times with crappy scissors, you will get a blister on your thumb. If you are lucky, you will have a Hello Kitty Band-Aid to put over it.)

Step three, cut out the neck. Basically make it a sexy tank top.

Step four, cut some awesome 80s-style fringe in the bottom. About a half-inch wide, two inches long, all the way across.

Step five, tie all the fringes together with double knots.

Step six, turn it rightside-out and oh my God you made a bag!!

Step seven, try to put your cat in the bag.

Hooray!!

sigiendo la lucha

2010-01-16T11:39:00.000-08:00

By now, I'm sure you have all read about the situation in Haiti. It's pretty grim. The earthquake would have been bad anywhere, of course, but in Haiti? In Port-au-Prince? Yikes. It pretty much destroyed all the infrastructure in a country that had barely any to start out with. People here are trying to mobilize. DREAM is having a few fundraiser events, and we're donating some of our own stuff (that others had previously donated to us).

Aside from being worried about Haiti, we've all been a little down here since it's been raining constantly for two weeks now. My street is a river, my apartment floods when it rains too hard, all my clothing is mud-spattered, and things are molding. Things that I did not even think could mold are molding. Of course, as annoying as all this is, I know I'm lucky to have a roof over my head. A twist of geographic luck and that earthquake could have been in Santo Domingo, not Port-au-Prince.

I'm sure you have heard this before, but truly, if you have any money to donate to Red Cross or Partners in Health or Oxfam or any relief charity, please do. It will help Duarte rest easier. He is very concerned about Haitian cats.

(Okay... he's not really. He's pretty oblivious. But you're not, right?)

¡terremoto! or, the power of social media

2010-01-12T15:29:00.000-08:00

Yikes! I was just sitting here in my apartment, minding my own business after a long day of DREAMing, when suddenly everthing started shaking. Duarte was frolicking around the bed and at first I thought maybe he was jumping too much and shaking the bed. Then I realized that even though Duarte has gotten fatter, he's still not big enough to do that kind of damage. Since I am sooo fancy and have Internet in my apartment now, I got on Twitter and joked about how maybe my apartment was collapsing. Then I felt dizzy and decided to eat some fruit snacks. I felt better and thought I had solved the problem! Then I read Rainn Wilson's (aka Dwight Schrute on The Office) Twitter where he said "Just heard there was a terrible earthquake in Haiti. Please send some prayers that way - they need a LOT of help."

Then I realized that it wasn't just my need for fruit snacks, and started Googling. CNN had nothing on it until like ten minutes after Rainn Wilson's Twitter. A few of my fellow IT volunteers updated their Facebooks with blurbs about the earthquake. Finally, CNN posted a 2-sentence story, which included the phrase "tsunami watch." Then I spent awhile Googling "tsunami" and freaking myself out. (Don't worry! It does not seem I am in any real tsunami danger here on the North Coast. However, in general please DO worry about tsunamis because they are terrible!!)

Anyway, in summation: I'm fine, the Internet is crazy, and you should maybe donate some money to the Red Cross because they are going to need it in Haiti. (More than they already did.)

¡dos mil diez!

2010-01-10T06:41:00.000-08:00

Oh gosh! Happy new year! I have not blogged in a little while, because I have been too busy working to fight global poverty.

Just kidding, mainly I've been hanging out with Duarte and watching episodes of 30 Rock on my laptop. Global poverty can suck it. Uh... what I mean to say is, classes are starting soon again at the DREAM Center, at which point I will once again do my part to right global wrongs by teaching children how to blog.

Anyway, in addition to hanging out with my grumpy kitten I have had a few other exciting moments. My friend Justin came back from vacation on the 29th, and a group of us with nothing else to do (and deep love for Justin in our hearts) made big posters and went to greet him at the airport. Dominicans were curious about who we might be waiting for. One guy told us he "already saw a white guy leave." We assured him that we weren't waiting for a white guy, but rather a Chinese one. (Dominicans tend to refer to all Asian people as "Chinese," which Asian volunteers can either get really depressed about or find it hilarious. Justin, a Filipino, generally opts for the latter.)

Justin, Jen, Karina, and Steph showing off their posters.

We were, in fact, dazzled.

In addition to gracing us with his company, Justin also brought me back some Christmas presents from my mom! Most exciting of these were organic macaroni & cheese and a new digital camera!! It is a Canon PowerShot SD1200IS, whatever that means, and I really like it! It is very small and it takes pictures quickly. This is important, because with my old camera I could pretty much only take pictures of Duarte when he was sleeping. With this technological advancement, please expect up to 75% more photos of Duarte.

Here's one right now! This was at my friend Judith's apartment, where Duarte stayed during Christmas.

For New Year's Eve, volunteers traditionally come to Cabarete to party. Although I party in Cabarete every day, it is exciting to have visitors!

Here is a picture of me, Jen, and Karina. Party hats are involved to verify that it is, in fact, New Year's Eve.

I made two New Year's resolutions. One was to leave the DR without hating it (not that I hate it now, but I do have a little bit of an attitude problem that I want to keep in check). The other one was... uh... I forgot. Keeping my attitude in check is the biggest one, I suppose. Cheers to a new decade!

simply having a wonderful christmastime

2009-12-27T07:48:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone had a delightful Christmas! Mine was very nice, although it got off to a rough start. It was raining really hard in the days up to Christmas, so my apartment kept flooding. We coped, however--I kept mopping, and Duarte learned how to wait on the bed until I got up, and then to jump onto my hips to get rides across the apartment so he didn´t have to get his little feet wet. He is the smartest, cutest kitty ever! Objectively speaking. Then on the 23rd, I went to drop Duarte off at my friend Judith´s house while I went on a Christmas excursion. I had a backpack and a giant totebag, plus Duarte´s cat carrier. I got on the back of a motorcycle taxi, since it was a little far to walk. Plus, it was raining. I´m fairly comfortable on motorcycles, but with my enormous bag in between me and the moto guy, every time we went up a hill I was pretty sure I was going to fall off the bag and die. Plus, about halfway there, Duarte figured out how to stick his head out of a tiny gap in the cat carrier and I became terrified that he would leap off the moto, so I had to use one hand to try to shove Duarte back in the bag and the other to cling to the moto guy´s shoulder AND try to hold my big tote bag. Also, did I mention that I didn´t really know how to get to Judith´s apartment? I had some super vague directions and assumed that we could get to the neighborhood and just ask around, but since it was raining, no one was out on the street to ask. So we circled around for a ridiculously long and terrifying time. But, in a Christmas miracle, we found Judith´s place and all arrived intact. Hooray!

Free of my clever escape artist kitten, I went onto Santiago to meet with my friends Jen and Karina. We spent $3000 pesos (about $100 US--goes far in the DR) on groceries and went back to prepare a fabulous Christmas dinner! Actually we just ate Chex Mix that day. Christmas eve, we went over to Karina´s neighbor´s for a Dominican celebration, which included some of the fanciest of Dominican foods arranged in a pleasing salad: cut up apples, marshmellows, grapes, whole nuts, and candy fruit slices. Another Christmas eve highlight was me trying to avoid her neighbor´s son, who dated the last Peace Corps volunteer who lived here. He told me, "You remind me of {the last volunteer}... I like bigger girls." It was awesome.

Christmas Day we woke up and had some classy beverages--mimosas AND coffee with Bailey's! (Don't judge us, we´re spending Christmas in another country.) Our friends Jenna, Chris, Joel, and Brittany decided to come at the last minute, which was exciting! But also we had to figure out how to double the amount of food we were making. Which we did, and we had the following awesome dinner:
Deviled eggs
Hummus with carrot sticks
Latkes
Mashed potatoes
Sweet potato casserole
Green bean casserole

Sadly, during the last course I got a migraine and had to go lie down. But I still wanted to hang out, so I just curled up on the couch with a pillow over my face and occasionally yelled out borderline-delirious comments. I recall being very worked up Britney Spears' latest song "3". (My stance, then and now, is that it is an awesome song and Britney is so comnig back.) Also, since I had the pillow over my face, I had no idea where anyone was and got kind of confused. Oh well!

Anyway, even though I missed my family and American friends (and Duarte), it was still a great Christmas. Now I'm getting ready to head back to Cabarete with Jen for some beach time... I mean, there are perks to a Dominican Christmas.

State of the Kitten

2009-12-14T07:33:00.000-08:00

Greetings, my fellow Americans, Dominicans, and other citizens of the world. I have come to this blog today to discuss a very important topic: the state of my kitten, Duarte.

Health and Hygiene:
Duarte has been de-wormed by the nice vet in Sosua. His fur is growing back, and he has a lot of energy. Sooo much energy. He is also using the litterbox with high levels of accuracy, although sometimes there are still accidents, often tragically involving my comforter.

Cuteness:
Cuteness levels are extremely high, rising to dangerous levels when he tilts his head at me. He often seems to have a disapproving look on his face, which is ADORABLE.

Rest and Recreation:
Duarte likes to sleep on top of me, even when I sleep on my side. This is also ADORABLE. Duarte also likes to wake up every few hours and and seek attention, which is slightly less adorable.

Athletics:
Duarte has proven himself to be a top contender in all internationally-recognized kitten sports, including the high jump, the pounce, the 5-inch string chase, hide and seek, and the bedsheet climb.

Controversial Issues:
The Renata-Duarte household is extremely divided on a few key issues. For example, the game “Bite Renata in the Face While She is Sleeping” is beloved by 50% of the population, but despised by the other 50% (margin of error +/- 3%). Another divisive topic is that of canned cat food. Again, 50% of the household finds it to be amazingly delicious, while the other half believes to to be “fucking disgusting” and “make[s] the whole house smell bad.”

i hate it when cliches are accurate

2009-12-11T09:36:00.000-08:00

So, as I may have mentioned, I've been a little stressed out the last few weeks. My attitude might perhaps have been best described as "over it." But things have been improving the last few days, and on Wednesday night, all the DREAM volunteers went out to dinner with a visiting Christian basketball team here to do basketball-themed charity. I was eye-rolling a bit about the entire concept of Christian basketball-themed charity (they are donating a bunch of basketballs and stuff to local kids and also leading free basketball clinics/games at some local courts, in case you are wondering what exactly "basketball-themed charity" consists of), and, I'll admit it, I inwardly eye-rolled a bit when one of the high school boys stood up to say grace.

But he said, "Thank you for the opportunity to be here and to serve," and it really clicked with me. Yes. This is an opportunity. Thank you for it, whoever is responsible for it. Thank you, Peace Corps bureaucrat who put me here. Thank you, parents who occasionally send me money to buy fancy condiments with. Thank you, Peace Corps friends who keep me sane via free cell phone calls. Thank you, DREAM, for giving me a place to teach kids. Thank you, high school boy, for your super trite yet super true words.

december already?

2009-12-09T07:58:00.000-08:00

Whew! My mom's trip ended happily, although she enjoyed her Dominican car wreck so much that she got into another one within her first week back. Ay. She survived, albeit with a few broken bones, so if you could direct some prayers/healing vibes her way, they would be appreciated.

I've been back to the grind at DREAM, which has involved a little bit of inter-NGO tension that I don't even want to talk about, but my stress levels have risen to the point where more hair than usual is coming out in my hair brush. Luckily, winter break is approaching, so I should be able to maintain the majority of my stylish tresses. Plus, I just read in Cosmo that center parts are coming back into style, which I did not even know they were out of style, so anyway I should be good to go.

The brightest spot here has been my afterschool blog club, which has been really taking off. I've (somewhat awkwardly) translated all the entries, so even the most gringo among you can check out our Blog de Sueños (Dream Blog). The kids are getting into it, especially the photography. However, when pressed to "Write more details!" they usually just tack on another sentence saying exactly the same thing as the first sentence, leading to some awesomely circular logic, e.g. "I took this picture because I like the car races and because I know how to drive vehicles because my father taught me how to drive but without him, I would not know how to drive vehicles." Also of note: this photo, in which I am inadvertently making some kind of pin-up girl pose in the background. (This kid took ten different pictures of the garden, including ones in which I was posing nicely and ones in which I was not at all visible, but he chose that one to post. Sigh.)

Anyway, tomorrow is our last day of blog class before Christmas break. We're going to have a party and blog about our favorite foods! Mmm. (Class favorite foods tally as of yesterday: plaintains, 2; soda, 2; chips, 1; cookies, 1; undecided, 3.)

PS: I would like to say that it is never, ever too late to send your favorite Peace Corps volunteer a letter or care package! My address here is
451 Avenida Bolivar
Apartado Postal 1412
Santo Domingo
Dominican Republic

And I will happily receive just about anything, but especially: vegetarian boxed dinners (like Tasty Bite or Annie's pasta), dried fruit (I have a lot of nuts, I'd rather have just fruit), and pretty much any American candy. Or British candy. I'm not picky, as long as it's not gross, sticky, too-sugary Dominican candy.

on the road again

2009-11-30T12:39:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving! The Peace Corps party was great, but I got some kind of 24-hour bug and threw up all my vegetarian stuffing. And all four kinds of pie. Ughhhh. But mustn't dwell!

Instead let us turn our attention to post-Thanksgiving travels. Mom, Duarte (we renamed the kitten Duarte since all the volunteers kept accidentally calling him that anyway--Juan Pablo Duarte was one of the founding fathers of the DR and absolutely everything here is named after him. Including my cat), Karina, Jen, Jenna and I headed down southwest to a little artisan workshop where you can pick your own piece of larimar (a semiprecious stone found only in the DR) and turn it into jewelry. Unfortunately, by the time we arrived on Saturday, they were closed, so there was nothing to do but head further up the mountain to a beautiful hotel/restaurant called Casa Bonita.

We got some food and drinks and enjoyed the view.

The sun set, and we continued to enjoy the view.

Here's a picture of my mom hard at work on her larimar.

Here's my finished product! It's... not that impressive, but I made it. With a liiittle help from some Dominican artisans. And also geology.

Here's Baby Duarte looking super mad. And adorable.

Now my mom is at the Puerto Plata International Airport, soon to be heading back to Nueva Yol (aka Illinois). At least I'll have baby Duarte to keep me company... and look! Look how totally non-malnourished he is now. Fatty little Duarte.

giving thanks

2009-11-26T04:33:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Let's be honest, the holiday season tends to inspire a lot of lame, cliche-y blog entries. And why should I be any different? What, do I think I'm better than everyone? So, here are some things I am thankful for.

My family! (Awww.) I'm especially glad my mom could come visit again. I am also thankful that she brought down an entire suitcase of candy.
Baby Cat--who, surprise, is a boy. And it turns out I'm unwilling to name him Billy Ray, so right now we're going with Dante. He has a little goatee!! Just like Dante from Clerks.

(You can't really see his goatee in any of the pictures I have of him so far. But he has a little patch of white just on his chin. So cute!)
Maru, who brings so much joy to my life with every awkwardly-phrased update.
My site change! Although my job is a little bit stressful, I love my great co-workers. And I love living a 15-minute walk away from the beach, even if it does get invested with giant turkeys around this time of year.
The fact that I still haven't drowned or been eaten by sharks while surfing!! I don't want to jinx it though :/
The Internet! I am so thankful that I can keep in touch with all my lovely friends and family so easily thanks to emails, blogs, Facebook, Skype, and the like. Hooray!
Friends! Of course, the Internet wouldn't be that fun if I didn't have all of you guys to keep in touch with in the first place.
ZooBorns. It's a website of all baby zoo animals!! LOOK HOW LITTLE THESE TURTLES ARE. BE THANKFUL YOU GOT TO SEE THAT.
Three nights in the Santo Domingo Marriott! You guys, there is air conditioning and hot water and the room is bigger than my whole apartment!!

So, happy Thanksgiving to you all! I hope you all have as many things to be thankful for as I do.

crash!

2009-11-23T09:30:00.000-08:00

"Mom, if you tell everyone that the best part of your vacation was getting in a car crash, everyone's going to think your trip sucked."
"What? No one got hurt, and it was interesting!"

Interesting, indeed. On Friday my mom and I ventured out in our tiny rental car, heading west to Dajabon for the market day. We picked up my friend Mica and two girls from her town--Mica was taking the girls to the dentist in Santiago, which was basically on our way. Driving in the DR is crazy--there are motorcycles zooming in and out everywhere, a frequent lack of taillights/headlights, barely-paved roads, and a general disregard for traffic laws. But mom assured me she was up to the challenge, and the trip had been going pretty smoothly so far. So, of course, a giant truck with no taillights stopped abruptly and Mom gently rear-ended him. The truck just drove off as if nothing had happened; we're not even sure if the truck realized it was in an accident.

So: right after the impact, the two girls in the backseat are screaming, Mica is trying to console them in Spanish, I'm trying to find my glasses, the kitten is crying, Mom is crying, and like six Dominican police officers are tapping on our windows. It was hectic.

Honestly, the whole thing went fairly smoothly. I have no idea why there were so many police officers just hanging out at that intersection, but they were. I think before yesterday I have maybe seen six police officers during my entire time in the DR. Weird, but helpful. They ushered us out of the car, pushed the car into a nearby parking lot, and got a ride to take Mica and her girls to the dentist all in about ten minutes. Meanwhile, my mom consoled the kitten (still unnamed, but our faithful travelling companion) and I called the car rental company, called the Peace Corps doctor, and argued with the police officers. They wanted Mom to go to the hospital; she didn't want to go. Finally we convinced her that she should go to the hospital. Then the police wanted her to go to the public hospital; I said no. They told me that if we wanted to go to the private hospital they wouldn't help us, we'd have to take a taxi to get there. I said fine.

So, we took a taxi to the hospital. We're carrying five large bags and one tiny kitten, and both of us are bleeding. The receptionist tells me that the kitten can't come in the emergency room. Understandable I suppose, but what are we going to do with the kitten? We don't have any kind of carrier for it yet, we've just been keeping it on my lap in the car. It is finally settled that I will wait in the waiting room with the kitten while Mom gets stitches done by an English-speaking doctor. While I wait, a police officer asks me questions about the accident/hits on me. I call a friend to chat so I have an excuse not to talk to the police officer anymore.

Here is perhaps the most startling part of the whole day: Mom got 10 stitches and IV and local anesthetic in less than an hour! And it cost about US$100! So fast and cheap! Ridiculous. And then our car rental company (Budget! Big ups to them) sent over a driver and a new rental car right away. I started thinking crazy thoughts like, "Wow! Maybe we can still make it out to Dajabon today!"

Ha!

Anyway, the new driver took us over to the police station. We had to wait a long time, still holding the crying kitten. I managed to get some yogurt from the police cafeteria, which we gave to kitty via eyedropper. Finally, I got to talk to a police officer and describe the accident to him. He told us we had to go to the hospital. "Oh," I said, "We just came from the hospital. We're fine."

"No," he said, "You're both injured. You have to go to the hospital and have them fill out this form saying how injured you are."

"But I only have a minor cut, and my mom already received treatment. I don't understand why you need this form filled out."

"Yes... many people do not understand why this form needs to be filled out. But these are the rules." I spent a few more minutes engaged in a Kafka-esque debate, but finally conceded to be taken to the public hospital. Sadly, we arrived around lunchtime and all of the doctors were gone, so we waited about an hour for the doctors to come back. Then we waited another hour while all the people who got there before us got to see the doctor. Then we saw the doctor, who gave us each a cursory glance and spent about thirty seconds filling out a form that said, in essence, "Cut lip" and "cut elbow."

We then went back to the police station, where I had to re-explain everything to an extremely fast-talking, mumble-y officer. (Do you know Boomhauer from King of the Hill? This was basically the Dominican equivalent.) So I kept telling him, "I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE SAYING" and finally another police officer translated for me, from Spanish to Spanish.... he just repeated everything Dominican Boomhauer was saying and I understood. Sadly, what I understood was that we were being sent to the Traffic Justice of the Peace. So we drove across town, waited in line, handed over some forms, got a stamp on the forms, got the forms back, and drove back to the police station. Like, seriously? You guys couldn't just keep one of those stamps at the police station?

Anyway, then we were free! Free... to go to the Budget Rent-a-Car office and finalize our change of car!

And then free to check into a hotel in Santiago and die of exhaustion! And also eat pizza. And also to promptly return our new car to Budget because the brakes were fussy and we were fearful of a repeat incident.

By the way, it is important that when you read this entry and envision our trials, you NEVER FORGET that the entire day has a soundtrack of "MEW! MEW! MEW! MRAAAWR!" from a grumpy, hungry little kitten. Not that I blame the little guy.

(PS pictures of Baby Cat soon, I promise! Also soon we will take her or him back to the vet and find out the sex for sure, and then I can officially name Baby Cat something besides Baby Cat.)

what have i been up to?

2009-11-19T08:05:00.000-08:00

More like, what haven't I been up to!

The weekend before last, my friend Trina stayed with me!

We went to the Cabarete Jazz Festival and saw some festive jazz.

Then we went up a mountain to a restaurant/retreat center called Blue Moon to celebrate Jenna's birthday!

We enjoyed the mountaintop view.

And the pool.

And of course, the highlight: Indian food served off of banana leaves. Mmmm.

After that, I went to the annual IT youth conference. All the IT Peace Corps volunteers (well, almost all) came with a few kids from their town for three days of workshops, games, and ridiculousness. I brought two girls from my center, one of whom had never ridden a bus before and threw up the entire two hour trip. But she felt better once she got there, and I'm really glad I was able to give her that opportunity. (Even if when, the next week I asked her to write a paragraph about what she learned at the conference, she claimed not to remember anything that she learned.)

The second night we had a big carnival. My friend Ruth and I were in charge of the cakewalk, which was awesome.

The kids had a great time, and so did the volunteers...

And, most importantly, we all received certificates of participation.

After the conference, I had to scurry back, drop off my girls, and go meet my mom! Yay! We spent the weekend at a posh resort in Sosua. I referred to our activites as "snake-ing"--"We just eat a lot, then go sleep in the sun and digest it, then slither back to the buffet for the next meal." It was pretty great. I didn't even touch the water all weekend. (The water was really rough so the resort closed the ocean. Yes. They closed the ocean. With yellow caution tape. I wish I had a photo, but they are all on mom's camera.)

This week, I've been working at ~*DREAM*~ and mom had been keeping herself occupied with shopping during. (Those of you who know my mom will not be worried that she is bored. My mom could probably spend a month shopping in Cabarete without getting bored.) Yesterday, mmom got a new project--I found a tiny baby kitten on the street. It was clearly in rough shape, so I picked it up and took it to work with me. I kept it on a towel outside and gave it some milk. Mom saw it when she came to pick me up for lunch and she decided to take it to the vet. The vet said it was extremely malnourished, and mom has been feeding Baby Cat a special formual via eyedropper the last few days. Baby Cat is very very small and cute, but she (or he--it's too small for even the vet to tell sex yet) has a propensity to poop on me. Like ten times she has pooped on me, and never on mom.

This morning I went to have breakfast with some embassy officials (who were going on a little tour of the North Coast and wanted to meet some PCVs) and Baby Cat pooped on my khakis just as I was heading out the door. However, I did not notice that Baby Cat had also pooped on my shirt until I got to breakfast. I pretended like I had spilled syrup on myself. I hope they bought my story!! Even if they didn't, they still bought me a delicious breakfast, so, score.

can you tell me how to get to ocho center?

2009-11-04T06:54:00.000-08:00

So. One of the more frustrating types of conversations I have here in the DR are ones where someone tells me something in Spanish, and I understand it all except ONE WORD. I ask them to repeat the word or define the word. Instead, they bring over someone who "speaks English" to explain it to me because I "don't speak Spanish." Except this person just repeats the same word to me. Right now, for instance, I'm sitting here monitoring the computer lab. Occasionally people ask me questions about how to use the Internet or try to trick me into doing their homework for them.

A young man walks up to me, hands me a pencil and piece of paper upon which is written, "September 11, 2001. Osama Bin Laden." He says, "Escribame Ocho Center." (Write for me "Ocho Center".)

I say, "Ocho Center?"

"Ocho center."

"What is Ocho Center?"

"You know... Ocho Center. Osama Bin Laden... it's like the White House."

"The White House?"

"But instead of the White House, it's Ocho Center. Osama bin Laden lived there."

"Ocho Center."

"Ohhh, you don't understand. Let me get my friend."

So the friend comes over and says, in English, "He wants for you to write down the words 'Ocho Center.'"

By this point I am losing it and cracking up, and my friend Rachel comes in.

Me: "Rachel! I don't know what they are talking about. They want me to write something about Ocho Center. He's got this paper... it's something to do with Osama bin Laden I think."

Rachel: "What's Ocho Center?"
Two Dudes: "Ocho Center!! Exactly!! Renata doesn't understand Ocho Center and we want you to write it down!"
Rachel: I don't know what Ocho Center is either.
Dude 1: Osama bin Laden!
Dude 2: It's like the White House.
Rachel: You want me to write down White House?
Dude 1: NO! OCHO CENTER.
Rachel: ... Barack Obama?
Dude 2: It's the building that was destroyed on September 11. In New York.
Me and Rachel: ....
Rachel: The WORLD TRADE Center?
Dudes: Yes! Ocho Center! How do you spell it?

Oh my God. I was hyperventilating with laughter by the end of it.

(Also, yes, in retrospect, given "September 11" and "Osama bin Laden" and "Something Center" you'd think I would have been able to come up with "World Trade Center." But it was just bizarre. Also, the White House stuff kept throwing me off.)

halloweekend

2009-11-01T15:49:00.000-08:00

I just uploaded some photos from this weekend. It's been a good few days--between Halloween and my friend Kathy's birthday, there were a lot of volunteers in the capital. Here are a few pictures from Halloweeen--which, for the record, Dominicans don't dress up for, so when we went out on the town, we got a ton of weird looks. More than the weird looks we usually get just for being a large group of white people.

Jeff (Frog Prince), me (I went as the Peace Corps lounge Lost & Found), and Justin (Karate Kid) having a prop battle.

More detail on my ridic costume.

The 80s girls!

Fun group shot.

see you never?

2009-10-27T07:07:00.000-07:00

The Dominican accent tends to drop a lot of "s"s, and since I am speaking Spanish primarily with Dominicans, I've started losing my "s"s too. For example, "adio" instead of "adios," or "no e' facil" instead of "no es facil." But today I heard myself tell another volunteer "no vemos!" instead of "nos vemos!"

For those of you rusty on Spanish, "Nos vemos" is literally "we see each other" but commonly used as "see you later."

"No vemos" is "we don't see each other" or, I guess, "I won't see you later."

Cultural intergration is one of Peace Corps's primary goals, but still, maybe I should work on keeping my Dominican accent in check, just un chin.

presenting gringo and the gritas!

2009-10-25T08:32:00.000-07:00

So, I've been in the capital all week working on the PCDR magazine, the Gringo Grita. (We all know what "gringo" means; "grita" means "yelling.") I'm serving as editor this time, which basically means it's my job to stay around until the whole thing is finished. As always, it's been a super fun (but tiring) week.

A few highlights:

Pretty Much Everyone Who Passed Through the Office Ever: RENATA! Did you know that the Jonas Brothers are coming to Santo Domingo?? Are you going to go??
Me (sulkily): Noo, I'm not going, it costs 1700 pesos.
Justin: We should have a fundraiser! I would put in 200 pesos for you to see the Jonas Brothers.
Me: Aww, that's sweet. But ridiculous.

Joel: Look! A Jonas Brothers poster!
Me: Are they on the MOON?
Joel: It says "world tour," not "intergalactic tour."

Joel*: Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young are like the Simon and Garfunkel of folk-rock.
Me: Aren't Simon and Garfunkel the Simon and Garfunkel of folk-rock?
Joel: ... point.
* I orginally typed that Chris had said this until I received this message from him: "I totally didn't say that about CSNY, Simon and Garfunkle can barely rock at all. Digo yo." So... I think it was Joel? I had this conversation with someone, if not Chris, whose opinions regarding CSNY/S&G I now know.

Me: Let's read this out loud. In Batman voice.*

Me: Remember that time when we read everything out loud in Batman voice? (In Batman voice) It was EPIC.

* Christian Bale Batman voice, which is super gravelly and low. It makes anything funnier!**
** This entry would probably be funnier if I posted a video or audio of us doing Batman voice. Alas, I am not quite that dedicated to my blog; you'll just have to use your imaginations.

Also, there was the time when we went out to a hipster bar that has the video game Rock Band on Tuesdays. We were really excited about it, but most of us hadn't played it before. This was in stark contrast to the small crowd of Dominicans who clearly go there every week and were all beating songs on Expert level. We went up and failed Oasis's "Wonderwall" on Easy. Twice. (I was on vocals! I failed out first! Both times!) But hey, we had a good time. We played (and passed) a few more songs later in the night. However, our best time was probably had when a group of Dominicans went up to perform "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey. We got super into it and sang it more loudly than their actual vocalist. Unforunately, these were the only Dominicans we saw fail a song all night.

Me: PUT IT ON EASY! MAS FACIL! MAS FACIL!
Joel: Don't stop! Don't stop believin'!
Me and Joel: DON'T STOP DON'T STOP BELIEVIN'!!

Our Rock Band night also inspired our themed Grita staff photo. We decided to pose as a band called Gringo and the Gritas. We are all extremely excited/angsty/angry about our band photo shoot. I hope that you think this picture is as hilarious as we think it is. We are all kind of obsessed with it.

let me tell you about a volunteer way more hardcore than me

2009-10-24T11:03:00.000-07:00

I'm in the capital this week working on our esteemed volunteer publication the Gringo Grita. We hole up in the library most of the day, editing and laying out and slowly going crazy. Then at night we go out to dinner and hang out with whoever happens to be in the capital. It's a fun way to meet new people. Last night, my friend Jen and I ate some fried rice with a Water volunteer named Bill. Water volunteers in the DR are known for being the most hardcore of all volunteers--they usually live in the most remote sites and are working to build aqueducts, so they lack running water and electricity. (Compare this to my studio apartment with a water tank and air conditioning.) Here are a few excerpts from our conversations:

Me: Hey, what happened to your finger? (Which has a splint on it.)
Bill: Well, I smashed it with a hammer a few days ago working on laying some pipes. I kept drilling into it to drain the pus, and it was fine, but then I mentioned it to Lissette (the doctor) while I was talking to her about something else, and she freaked out and told me to put a splint on it and come into the capital immediately. So I got some popsicles* and taped the sticks to my finger.
Me and Jen: ...
Bill: But it's fine, really. In fact, I think I'm going to take it off right now. (Untapes the popsicle sticks to reveal a horribly swollen, crooked finger.)
Me and Jen: OH MY GOD.
Bill: It's fine!
Jen: It is definitely crooked.
Bill: Yeah, Lissette says I need X-rays.
Me: Put the splint back on! I'm eating.
Bill: This is nothing.

* This is my favorite part of the whole story.

Bill: I've been waiting on funding for my aqueduct, so I've spent like $500 of my own money on it.
Me and Jen: YOU WHAT?

This morning we also experimented with the Peace Corps Challenge game on the PC website. It's purportedly a game designed to simulate the Peace Corps Experience (tm) but it's a way more hardcore experience than ours. We wanted to design our own game, where you sit around the Peace Corps office and have to decide if you want to have pizza or sushi delivered to you. Then, you try to get the office WiFi to work so you can check the movie listings and figure out what you want to see that night. Be careful not to pick something dubbed into Spanish!! When you walk to the movie theater go in a group so you don't get mugged. Also, watch out for potholes in the street! Minus five points if you get garbage water in your flipflops :(

on shaming children

2009-10-17T12:18:00.000-07:00

This week at DREAM we had "community service week" in our afternoon program, wherein we had a variety of different activities instead of regular classes. The first day was the only day that really had "community service"--we did a street cleanup of the barrio. Some of the older girls insisted to me that they couldn't possibly pick up garbage because it was too shameful. One girl insisted that she couldn't pick up trash because her mother-in-law would see. I said, "What? You have a mother-in-law?" and she gave me a glower and told me I didn't understand anything. Fair enough, teenage girl!

But most of the kids were enthusiastic and we picked up a TON of trash, which is great. (The DR doesn't have any kind of anti-littering culture. Kids, grownups, everyone will just toss trash into the street without a second thought.)

The rest of the week the kids got increasingly worked up about the change in routine and we had more and more behavior problems. After classes, some of the other volunteers and I talked about how frustrating working with Dominican kids can be. One of the biggest cultural differences we've noticed is how shameless Dominican kids can be. Most Dominican kids are huge cheaters--and don't get me wrong, American kids cheat too! But American kids will usually try to be smooth: writing on their hands, notes under the table, at the very least they'll whisper. Dominican kids lack any kind of subtlety in cheating. They will talk at normal volume levels about the answers to tests. While the teacher is in the middle of giving a "no cheating" lecture.

Or take the T-shirt painting activity I led. I started off by explaining that "Some very nice people donated a bunch of T-shirts to us! Wasn't that nice? Now we can give everyone a T-shirt as a gift. The T-shirts are pretty big, I'm sorry. But a big T-shirt is better than no T-shirt, right? So we don't want to hear any complaining when we pass out the T-shirts, okay?" To which all the kids replied, "Okay!" And then literally the second I pulled out the first T-shirt, all the kids immediately started whining about how big and ugly the shirts are. Of course, American kids would have whined about the shirts too. But I estimate that lecture would have shamed them into at least five minutes of silence before the complaints started.

This shamelessness can be super frustrating to American teachers. Like, the kids don't even respect us enough to fake listening for five minutes? But on the other hand, it's a little refreshing. What you see is what you get, even if what you see is sometimes kids who are cheating off of each other, talking over your frustrated lecture about how rude it is to talk when other people are talking, or making out in the library during class.

Luckily, these kids don't speak English, so if you occasionally have to mutter to your co-teacher, "I am going to KILL ALL THE CHILDREN," they are none the wiser.

do i know how to throw parties or WHAT?

2009-10-09T13:49:00.000-07:00

Since the other DREAM volunteers have bigger apartments than I do, we always hang out at their places instead of mine. But on Wednesday, I decided I wanted to entertain. I invited a few friends over with promises of homemade banana bread & a freshly-downloaded episode of The Office.

I tidied up, even going so far as to actually make my bed. I figured that we would all just sit on my bed, since I don't have a couch. Or other furniture. All went according to plan: my friends arrived just as my banana bread turned a lovely golden brown, and we all cuddled on my bed-couch. A few minutes into The Office, however, we all hear a crack. We look around and notice nothing amiss, so we don't think anything of it. You hear a lot of weird sounds living in the DR. Soon, however, we hear more cracks. And then the bed collapses.

We all flail about for a few moments, then manage to lift up the mattress and check out the frame. One piece of wood is cracked. We have no idea what to do about it, so I run next door to my landlord/neighbor's house. The landlady says, "How did this happen? Did it happen last week when you had THREE friends over? Three people can't sleep in that bed." "No, no," I assure her. "It was just now." She shakes her head. "My husband will have to see it."

He comes over to survey the damage, shakes his head, and magically gets two muchachos out of nowhere. The three of them take off my mattress and drag my bedframe out into the street. This naturally draws a crowd, and we all speculate what the neighbors must be thinking when they see five hot gringas and a broken bed in the street.

Then, magically, the muchachos immediately return with a new bed!

It was ridiculous. So unexpected, too, since things here are often... inefficient. But apparently when a lady needs a new bed, a lady gets a new bed. Awesome.

A short photo essay:

Oh dear.

"Fun party, Renata!!"

Magic new bed! (A mattress arrived shortly after.)

permit denied.

2009-10-08T09:01:00.000-07:00

Remember Anderson, my student who wanted a permit to be my friend? After I failed to respond to his e-card, I've received these messages from him:

hi Renata
this is your pupil Anderson , how was your week end. i hope you had a good one .for me i am doing very good but i do miss you a lot for the last week i didnot see you .please i hope to hear from you too.
your friend Anderson

hi my friend
Are you good today?i am sending you some emails but i dont receive your answer .do i am so unfair to receive your email or to be your friend?i hope to hear from you for this moment
Anderson
take care

great googly moogly

2009-10-07T08:05:00.000-07:00

In my afternoon computer class we're continuing to focus on Internet research. After more or less completing last week's dictionary worksheet (you know, the one where words were frequently defined as "noun" or "verb"), we've been working on an Internet scavenger hunt using Google. By the way, Dominicans (and I suppose all Spanish-speakers) pronounce "Google" as "Googly." And they have no idea what I'm talking about if I say "Google," so I'm always like, "So, let's go to Google... (blank looks) sorry, I mean, Googly." This cracks me up. Also, like 5/6s of the sounds are the same between "Google" and "Googly" so you'd think they'd figure it out. But no.

Anyway, here are some highlights of student answers to the scavenger hunt, translated to English for your convenience.

What is the capital of India?
Wikipedia

What is the population of China?
2008

What is a traditional African food?
food

What is a type of traditional Japanese theater?*
Japan

Find a photo of traditional Mexican clothing.

(I mean, yes, technically this is Mexican clothing, but seriously... you couldn't find a PHOTO? No, you can't, if your entire Internet strategy involves clicking on the very first thing that comes up. And also if rather than use Google Images [I mean Googly Images], you type "Find a photo of traditional Mexican clothing" into Googly.)

* "What's your favorite kind of Japanese theater?"
"Noh theater."
"You don't like any Japanese theater?"

more tales from this dominican life

2009-10-02T09:02:00.000-07:00

Thank God it's viernes! A few anecdotes for you:

Yesterday I introduced my classes to the online multilingual dictionary WordReference.com. I gave them a worksheet with some English words and some Spanish words and asked them to find the word in the opposite language. This activity was a little bit high-level for a lot of the kids, who just haven't been taught many reading comprehension skills. So I'd look at the worksheet and see that kids had defined words as "verbo" or "sustantivo" (noun). But my favorite was one student who defined "reirse," which means "to laugh," as "to laugh at grammar." Wouldn't it be great if English specifically had a verb that meant "to laugh at grammar"? I would use that verb all the time. I bet German has a word for it.
The standard demand in my computer classes is "Juegos! Juegos! JUEGOS!" (Games!) The kids want to play computer games. Understandable, but whenever I give them a little free time to play games, it turns out... they don't really know how to play computer games. So they call me over to show them how to play whatever Flash game they have encountered--assuming, naturally, that I automatically know the rules to every single Flash game on the Internet. Usually I can figure it out, and then they don't even want to play the game. They want to watch me play the game. So I have 10 kids all going, "Sssst! Profe! Sssst!" urgently calling me over to play Internet games for them. Which, I mean... there are worse jobs.
DREAM has a pretty good database of all its past and present students, often including observations from teachers and parents. Today I looked up a student and saw that under "Parental comments" it said "He is not good at anything." WOW. I called everyone else in the office over to look because I thought it was so hilarious. And so sad. And also, can you ever in a million years imagine an American parent telling their child's teacher, "Oh yeah, he's not good at anything"? I mean, there's a good chance that the Dominican parent honestly meant for "he's not good at anything" to be a helpful comment. Like, he should take all the classes... because he's not good at anything.
I realized I never really updated my blog about my health--I'm totally fine after my week of near-constant sleep. However, I'm bitterly disappointed that my diagnosis was "a dengue-like viral infection." Come onnnn, I couldn't have gotten regular dengue? I had all the symptoms, but now I don't get the badass points of being able to say "Yeah, I had dengue fever. No big deal." "I had a dengue-like viral infection"? LAME. I also technically can't say for certain that I had a parasite. "I had a long-running stomach ailment that resolved itself after I started taking anti-parasite medication, but I didn't go in for a stool sample so I can't conclusively state that I had a parasite." All I wanted from my Peace Corps experience was one impressive-sounding tropical ailment. Is that so much to ask?
Also, the electricity situation has been better. I opened my milk box and it hasn't gone bad yet, hooray! Next to the fridge, I did discover a banana that I left at my house the entire week I was gone being sick. It was basically liquid, but strangely didn't smell bad or have any flies or ants on it. (It was in a plastic bag, but that doesn't necessarily keep bugs out in this climate.) Interesting. I wonder how long I could potentially have rotten fruit in my house before I would notice.

i don't even know, you guys

2009-09-30T08:59:00.000-07:00

Remember a few weeks ago when I posted about a student's email to me? It was very sweet and high-level.

Today I received an eCard from the same student, which I'm choosing to share with everyone because it is amazing. Haga clic aqui.

I really recommend that you follow the link, since the image and formatting are also key, but in case you don't have that kind of time I'm going to archive the text of the card here.

my best teacher Renata S-

Hi teacher
how are you today? i hope you are doing very good.I am your student Anderson I send you this flower just to prove you how i appreciate the manner you teach me and sincerly i am very flattered that i have some one so special like you as my teacher .iwant to ask you this question but i would like you answer me about it:can you give me permit to be your friend ?i hope fully you will let me hear from you very soon.take care of your self and i wish you a perfect time here in Dominican Republic.
your student Anderson
Your sweet student Anderson

Also, a quick GChat my friend Keane & I had on the subject:

Keane: WOWWWWWW
Keane: POST THAT AS YOUR AWAY MESSAGE
Me: i just wish that the image was actually the cover of twilight like i thought it was at first
Keane: it's so deep
Keane: so are you going to be friends with him?
Keane: he wants your permit.
Me: i think i'll give him a learner's permit to start

It's such a fine line between "sweet" and "a little creepy." But I'm going to just go ahead and give him props for the effort. And the correct spelling of my email address. Peace Corps is truly offering me the opportunity to be an agent of change in the Dominican Republic.

out of the sickbed, into the fire

2009-09-28T09:01:00.000-07:00

Not really a fire, just back to Cabarete, which is swelteringly hot. And I think I've had about half an hour of electricity since I got back on Saturday night. It was from 8:30am-9am today.

The main reason this is annoying is that my milk goes bad. Dominican standards for milk are different from in the US. Here, whole milk is the norm. You can buy whole milk in little juice-box sized boxes. This way, you can probably use it all in one day before it goes bad. But whole milk is gross.

You can buy 1% milk at the big grocery store, but it is only available in big boxes. I think they are a liter or something. Anyway. When the electricity is being normal (a few hours on, a few hours off) you can buy a big box of milk and it will probably be okay.

These boxes (of all milk, not just the 1%) are hermetically sealed so they don't go bad. So right now I have an unopened box of milk in my fridge. I am afraid to open it because I don't know when the luz will come back and I don't want to waste a 45-peso big box of milk.

In summation: life is hard!! Wah!!

But on the bright side... I'm feeling better! I got out of my medically-mandated hotel room! Hooray!

looking on the bright side of things

2009-09-22T18:21:00.000-07:00

I was going to write some kind of funny blog entry about how I've been sick for the last four days but actually I'm just pretty tired. Yesterday I came into the capital to see the doctor. We're waiting on some bloodwork to come back to make sure I don't have anything too weird like dengue. Mainly I've been sleeping a lot and only occasionally surfacing to eat crackers and watch reality televsion.

But on the bright side, at least I didn't get tuberculosis* like a friend of mine did! He's in quarantine for like three weeks now. We've decided that he should release an emo album based on the experience entitled Within the Quarantine of my Soul. It will include tracks like "The Empty Calcified Pocket in my Lungs... and Heart" and "I Miss You Like I Miss Not Coughing." Trust me, TB is going to be the next big thing.

* You might be thinking, "I didn't even know people got TB anymore!" Well, they do, but it's pretty rare in developed nations. He'll be fine, though, he's getting antibiotics. And is in quarantine.

haga clic. haga clic. haga clic. jesus christ, DIJE HAGA CLIC.

2009-09-17T13:17:00.000-07:00

The above was pretty much what I was chanting all day today and yesterday as I tried to coach kids through creating email accounts. I realized that I waaay overestimated these kids' skill level. They are extreme beginners, although they are very enthusiastic. Also, the Dominican school system does not emphasize creativity, but rather rote memorization. So, for example, when I was trying to explain the concept of a "user name" I said that usually people do something like their name plus a number or a nickname. Then I said, for example, my email could be "Renata50 at gmail.com". Then I walked around and realized that half the students were trying to register the account "Renata50@gmail". Not quite, guys. The other half put "Cabarete, Callejon de La Loma" for "desired address."

Anyway, as if this weren't complicated enough, our Internet kept cutting in and out and resetting everyone's work. And then Gmail decided that we had registered enough accounts for one day, thank you very much.

BUT ON THE BRIGHT SIDE, one of the few students who successfully created an account sent me an email to practice his English, and it reads as follows:

Subject: Saluting
Hi Teacher

How are you ? i hope you are very fine.My name is Anderson , i am a student at dream Project .i am 22 years old ,i am intersting very much for the manner you teach me and sincerly i appreciate the computer class so much , i hope fully that i will have a good experience with you at the computer.take care of yourself and God bless you.

your studant Anderson

So, you know... could be worse.

a brief interlude from peace corps stories

2009-09-09T09:04:00.000-07:00

Advise me on my grad school/GRE dilemma, blog readers!

The gist of the dilemma is: Waaah I'm lazy and I don't want to take the GRE. Should I suck it up and do it anyway?

The deets: I am applying for library/information science masters programs. My top two schools, U of Illinois & U Wisconsin (Madison) do not require the GRE. U Iowa and U Washington, which are my... third and fourth choices I guess, DO require the GRE. U ILL says a good GRE score can help an application. U Wisconsin doesn't consider the GRE (right on).

It is possible to take the GRE in the DR, but it's kind of a pain. And expensive. And also I don't want to study for it.

I think I am probably already a pretty good applicant without the GRE. I also think if I suck it up and study I could probably get a pretty good score normally. I have also been having these anxiety problems lately so maybe I would actually just tweak out about it too much. I'm not sure.

Also, if I don't take the GRE it looks like I'm only going to apply to two grad schools. Is that okay? I don't want to flip out and apply to a billion schools or anything, but should I apply to more?

Any input would be appreciated!

surfing photos

2009-09-07T17:51:00.000-07:00

I took my camera out to the beach this weekend! Here are a few shots.

Seriously. Not allowed.

Me showing off my board. And by "my board" I mean "the communal beginners' longboards."

I couldn't even tell who I was taking pictures of. I'm pretty sure these are strangers, but just pretend like they're my friends. Or, hey, pretend like one of them is me.

Kicking it on the beach.

Kadi, me, and Surfcat. AWWW.

awkward conversations with my landlady

2009-09-05T14:01:00.000-07:00

Landlady (who I also pay to do my laundry): I’m sorry, when I did your laundry I got bleach on some of your underwear. It’s just that there were stains. You know… blood.
Me: Yeah, sorry… um… it’s fine.
Landlady: Oh, are you embarrassed to talk about this because there are other people here? Don’t worry, they’re my family!
Me: No, no… it’s fine.
Landlady: These are women’s things. We can talk about them.
Me: Yes. Anyway I have to go, bye.

Scene: In front of the small surf boutique my landlady owns.
Landlady: Renata, come here! I want to show you something!
Me: Okay. (Enters store)
Landlady: (Picks up a stack of panties) Look, these are very nice. (Begins showing me each individual pair) These ones have lace… these ones are pink… they are very pretty, right?
Me: Yes, they are very nice. But I already have enough underwear, thank you.
Landlady: Yes, I know. You have a lot of underwear.
Me: …. Anyway I have to go, bye.

Landlady: Do you want me to do your laundry?
Me: Oh, no thank you. I know you are very busy, and my other volunteer friends told me about a Laundromat nearby.
Landlady: You can’t go to a Laundromat! They don’t care about your clothes there! I care about you!
Me: Well… it’s just that the Laundromat is very cheap, and I am a volunteer and don’t have that much money.
Landlady: But I wash your clothes with love!
Me: Well… thank you.

Landlady: Did my girl do a good job cleaning your apartment?
Me: Yes, thank you. How much do I owe her?
Landlady: (Hands up in surrender gesture) It’s up to you.
Me: Well, I thought four hundred was too much. The other volunteers say it costs them two hundred to get their apartments cleaned, and their apartments are much bigger than mine.
Landlady: My girl will not want two hundred. It’s not about money. She cleans your apartment with LOVE. She is not some person who is only interested in money. She has a good heart. She will want three hundred pesos.
Me: … okay.

*Previous awkward conversation involved her talking about “her girl” and me not realizing that she was referring to her middle-aged neighbor who was sitting there the entire time. She convinced me that I should pay “her girl” to clean my apartment because she is so poor and needs the money, even though I feel awkward about the whole idea of paying someone to clean for me. But also I don't want to be overcharged for it!

in case you thought my life was just all glamorous surfing and whatnot

2009-09-02T08:10:00.001-07:00

Here's how I've been spending my morning:

Attempting to partition a hard drive and install Windows on it. This is a pretty basic task but I keep getting weird error messages and having to re-install. I have re-installed three times. The power is out and the computers are running off the inversor, but the fans don't work. It is hot and I am frustrated.

Also, I made new cards to number the computers and taped them up on the wall behind each computer. Even though I used the paper cutter, none of my cards are quite identical. Honestly, I'm not even sure how I achieved some of the angles involved with these "rectangular" cards. Good thing I'm not the art teacher I suppose? (Although maybe I would just teach the class about modern art, and how what a rectangle means to me is maybe not what a rectangle means to you. Suck on that.)

This afternoon we start teaching! Our Estrellas Juveniles (Young Stars) program is pretty cool. There are three rotating groups. I'm co-teaching "Computers & English." The others are "Reading & Writing" and "Math." It is kind of a cool program because if a kid just wants to take, say, computer class, he still has to take the other classes and learn even more things. Also, our classes are free.

Anyway, we plan to use these ESL flash games in our class, and they are really fun and I've been playing them all morning even though I already, you know, know English. Also, some of the other volunteers and I have gotten really into the typing games at ARTypist (it's a bilingual site) and are now pretty competitive about it. Right now my top score is 17,000 in the ghost typing game. I was briefly the champion but Roger just blew past me with 19,000. That... might not be as interesting to the average reader as it was to us at the center.

In slightly more exciting news, I went surfing again on Saturday and totally didn't drown! I'm also still totally bad at it, but, as they say, Rome wasn't surfed in two lessons.

i, like, totally surfed!

2009-08-27T09:12:00.000-07:00

It's true! The verb "to surf" is one that I never thought I'd be able to accurately conjugate in the first-person past-tense, but here I am. I surfed.

Okay, fine, I never actually stood up on the board. (Which most people don't their first time, apparently.) But I got up on my knees a few times and it was super fun!

A local surf shop donated a free lesson to all of the DREAM volunteers because we are so awesome. I was intimidated about it, since I'm not as athletic as most of my fellow volunteers here. Also, I fear sea creatures.

But it was awesome! I think I am going to sign up for a whole year of surfing, since the same guy is giving us a really good deal on it. (When I say "a whole year of surfing" it includes a few more lessons and then unlimited board rental. And rides to the beach.)

Anyway, that's pretty much my big news for right now. Other than that, it's been pretty chill, non sea-faring workshops and the like.

non-verbal communication

2009-08-20T09:04:00.000-07:00

I'm preparing a few worksheets about Dominican culture for the new DREAM volunteers who are coming next week. (Peace Corps gives us three months of cultural, language, and specialized skills training--DREAM gives its volunteers a week!) Anyway, I thought this handout about non-verbal communication might also make a good blog entry.

Gesture	Meaning	Note
Finger-wag back and forth	“No”	This is very commonly used and is not rude. Use it like you would a head-shake no. It’s especially useful on the street—finger-wagging should put off most vendors and motoconchistas.
Nose-scrunch	“I don’t understand”/ “What?”	If someone does this do you, start off by repeating whatever you just said.
Hiss	“Look at me/listen to me”—attention-getter	Again—not at all rude here, although it may grate on American ears. You may grow accustomed to ignoring it, since it often comes from tigueres, but sometimes a Dominican friend will say, “Hey, I saw you in the street yesterday and you ignored me!”
Hand to opposite elbow	“Tacaño—cheapskate”	A little rude. A seller might use it if you are bargaining with too-low prices. A Dominican might use it to you to refer to someone else.
Lip-point (looks kind of like a kiss)	“Look at that” (whatever the lips are directed towards)	Not sexual or kissing-related at all. Just pointing, like with a finger.
Tapping temple	“Smart!”	For example, if a student has a really good idea you can say “buen idea” and tap your forehead for emphasis.
Rubbing index fingers together, or one index finger on the thigh	“Sex”	Usually a man will do this to a woman on a bus or something. It’s a gross gesture; don’t acknowledge it. It could also be used in conversation between friends, like “Eh, Juan y Maria… (rub index fingers together)?” I.e. “Do you think Juan and Maria are hooking up?”
Use index finger to scribble in the air	“Check, please!”	Use this after making eye contact from afar with your waiter or waitress at a restaurant.

Congratulations! You have completed the equivalent of 20 minutes of DREAM volunteer training.

cheer up, tropical depression ana

2009-08-17T13:25:00.000-07:00

Well, hurricane season is starting up again with Ana, Bill, and Claudette partying in the Caribbean. Right now Tropical Depression Ana is causing a gentle rain to fall upon Cabarete. (Yesterday it was Tropical Storm but it's already been downgraded.) Bill and Claudette aren't even supposed to affect the DR. (Southeastern Americans, though, watch out!) Anyway, just a reminder that Peace Corps DR has an excellent storm warning system and I'd already gotten two emails, a text, and three phone calls about Ana before it even started raining here.

This weekend I failed to round up a group to go to Santiago to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (Harry Potter y el Misterio del Principe--Harry Potter and the Mystery of the Prince, not quite the same) but I'm going to try again this weekend. Unless we get put on Standfast--Peace Corps code for "it's raining, or might rain, so everyone stay home." But si Dios quiere, I'll get my British wizard fix soon.

This weekend I did go to Sosua with my friends Asahi and Nate, which was remarkable for two reasons:
1. I ate some really greasy French fries and got spectacularly sick. (I'm fine now.)

2. I got one of the more hilarious pickup lines I've received in this country. Let me recreate the scene:
Asahi and I are walking back from the beach. We weren't swimming, so we're wearing normal clothes. The street to the beach is lined with small stores, all selling the same touristy crap. Asahi and I are talking to each other and trying to avoid eye contact with the sellers.
Che Guevara T-shirt wearing seller (in English): Excuse me.
Me (avoiding eye contact): No, gracias.
Che guy: Please, I do not want to sell anything to you. I just want to ask one question.
Me: ... okay.
Che guy: Where are you from? Are you from Canada?
Me: ... I'm from the United States.
Che guy: I'm from Haiti.
Me: Hm. (Tries to walk away)
Che guy: Wait, wait! I saw you before when you were walking to the beach, but I didn't call out to you because I thought, they are going to the beach. But I like the way you carry yourself.
Me: Um, thanks.
Che guy: I want to see you again.
Me: ....
Che guy: I want to see you again every day for the rest of my life.
Me: .... (Trying not to laugh)
Che guy: Let me get something for you. (Reaches out and wipes sweat off my cheek.)
Me: UM, GOODBYE. (Walks away and cracks up)

I think I might be leaving out a few pieces of the conversation, but I definitely remembered all the best lines. I want to see you again every day for the rest of my life. Nice one, Che guy. Nice one.

the pit of despair and other landmarks

2009-08-13T05:31:00.000-07:00

Hi guys! So, not that much is new with me since the last update. I’ve been settling in at the DREAM Center, working on updating the manual for computer classes and a grant application. I now have some pretty bourgeoisie problems to deal with: my manual is for PCs and we have Macs! The lab doesn’t have air conditioning! But these are both kind of important, since Macs are different enough from PCs that the manual needs a lot of work to be comprehensible for beginner computer students. And without air conditioning these new computers are going to get super effed-up by the heat here. (That is not the exact phrasing I am using in my grant application, but you get the gist..)

I’ve also been getting to know my new fellow volunteers. It is funny: we go out to Happy Hour after work, like we are in America or something! Better than America, even, since Happy Hour is on the beach. Uh, where even am I? Am I still in the Peace Corps?

Perhaps most excitingly, I have been walking home from work. This is exciting because the last few days my street has been ripped up by a big earthmover. Apparently they are fixing some pipes down there or something, which is good since our water situation has been dire lately. (Like, half an hour of running water a day, which I have to obsessively monitor and then fill buckets when it comes.) But now, since the entire street has become a Pit of Despair, I have to scramble home over a very narrow strip of sand. Although “strip” sounds misleadingly flat—it is a narrow series of piles. Of sand. That I scramble over in flip-flops. Meanwhile, neighbors helpfully call out “Cuidado!” (“Careful!”), as if I am not already painfully aware that one misstep will send me straight down into the Pit of Despair. (OK, it is like five feet deep and I probably wouldn’t die. I could probably climb back out again. But it would be so awkward.)

Also, I have prepared for you all a small photo tour of my new barrio and apartment, including the Pit of Despair! Enjoy.

Here is the earthmover responsible for the Pit of Despair.

I am not sure if you can accurately detect the depth of the Pit here. Oh, it is deep.

This child is far better at navigating the edge of the Pit than I.

After successfully crossing the Pit, you arrive at my apartment! Not pictured: my apartment extends for about three inches past the door on the other side, but I couldn't get it all in the frame.

Here is my kitchen area! I put the cutting board on the stove to make a counter. One day I will probably melt my cutting board.

I thought about cleaning up before doing the photo tour, but then I thought no, you should see how I live! Thus, here is my bed/couch/table/nest, unmade. But the table is set for lunch, which inquiring mothers will be happy to note includes a fruit AND a vegetable. (Perhaps this is only detectable in the large version: it's pineapple, carrots, and a falafel wrap that I made myself because I am awesome.)

The front half (third, really) of the apartment. The TV doesn't work, but the ceiling fan does.

Here is the DREAM center! Perhaps it is not that exciting to look at. Dreams are invisible.

Oh hey, here's Playa Cabarete. I can walk there in about fifteen minutes. Just sayin'.

There are some more pictures at my Flickr. My dad particularly will be interested in the additional shots available of the Pit of Despair and related equipment.

roughly 7000 words

2009-08-05T08:41:00.000-07:00

Hey, gang! I survived my trip to the capital and I'm back at the DREAM Center now. (I love that my place of work is called the DREAM Center. It sounds like I should be in an office full of Care Bears.)

Anyway, I uploaded a new batch of photos to my Flickr. Here are a few favorites:

One of the hikes we took with the Constanza youth camp. I held up the back of the line.

A muchacho with a hilarious attitude.

Chris, me, Malia, and Kathy on the top of a mountain called La Ochenta. (The 80. The name is unclear to me; it is more than 80 feet tall but less than 80 miles. Whatever.)

One of the views from the top of La Ochenta.

Julie's body art in progress at the DREAM art show fundraiser, which featured face/body painting.

A couple kids rocking their face paint.

One of the pieces of art for sale at the DREAM event.

what i blog about when i blog about blogging

2009-08-02T15:52:00.000-07:00

Keane: I don't really get all these volunteers who have blogs. I mean, my life is not that interesting. I don't know what I'd blog about.
Me: Yeah, once in awhile I actually have something interesting to post on my blog. The rest of the time I just put stuff about, like...
Keane: That Japanese cat blog you're into?
Me: YES.
Keane: Haha.
Me: No seriously, I wrote like a paragraph about it last week.

(God, it's still the cutest blog ever, though.)

Anyway. Right now I am at Keane's site kind of helping him fix a computer. Also kind of blogging and making fun of other volunteers' blogs. (JUST KIDDING ABOUT THAT LAST PART, OTHER VOLUNTEERS.)

Yesterday I went to an Art Night at a hostel in Santiago. It was a lot of fun to connect with other volunteers and hear their music and poetry. Plus, Keane and Shilpa made Indian food and it was amazing. I brought a new friend from DREAM with me and I think she had a good time. We had previously bonded with each other over the fact that everyone else at DREAM has already bonded over the summer. But now, the two of us have an Art Night bond!! Hooray, friends. (Please imagine those last few sentences being spoken by Dr. Zoidberg from Futurama if you are familiar with that show. If you are not familiar with Futurama, just know that I do realize I'm being a little pathetic. Friends are fun!!)

Anyway. I am extremely excited that tomorrow I get to pick up my new glasses! (You may recall the broken glasses saga of two weeks ago. I have been wearing my old backup pair since them. They are almost the right prescription, but a little too weak, so I've been getting some headaches and eyestrain after I look at too many things. Tragically, nearly all of my job assignments and hobbies require looking at things. It is also making me really appreciate proper optometry! I know for a fact that when we gave out free glasses at the med mission I did a few months ago it was really hit or miss; we just gave each person the closest glasses we could find to the prescription the person actually needed. I am sure many of those people are having these kind of problems all the time. And I'm sure they are excited to have imperfect glasses, which are surely better than no glasses. And all you lucky chumps with perfect vision should take a moment right now to appreciate it.)

Now that I've finished reminding you decadent First Worlders of how good you have it, I'm going to go back to trying to fix this computer. (We've just made the executive decision that we need to open it up and swap out the sound card. This requires us to literally break a seal that the Despacho de la Primera Dama has placed on the back of the computer to prevent a person from opening it. Breaking the seal on a Despacho computer offers an IT Volunteer the same kind of mild illicit thrill as ripping off a strongly-worded mattress tag.)

what have i been up to

2009-07-29T07:44:00.000-07:00

Ohhhh all kinds of things. Here is a recent article (in English) about my new partner NGO, DREAM Project. It is slightly factually incorrect in parts (for example, it claims that Google is one of our sponsors, which it is not. But if anyone reading this works for Google, please feel free to become one of our sponsors!!)

Basically I am working a lot, like nine hour days. This is compared to my old site where I pretty much worked a 9-hour week. Maybe. It feels good, though.

Also I am spending a lot of time reading this blog about a Japanese cat named Maru. IT IS AMAZING, please cease reading my blog immediately and read about Maru instead. I assure you it will be more fulfilling.

greetings from cabarete!

2009-07-17T14:12:00.000-07:00

HEY BLOG. How have you been? I've had an eventful week, I suppose! I went up a mountain to Constanza, where I helped my friends Chris, Kathy, and Malia run a youth day camp. It was nice: the air is cooler up the mountain, and I got to go on some fun hikes and get a free snack every day. It wasn't all sunshine and unicorns, however:

I got enormous (egg sized in surface diameter, though not in depth) bug bites from evil insects known as magi.
I got hit in the face with a baseball and had a sore nose.
I had the sniffles all week.
I scratched my arms on thorn bushes.
I fell on a rock and skinned my knee REAL BAD.
I broke my glasses across the nose and had to tape them together.

Basically I had a lot of maladies an average elementary school student might sustain. Hilarious.

Now I am up in Cabarete, a nice beach town on the North Coast. It seems I will be moving here next week! I will be working with the DREAM project and it seems like it will be awesome. I looked at some housing options today and hopefully I will hear back about prices by the end of the day and move in somewhere on Tuesday! Goodbye, stupid old town. Hello, beach!

Oh also I will get new glasses on Monday, which I am really looking forward to because this tape job keeps coming undone, causing my glasses to fall off my face at inopportune times. Actually there are never really any opportune times for glasses to fall off one's face.

current weather: raining

2009-07-11T07:49:00.000-07:00

Current status: sitting in the Peace Corps computer lab uploading pictures of my cats to the Internet and drinking coffee out of a Thomas Kinkaide-printed paper cup that someone's mom sent in a care package.

Current mood: pretty alriiiight.

I still don't have tooo much more information about my site change, although it sounds likely that I will be placed with that NGO I linked to before. On Friday I'm going up to visit and meet with them. I hope they like me! (And vice versa.)

In the interim I'm basically hanging out. Last night Justin and I went to see Transformers 2, which was, perhaps, the absolutely most on-target bullseye to the lowest common denominator film I've ever seen. We had a great time. Tonight we are planning to have an Arnold Schwartzenegger festival, featuring Kindergarten Cop and Last Action Hero.

Tomorrow I am going up north to help my friend Kathy with her youth camp until Friday, when, as I mentioned, I'll be going to visit with my potential new site.

Right now, here are a few pictures from my last batch of at-home photos.

Kitty Barack and Kitty Magneto! THEY ARE SO CUTE.

Me with Tyrone, the most BA of all cats.

Mom & I at BURGER BARGE

Dad & I, also at Burger Barge. I mean, BURGER BARGE.

kickin' it in the peace corps office

2009-07-09T13:21:00.000-07:00

Hi, Internet! I am back in the Dominican Republic. Here are some anecdotes:

My dad decided to pack a bag full of tools to send as a gift to my host dad. When I checked in to the airport at 5am, the check-in woman (who looked about as tired as I felt, and I had stayed up the entire night) informed me that the tool bag was three pounds over. Three! So mom and I began ripping open dad's careful tape job (why would you tape a duffel bag shut? If you are my dad, and you are supremely confident that your bag will not need to be opened, I suppose) and extracted a very large hammer and a heavy tape measure, knocking the bag down to an appropriate weight. Hooray!
When I arrived at the airport, I was slightly bewildered to be greeted by my friends Karina and Justin! Yay! They knew I had a ride back to my house, but they came anyway bearing signs that said "We [Heart] Renata" and "Welcome back, Scrabble!" Also, my super-sweet host parents picked me up in their truck and gave my friends rides home too. And then somehow got a flat tire but just took me home anyway.
Then I came into the capital the next morning thinking I was supposed to meet with my boss but it turns out NOPE, so I just hung out with friends and ate sushi and watched (and made fun of) Selena.
Today I took a long nap on the couch in the Peace Corps lounge. It was nice.

I still don't have a lot of details about my future site change. I MIGHT work with this NGO in Cabarete (a beautiful beach town) but I don't think I'll have any details until next Thursday at least, when I might go visit there. Basically my site change is kind of low on the priority list for my boss, which is fine with me. I'll just ease my way back into Dominican life and hang out for awhile. Also maybe help my friend Kathy with her youth camp, vamos a ver.

leavin' on a jet plane

2009-07-07T00:26:00.000-07:00

Since my flight leaves Central Illinois Regional Airport at 6am, my intrepid mother and I have opted to pull an all-nighter rather than have to set alarms for 3:30am to make sure we get up and to the airport on time. We are enjoying late night cable television, including Daisy of Love, which is even more stupid (and awesome) than its predecessor, Rock of Love. Mom keeps trying to get me to put it on Home & Garden TV and I keep insisting that I am leaving the country today, mother, and I want to watch Disney Channel. I mean, really.

Anyway, my trip home has pretty much been awesome. I ate so many things and my suitcase includes like five kinds of trail mix. And five kinds of chocolate. And a space bag full of new clothes from Sam's Club!

Here's some stuff I did in America:

Went Pirate Adventure mini-golfing in Wisconsin!

Went to the Harry Potter exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry!

Plus the museum has sassy baby chicks! (Look at the big version! The chick in the middle is SO SASSY.)

Went to Pontiac Heritage Days and met fake Abraham Lincoln!

Had a Fourth of July party and played with sparklers!

And also a mini-high school reunion!

And also a mini-college reunion!

HOORAY.

Anyway, I've had a good time being home but I suppose I am ready to go back to the DR. I am hopeful that in my new site I will maybe be able to do some of the stuff I joined Peace Corps to do. Plus, I miss my ridiculous Peace Corps friends.

But seriously, America is pretty sweet, you guys.

hitting the road

2009-06-21T08:18:00.000-07:00

Well, we've rearranged our travel plans slightly. Today my family and I are heading over to Iowa to attend my friend Megan's funeral service. Then we are heading up to Wisconsin for a few days, including a waterpark trip.

I am still trying to enjoy this trip home as much as possible, but I can't pretend it isn't colored by the tint of grief. Here's a link to Megan's obituary. Those of you who have heard any of my stories about my Rent days have probably heard about Megan, although we stayed in contact even after we stopped traveling around watching musicals together. She was a smart, fun, funny, kind person and I am going to miss the shit out of her. That is pretty much all I have to say right now.

back in amurica

2009-06-20T20:27:00.000-07:00

Hi gang!

Guess what country I am in! OK I gave it away in the subject line: it is the United States of Amurica. I arrived safely and on time, which is a small miracle considering I had four connecting flights. Gloria al Señor!

And in the Miami airport I got a bagel sandwich and jalapeño chips for lunch!!! And in Atlanta I got a soy latte and a Danish!! And when I got home my family took me out for Thai food!

Yesterday I went up to Chicago and visited my friend Trina. We ate some food and tried to go see a Harry Potter exhibit at the Museum of Science & Industry, but we failed to plan ahead and it was sold out all day so, uh, we didn't.

This blog entry is probably not that interested for Americans to read! Sorry!

As a postscript I will say that my last day in the DR before vacation was super terrible and I had to go to a committee meeting dedicated to denouncing me for stupid reasons and anyway when I go back to the DR I'm moving to a different town. But I don't have details about where I'm going and I don't really want to go into details about how effed-up my old town really was. Suffice to say that although moving will be a pain, I am looking forward to a fresh start.

homeward bound

2009-06-16T12:31:00.001-07:00

What’s up, guys? Here is what is up with me: I’m going home the day after tomorrow!! Hopefully I will be able to hang out with [you] while I am there. This will be my first time in the States since February 2008! I imagine things are pretty similar there, although from the La Sirena checkout lines I have noticed that Tic Tacs have gotten bigger here. Have they gotten bigger in the States? I suspect that they have. Other than that, though, you guys are still using the dollar, right? Have you gotten rid of pennies? Is Obama on any money yet? Do we still have fifty states? Which group would you say is more hated, gays or Arab-Americans? Do they still make that gross cherry-chocolate flavor Dr Pepper? Does anyone know if my credit union is still in business? I have like three hundred dollars in checking, that shit better still be there.

Well! I suppose I will find the answers to these questions and more as of 5:17pm on Thursday, unless my flight gets delayed.

In case you are curious, here is my “To do” list for while I’m home. It is composed entirely of food (and a few beverages). Please contact me if you would like to eat some of these foods with me.

Thai restaurant
Masala
Steak & Shake*
Panera
Coffeehouse
Burger Barge*
Sonic slushie
Greek Islands
Big pretzel
Waffles
Jalapeño chips
Diet Diet Pepper

* For those of you sassafrasses who would like to know what a vegetarian is doing at Steak & Shake and Burger Barge, the answer is: French fries. Also shakes. And they have portabella mushroom sandwiches at Burger Barge. (I don’t get it, but whenever I express a desire to visit Steak n Shake to non-Midwestern Peace Corps friends, they are always like, “But you’re vegetarian! Why would you want to go to a place called Steak n Shake.” And I’m all, “Hello, it’s called “Steak n Shake,” the shakes are vegetarian!” They just don’t even know, you guys.)

Aside from food, I am also looking forward to:

Air conditioning
Hot showers (I know, I know, if it weren’t for the air conditioning, the hot showers wouldn’t be necessary)
Uninterrupted electricity
Traveling with my sweet State Department passport (which, there appears to be no real reason why Peace Corps volunteers get these, and we're definitely not State Department employees, but the passports are rad)
Not being stared at all the damn time
Target
Some pretense of customer service
Basic respect for line-waiting
Driving around in cars with fewer than six people in them
Seeing family & friends or whatever

Mainly my planning for my trip home has reverted to me having the same conversations with my mom that I would have had circa age ten. “MOM! For my birthday, can we get an ICE CREAM CAKE?!”

“AND CAN WE GO TO THE WATER PARK??”

“CAN WE GO TO SHAKESPEARE FEST AND HAVE A PICNIC ON THE LAWN!!” (OK, at ten I might not have wanted the Shakespeare, but definitely the picnic.)

“MOM, I KNOW I SAID YOU COULD USE MY GAME BOY WHILE I WAS GONE BUT I WANT IT BACK NOW.”

“MOM, CAN CHRISTINE AND JULIA SPEND THE NIGHT AT OUR HOUSE?”

“MOM, CAN WE HAVE A PARTY AT THE HOUSE FOR FOURTH OF JULY? AND CAN WE MAKE CHEESE DIP?”

“MOM, WHEN WE GO TO WISCONSIN CAN WE GO TO THE RESTAURANT ON THE LAKE, WITH THE BIG UMBRELLA AND THE FRIED PICKLES?”

Basically this is probably going to be the BEST THREE WEEKS I’VE EVER SPENT IN AMERICA.

more tales from this dominican life

2009-06-16T12:22:00.000-07:00

I’ve been corresponding back and forth with a 6th grade Spanish class in the States through the Peace Corps program World Wise Schools. (Briefly, my English class was also corresponding, but that kind of stopped when all my students stopped attending English class.) Last month, one of the students wrote to me that he liked cooking and baking. I wrote back asking what kinds of things he cooked, and last week I got a reply saying he just made a “pie de arándano.” “Pie” is Spanish for “foot,” and I didn’t recognize the word “arándano,” so I was a little grossed out as I went for the dictionary, like, what animal is this kid cooking the foot of?! And then it turned out that “arándano” means “blueberry,” which threw me for another loop. Blueberry foot? Is that like some kind of British pastry? Or, wait… he just meant “pie.” Blueberry pie.
This story actually probably could have happened in the States, but I’ll share it anyway. It is for your amusement, reader, that I do this! I’ve recently had a few sets of visitors to my house, which made me realize that my mug and bowl supply has been somewhat depleted by my tendency to drop things. So I went down to my town’s 10 y 20 (like a five and dime store, but the devaluation of Dominican currency has led to 10 & 20s instead) and perused the somewhat limited housewares section. I debated between some large solid-color mugs, some smaller flowered mugs, and some Garfield and Friends mugs that were shipped directly from 1988. I left the store with two plain mugs and two neon plastic bowls (probably from the same shipment as the Garfield mugs). Since the stuff was dusty from the store, I washed it before putting it away. Unfortunately, I dropped the red mug on its way to the drying rack and broke it. “Oh well,” I thought, “at least I still have this green mug.” Unfortunately, the green mug had some sort of dirty speck that was really stuck on the bottom, so I left it to soak over night. The next day I went back to continue my attack on the green mug. The mystery fleck was stubborn, and I kept scrubbing at it. And scrubbing. Until I somehow scrubbed through the side of the mug, knocking out a nickel-sized hole on one side, severely reducing the liquid capacity of the mug. Oh well, I guess I’ll go back and try the Garfield mugs.
In the DR, ambulances and fire trucks are sort of rare and unreliable, so if someone drives by and sees an accident, they will almost always stop and assist and drive people to the hospital if necessary. Accidents are also often the most exciting thing to happen all day, so they draw huge rubbernecking crowds. Yesterday, I was taking a guagua back to my town from La Vega and talking to my friend Justin on the phone. We had gone about 2 blocks from the stop when we passed a big accident, which actually had an ambulance there, in addition to a large mob of onlookers (La Vega is a pretty good-sized town.) Suddenly, my guagua whipped around and did a U-turn, which I grumbled about to Justin. “I think we’re turning around to go back to that accident, but there was an ambulance there! What are we even going to do? Are we just going back to stare? ” As it turned out, we were just heading back to the guagua stop because the driver had forgotten his lunch.
Last week, my friends Justin, Arianna and I met up for lunch with a Dominican doctor, who had been some kind of liaison with the military med mission Justin and I did last month. (Which I don’t think I ever posted very much about, but it was really great! Speaking as someone who has personally criticized the size of the US military budget, these Reservist medical missions seem like a very well-done program, and one that military PR guys maybe should spend a little more time promoting to the general public.) So when this doctor told us we should meet up because she wanted to help us plan medical missions in our own sites, we were excited about the possibilities. Unfortunately, it turned out that 1) this woman has a crush on Justin that she is apparently prepared to be pretty relentless about pursuing, 2) she has no actual authority with the military med missions and is offering to travel with a couple doctor friends to sites to do one-day mini-missions (which is still a nice project, but not quite what we were hoping for), 3) she is some kind of quack who encouraged Arianna and I to wear vibrating bands around our waists to lose weight, noting that it has worked for all of her patients, many of whom are much fatter than we are, 4) she is interested in acquiring a Peace Corps volunteer to serve as her personal assistant, 5) she is also interested in acquiring a Peace Corps volunteer to serve as her private English tutor, and 6) she is some kind of crazy. Oh, and when I tried to bow out of her crazy meeting by saying I was going to the States for three weeks (true), she asked if I could bring her back “una cosita” (one little thing). I said “Maybe… what?” And she said, “Oh, just a little laptop computer.” Ay, Dios. Anyway, so the three of us engineered our escape (but not before she got Justin to pay for her lunch by claiming her wallet was stolen—which maybe it actually was. Maybe.) by claiming (semi-truthfully) to be subject to the whims of Dominican public transportation, and scurrying to a colmado a block away to sit on plastic chairs and talk about how crazy this woman was. Then, an hourish later, when we actually did need to start leaving to make sure to catch public transportation in time, she passes by the colmado and sees us standing up to leave. “Justin! Justin! You abandoned me!” she yells (Arianna and I are pretty much off the hook). “Oh,” Justin says, awkwardly. “It’s just that after we left, it started raining, so we sat in here to wait a little bit for it to stop…but now we really have to go or we’ll miss the very last carros.” (This is kind of true, in that it had been raining on and off all afternoon, and we really did need to leave then. It’s also an excellent excuse, because Dominicans hate to do anything in the rain, so avoiding rain is always an acceptable motive .) STILL THOUGH, IT WAS SUPER AWKWARD.

counting down

2009-06-05T12:52:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone! I haven't updated much lately for the simple reason that I haven't been doing much lately! After my hectic month of May, I've been playing it pretty tranquilo here in my site, doing a lot of reading and DVD watching in my house and doing some light work (virus deletion and Photoshop installation) at my center.

I've also been counting the number of mosquito bites received! Not really, but if I were, the number would be very high. Eek. Hope all is well with all of you, and if you're in the Midwest I'll see you soon!

i'm gonna jump!

2009-05-30T13:45:00.000-07:00

Hey guys. I'm still alive after a hectic week of traveling and conferences. My new friend with a waterproof camera just sent me a bunch of photos from our trip to 27 Charcos. I'll upload them later, but for now here is a video of me jumping off the 27th (highest) one. I look kind of goofy but whatever, I did it! And lived to tell.

how renata lost her social skills

2009-05-23T11:04:00.000-07:00

I've been hanging out in the capital the last few days, enjoying food, friends, and cable television. Unfortunately, I made some new friends last night and was forced to confront how Dominican (well, Dominican Peace Corps) I've become. A few PCVs and I went out with some visiting Harvard students who were here with Engineers Beyond Borders, and here are some of the things I unthinkingly did at dinner:

Hissed at them to get their attention (my friend Trina stopped me with a shocked face and a "You can't hiss at them!" But in the DR it's totally socially acceptable and useful to hiss at people.)
Gave directions with a hand wave and a "pa'lla" (over there)
Talked too much about Twilight (this is actually a Peace Corps thing, not a Dominican thing)
Liberally used essentially meaingless Spanish phrases like "ya tu sabes" and "ahorita"
Wagged my finger to say "no"

Anyway, please be understanding when I come home to visit. I'm not trying to be rude or awkward, I'm just culture-shocked. Some friends and I have also been joking about how funny it will be when we move home after Peace Corps and try to import the entire culture by doing things like asking people "Where's your site?", trying to fit 6 people in a Corolla, and showing up uninvited to people's houses and asking for coffee. Also, we will all totally invoke God in conversation way more than we used to. Ay, Dios mio--I need to end this blog entry so I can go catch the bus, si Dios quiere.

i forgot to say

2009-05-20T13:18:00.000-07:00

That my landlord fixed my power!! He stood on a ladder and patched me back into the grid with a stick and a piece of my wire clothesline. Later some Edenorte guys came by to do it for real. In other news, this morning I spilled half a greca of coffee on my right hand. Since Dominican coffee actually has to boil to work, it is hotter than the average American coffee. Please feel sorry for me!! I'll take a picture of my pathetic tape & gauze job if I have to.

Don't feel too sorry though, cuz tomorrow I'm skippin' town to pick up my friend Stephanie at the airport (returning from a trip home) and then we're going to the beaaach.

fotos

2009-05-19T10:10:00.000-07:00

Justin's birthday cake! They don't decorate cakes at Nacional so Keane and I had to do our best with big frosting and a toothpick.

"I have a request... can all the girls drape all the guys? Like in a hip hop video?"
"... only because it's your birthday."

Carly & I re-enacting our karaoke glory.

Me riding up the loma to Anne & Tim's site. (I told you I wore my helmet, and now I have evidence.)

Carina, Carly, me, and Justin pre-27 Charcos. Each of us jumped off of the 27th!! We couldn't take pictures because no one had a waterproof camera, but you can take a digital tour here if you are so inclined. (In English, even.)

A delicious campo meal of homemade falafel and red wine (hauled up the mountain on a moto.)

Como siempre, more available at my Flickr.

a whirlwind week

2009-05-18T12:32:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone! I’m just getting settled back into my site after a crazy week, the kind that makes me realize how awesome being in the Peace Corps is. I’m going to do a little day by day for you, and hopefully get some pictures posted.

Sunday:
I left my site to visit Justin, a nearby IT volunteer. We hung out with his host family, ate some tostones, and watched Battlestar Galactica.
Monday:
Justin and I went to the medical mission in his site. It was organized by the US military (specifically the Navy Reserves) in partnership with the Dominican military, and it was a lot of enlisted doctors and nurses coming to give free basic health care, including a dentist and an optician. (If you’ve ever donated your old glasses to the Lions Club, this is where they end up.) Justin had expected it to be a small event, so he only invited me to come help translate (also because we wanted to watch some BSG together), but there ended up being about 50 American Navy people and hundreds of Dominican patients. It was a little hectic, but fun. I spent the morning working at intake, where I went between four different desks helping translate stuff like “dolor de cabeza” (“headache”), ”los riñones” (“kidneys,” or basically any kind of internal upset), and “la gripe” (cold, or flu, or possibly allergies). Then I moved to the eye room, where I helped translate stuff like “Which is better, one or two?” and “What exactly is the problem with your vision”? Also, I’d run across the room and ask patients how their new glasses fit. It was a little frustrating because they usually cared more about how the frames looked than how the glasses actually fit their prescription—often they would try to get ones that were too weak or too strong if the lenses were more stylish, and I would try to prevent that from happening.
Tuesday:
More of the same at the med mission, although by the afternoon I was so tired that I kept saying “osos” (“bears”) instead of “ojos (“eyes”).We said farewell to our new Navy Reserves BFFs—although the mission had one more day in Justin’s town we had to leave the next morning. The funniest part was when we took a photo of all the translators together (Me, Justin, a few advanced English students from the town, and our friend Iris also came on Tuesday) and Iris said, “Let’s take a picture where we all jump on a three-count!” And then she looked at the picture on someone’s camera and said excitedly, “Look how good I jumped!!” Maybe you had to be there.
Wednesday:
We left and headed for our friend Keane’s site. Since it was his birthday, I brought a cake that I had baked on Sunday before I left, which we ate even though it was a little moldy. (It was in Tupperware and a Ziploc bag! Darn you, Caribbean climate!) Justin and I had also made him a certificate, which Dominicans are really big on certificates. In any Dominican house, they will have every certificate they have ever earned from junior high school on proudly displayed. When you offer a class, one of the first things students will ask before they sign up is if they will get a certificate at the end. Dominicans also love Word Art and clip art, so we made Keane a hilariously tacky certificate with no free space anywhere, just tons of rainbow lettering and pictures of pizza everywhere. (Best part: we printed it out in Justin’s center the day before and everyone there was all, Que lindo!! [How pretty!]) Then we went to the new volunteer swear-in ceremony, which was… well, not exactly fun, but nice to see all the new group and get free cupcakes. Afterwards we went out for Chinese food and karaoke. The new kids weren’t really into the karaoke but we older volunteers (it’s weird that we’re older volunteers now, right?) ate it up. I myself participated in duets on the Spice Girls’ classic “Wannabe” and Aqua’s “Around the World” (which my friend Joel chose thinking it was a different song called “Around the World” and I leapt in heroically to save him with my knowledge of Danish pop music). PLUS I was a backup dancer for a performance of NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye.”
Thursday:
The All-Volunteer Conference! These used to be held in December and then got moved to May last year so this is actually the first one my group has attended. It was kind of lame; a lot of bureaucratic announcements and such, but it was nice to see everyone. Plus, free food. The best part was when the safety & security officer gave everyone a little home improvement kit containing “a lock, a personal alarm, some screws, and a hasp” and none of us had any idea what a hasp was, which it turns out it’s that little metal flappy thing you need to lock something with a padlock, and then we were all obsessed with the word “hasp” which is, you know, a pretty funny word. The worst part was that for the rest of the week I had to haul around ten pounds of hardware. Including the hasp. Hasp hasp hasp. Also then we went out to the car wash (which in case you’ve forgotten is a car wash by day, open air discoteca by night).
Friday:
Justin, Carly, and I traveled with Anne and Tim up to their site, a trip which involved a bus, a carro publico, a guagua, and a moto ride up a mountain (yes, Mom, I wore my helmet). Their site is much more “Peace Corps” than mine—it’s a little two-room house on top of a mountain with a latrine and an amazing view. We hung out and made dinner and just had a fun evening, including a heated discussion of food of an intensity probably only possible for Peace Corps volunteers and other people suffering from culture shock:

“I think my favorite cereal is Reese’s Puffs.”
“OH MY GOD THOSE ARE SO GOOD.”

“SNICKERS ARE THE BEST CANDY BAR.”

“My favorite Ben and Jerry’s flavor is Chunky Monkey.”
“OH MY GOD MINE TOO!!”

“Would you guys PLEASE stop talking about Brie cheese?”
“Let’s just run down to the store and get some. (Deep sigh)”
Saturday:
Justin, Carly, and I met up with Karina’s friend Carina (confusing, I know) to do the 27 Charcos, which is a series of 27 waterfalls and pools and you climb up and jump down. It was really hard for me because I couldn’t take my glasses so I was just sort of blindly wandering along and slipping on rocks and stuff. We all jumped off of the 27th charco, which is the highest and scariest one. I did it, and then immediately afterwards was like “Oh my God I can’t believe I just did that!” and was more scared about it after the fact. But we were all fine. (Don’t worry, Mom, we all wore helmets and life jackets.) Unfortunately, our guides were in a hurry to get down the mountain (I’ve heard from other people that this is a problem—the guides want to go as fast as possible so they can do more trips and get more money) and wasn’t clear about the directions on the next one, which was a long waterfall we were supposed to slide down. I went to go down it, and the guide goes, “Not there, over here!” but the current was too strong for me move back and I ended up getting swept down this waterfall backwards and my leg got stuck on the rock and forcefully removed. I didn’t break it or anything, gracias a Dios, but it hurt a lot and made the rest of the charcos harder. Especially since then the rude guide was guiding me by hand and yelling at me the whole time (“Watch where you’re going! Go slower! Go faster! Don’t fall!”) etc. And then when one of my awesome friends came over to take my other hand, the guide would yell at them, too—“That’s not your job, that’s my job! I know my job!” Ugh. But the sore leg and mean guide aside, it was a lot of fun. It was like Nature’s waterpark (with an Indiana Jones theme). It was really frustrating not being able to see, though—everyone kept being like, “Wow, it’s soo beautiful here!” and I’d be like, “It looks very brown and blurry!” There were two Mormon missionaries on the trek with us and they had a waterproof camera and promised to email us pictures… maybe then I’ll be able to see how beautiful it was! Then we went back to Anne & Tim’s and enjoyed another tranquillo evening. There are definite tradeoffs to all Peace Corps sites—they have to ride a moto 25 minutes down the mountain to get to the nearest colmado, and further still for a grocery store. But their site is beautiful and cozy, and their old host family grows and roasts their own coffee and cacao and makes 100% fresh coffee and hot chocolate for them. Awesome.
Sunday:
We spent the morning with Anne & Tim, eating pancakes and playing Quiddler. Then Carly, Justin and I went to my site, where my guests were in complete awe of my home décor (not to mention running water and tile flooring). We went over to visit my host family, but they weren’t home so we went over to the host aunt and uncle’s house. We were planning to eventually go to a concert at the high school that was supposed to start at 6pm, di que, but we knew it would be later. But then at 7pm, the host aunt (a teacher at the school) said, “You’re going to the concert? Let’s go now!” and we ended up sitting in the bleachers for another hour and a half. And then as soon as it started (and the lights went down) we slipped away to make dinner. (Not that I didn’t want to see the concert, but I was more concerned with just showing my face in the community again after being gone a week, which I had had ample opportunity to do. And we were hungry.) We made an awesome stirfry and played Scrabble!
Monday:
We got up and I made French toast. Hilarious highlight: I went out to the colmado to get eggs, and Justin offered to make coffee. I told him where I keep the greca and the coffee, and when I returned a few minutes later I found him sitting on the bed next to Carly with the greca in pieces. “I thought I could just figure it out,” he said, “but it looks really complicated!” (Justin still lives with a host family—he has his own little suite but his doña still cooks all his meals for him, so he’d never had to make his own coffee before.) Then they headed off to Justin’s site for his English class, and here I am, alone for the first time in eight days! (Actually, now I'm back at my center. But for awhile there: alone.)

more tales from this dominican life

2009-05-08T13:03:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went into Santiago to meet up with my friend Karina and her visiting friend Carina. (I know, right, what are the odds?) We climbed to the top of the Monument, which is the first time I'd ever done that. There's a nice view from up there, although not too much to see. I was more impressed with the awesome mannequins in the historical tableaux on each level on the way up. I regret that I forgot my camera, since these were some high quality historical kitsch in my favorite vein.

Afterwards, we went to La Sirena where I bought ramen noodles and attempted to purchase an unintentionally hilarious Precious Moments greeting card to send to my mother. I got to the checkout, where the cashier swiped my noodles just fine, but was flummoxed by the greeting card. "It doesn't scan," she said helplessly, then stared at me distantly.

Me: Oh.
Cashier: It doesn't scan. (Continues staring)
Me: Can you do anything?
Cashier: No.
Me: You can't ask someone how much it costs?
Cashier: No. Usually there is a muchacho who checks the price, but he is not here.
Me: There's no one else you can ask?
Cashier: The muchacho is not here.
Me: ... so I can't buy this?
Cashier: No.
Me: I really can't buy this card?
Cashier: No.
Me: (Stares)
Karina: (Engages full-on Spanish-flip-out mode at the cashier)
Cashier: I'm sorry.

Oh well. Sorry, mom, but this is why you're getting an eCard for Mother's Day: the muchacho wasn't at La Sirena. Nothing to be done.

Schedule for the week to come:
Saturday: English class if anyone comes (so probably not); helping out with the afternoon computer class.
Sunday: Visiting Justin for Battlestar Galactica party.
Monday-Wednesday: Helping with the medical mission at Justin's site. (Translating for Dominicans receiving free medical care from visiting doctors.)
Wednesday: Heading to the capital for the new volunteers' swear-in ceremony.
Thursday: All-Volunteer Conference, which I am pretty sure will be a nightmare but maybe will be fun.
Friday: Travel day?
Saturday: Do the 27 Charcos with friends--a series of waterfalls that you climb up and jump down. I haven't done them yet but they're supposed to be a great Dominican experience.
Sunday: Graduation at my high school.

Oh, and yesterday my landlord came by and promised to talk to the power company this morning to see about reinstating my luz. He also assured me that I did not have to pay the $12,000 pesos owed. So, we'll see. At any rate, I'm leaving again so I won't need electricity until I get back.

back home

2009-05-05T12:58:00.000-07:00

I'm back home after a lovely weekend in the capital, complete with Sarah's despidida and Justin's surprise birthday party, and of course, lots of electricity and delicious food. Also, I ate too many mangoes and got an itchy rash around my mouth. (Did you know that mangoes are related to poison ivy? That is why you should not feel them with your teeth if you are too lazy to get a knife. But whatever, it's worth a little discomfort to eat free, delicious mangoes.)

Now I'm home again, and no, I still don't have power at my house. The landlord hasn't been by yet. It's not really that big of a deal. The worst is that my fridge is out of commission, but I lived a few months without a fridge before. The colmado system makes it easy enough to live sin luz. Also, I'm addicted to the show Battlestar Galactica and now I can only watch it when I charge my laptop at the center, and then for only three hours at a time. Which is sometimes not enough. But really it's for the best; I'm reading and cross-stitching more, and spending less time watching computer TV.

It is getting hotter, however, so I hope that I get my power back so I can run a fan when full Dominican summer hits. But this is looking to be a busy month for me, so I should be able to avoid heat by being in other places, places with more electrical power.

welcome to my disaster area

2009-04-29T13:14:00.000-07:00

SO. I finally got my running water fixed (although it mysteriously stopped working all of yesterday, it's back again today). Naturally, life would be too easy if I just had functional, yet occasional water and electricity, so yesterday morning someone from Edenorte, the power company, arrived to cut off my luz. I fought them off with the receipt for last month's paid power bill, but apparently they came back in the afternoon after I left. This happened once before, because the lady who lived in my house before me left me with a $12,000 peso outstanding bill (roughly US$300/roughly what I make in a month). I pleaded my case--"It wasn't me, I swear, and my landlord says that lady is dead" and they reconnected my luz. Today, no such luck-either I have to get my landlord to pay (unlikely, since he is a shady shady dude) or I have to pay myself (ouch) or I have to live sin luz. Ay, Dios.

Anyway, if that weren't enough, yesterday it rained hard enough to flood my house. This happens occasionally, not because my roof leaks, but because my entire yard is paved over, and when it rains enough in one day, the water flows up under my door and into my house. Yesterday it rained enough to fill my entire house (usually it only makes it into my front room) and make my yoga mat float out of my bedroom and into the living room. Luckily, my floor is all tile, and I'd been meaning to mop the place anyway. So it's all for the best, really. Basically.

I'm planning to deal with my luz situation primarily by a) skipping town and b) spending even more time at the computer center. Also eventually harassing my landlord, except I'm still kind of scared of getting evicted. I mean aside from the fact that my house has no power, lets in water, and has a shady landlord, it's a very nice house & in a very convenient location.

Anyway, like I said, I'm skipping town tomorrow--I'm heading to my friend Justin's site to guest teach an English class, and then we're going into the capital together for our friend Sarah's despedida (goodbye party), since she's leaving the DR soon.

a highly successful weekend

2009-04-27T11:41:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone. I hope you all had a weekend as delightful as mine was. “What did you do, Renata?” you might ask, and I will happily respond, because, like all bloggers, I love talking about myself.

So, Saturday morning I got up and dragged myself out of bed early for my 9am English class. I had made plans to meet friends for lunch “if no one comes to my English class, which they probably won’t.” As predicted, no one came to my class (which is too bad for them because my lesson plan was “watch Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure with Spanish subtitles on”), so I called my friends to set the backup plan into action .Unfortunately, Justin had been pressed into service helping his host family with an inventory of their colmado, so we rescheduled for Sunday. I then took a nap.

Then I rolled out of bed and helped out with the afternoon community informatica class, which mostly meant deleting a bunch of viruses off of one of the school’s computers so that the students could actually use them. I spent the evening watching movies and working on my cross-stitch.

Sunday morning I got ready to meet my friends for lunch. We were meeting in San Francisco de Macoris, a good-sized city that was supposedly about an hour and a half from me. I hadn’t been there before, but di que there’s an awesome restaurant there. So, I got in my carro publico to La Vega at 11, and told the driver to let me out at the stop for the San Francisco guagua. (This is one of my favorite things about carro publicos: I never have to know exactly where I’m going. Either the driver will know, or he’ll roll down his window at corners and yell out requests for directions.) I get in the guagua with 2 Dominican girls and we wait. And wait. It is raining, so naturally activity halts in La Vega. A few more people trickle into the guagua. I listen to an entire Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me podcast. The Dominicans start to riot, “Ya nos vamos! Ay Dios!” The driver continues to wait for more passengers. Finally we leave, with the guagua about 2/3 full. I show up, shamefaced, about an hour late for my lunch date, but everyone understands. They know how it is when the guagua just won’t leave.

Anyway, the restaurant is as delicious as promised. We share a pitcher of chinola (passionfruit) margaritas and have cheese and spinach (SPINACH!!! The only other place you can get spinach in the DR is the US Embassy cafeteria!) quesadillas and an awesome pizza with blue cheese and nuts and some sort of magical sauce. It was almost like being back in Amurica. Justin and I also had an in-depth discussion about Twilight and Battlestar Galactica, much to the dismay of the less-geeky Arianna.

Then we parted ways and I caught a guagua back to La Vega, which luckily left more quickly than my last trip. Unfortunately, then I also had to get a carro from La Vega back to my town. While waiting for the carro I picked up an admirer. Not to sound vain, but I pick up a lot of admirers in this country, both because it’s much more acceptable (in fact, encouraged) for Dominican men to act in a way that would be considered harassment if an American man did it, and because most Dominican men love white girls. Anyway, so I’m pretty used to rebuffing Dominican dudes, but this one was a little more intense (and hilarious) than usual.

(Translated from Spanish)
Dominican dude: Where are you going?
Me: [My town]. (Pretty obvious, since I was waiting at the stop for my town, but anyway.)
DD: You live there?
Me: Yes.
DD: You live there… alone?
Me: Yes.
DD: You shouldn’t be alone! (Rubs index fingers together in the Dominican sign for sex)
Me: It’s okay.
DD: You should marry a Dominican.
Me: Maybe.
DD: You should marry ME.
Me: No.
DD: Can I have your phone number?
Me: No.
DD: Please can I have your phone number?
Me: No.
DD: Can I give you my phone number? You can call me?
Me: No.
DD: (Pulls out his phone)
Me: NO.
DD: (Sticks his phone in my face)
Me: (Realizes he’s taking a picture with his camera phone, turns away)
DD: (Sticks phone in my face again and shows me a picture of myself in profile, turning away from him)
Me: (Pulls out my own phone and starts making calls to my friends, so I can be far too busy talking in English to pay any more attention to this guy)

It was awesome.

Anyway, then I got home without further incident, dropped off my stuff, and went over to visit my host family. I’ve been trying to get my host dad to come help me with my plumbing for like three weeks, throughout which period I haven’t had water. A pipe connecting my house to the main water line broke, requiring someone to climb up on the roof and reconnect it. My dad keeps insisting that I should get my host dad to do it, because I will probably die if I do it myself. But since my host dad has a job and a car and extended family responsibilities, he is rarely there. Finally on that afternoon I decided to just give up and do it myself. I mean, I’m an independent woman, I can surely reattach one little pipe by myself, right?

So I borrow my host family’s ladder and set it up. Then I got out the bonding cement whatever that Dad left me and tried mightily to open it. And I couldn’t. So this independent woman finally took it over to the colmado guy to get him to open it for me. And he couldn’t do it either, so he passed it off to one of his muscular customers. So, with my open cement in hand, I climbed up the ladder and studied the scene. Just then, one of my neighbors yells something about the ladder, and I freak out a little. The next-door doña sends over the next door don, and I climb down the latter. It turns out the doña mistakenly thought the ladder was broken, but since the don was over there anyway, she started commanding him over the fence to fix my pipe for me, giving him shouted step-by-step advice. “Put your left foot up now!” “Test it before you glue it back together!” “Tell her that anytime she needs something like this done, she can ask you to do it! Tell her!”

Anyway, so now I have running water again! Hurrah! Right now I’m preparing for my first community Photoshop class (OK, right now I’m writing this blog entry, but that’s just on break from preparing my Photoshop class). I didn’t really think about preparing anything for it last night, because I was pretty sure no one will show up. I still kind of think that, based on previous community enthusiasm for my projects, but I’d still better be prepared!

happy earth day!

2009-04-22T13:13:00.000-07:00

I thought about organizing some sort of Earth Day celebration at the school, but then I decided I couldn't really bear the crushing defeat when it inevitably fell apart or suffered tragically low attendance or just exploded. Instead I'm trying to install Windows on some computers at my center, and also celebrating the fact that we just got Internet here!! Hooray. Also, I put up some posters for the Photoshop class I'm going to start soon, si Dios quiere, although it just started pouring rain so all the outdoor ones are probably ruined. Stupid Dios.

What else? I just finished reading the book The Sex Lives of Cannibals by J. Maarten Troost. It's not really about the sex lives of cannibals, it's about his two years living on the small Pacific island of Tarawa, where his girlfriend was working for an NGO and where he was basically just hanging out. I relate to it way more than I do to the Peace Corps narrative books I've read, which are all like "Blah blah blah I built a clinic and dug a million wells and saved my village from destruction by evil imperialist slugs.¨" In contrast, here's an excerpt from Troost's book:

"The longer we spent on Tarawa the more Sylvia and I came to realize that to live on Tarawa is to experience a visceral form of bipolar disorder. There is the ecstatic high, when you find yourself swept away in a lagoonside maneaba rumbling to the frenzied singing and dancing of hundreds of rapturous islanders. And there are the crushing lows, when you succumb to a listless depression, brought about by the unyielding heat, sporadic sickness, pitiless isolation, food shortages, and the realization that so much of what ails Tarawa, the overpopulation and all its attendant health and social problems, need not be as bad as it is."
-- J. Maarten Troost, The Sex Lives of Cannibals, p. 207

Which it's kind of sad that I relate to life of someone who is UNEMPLOYED, but also I think that Peace Corps/NGO lives in places like Tarawa and the DR are different from the kind of countries that get Peace Corps books written about them (mostly African nations). And especially I am sure that no Information Technology volunteer has ever written an inspirational memoir of any sort. Oh well, at least now I can check my email every day! (Until our router inevitably breaks.)

Also, as I type this, some Dominican muchacho is using the new Internet to play awesome American music: Gangsta's Paradise by Coolio, Single Ladies by Beyonce, and That One Song by Linkin Park. God bless you, The Internet.

important bureaucratic events

2009-04-17T09:20:00.000-07:00

So anyway, after my freezing cold Constanza adventure, I hung out in my site for a few days (including attempting to hold a youth group meeting, which no one attended) and then headed into la capital. I had to get my green card renewed, which took over four hours. (Two hours of waiting to get a photo taken, 2 minutes to get a new photo taken, 1 more hour to wait for the card to get printed, and then another hour to wait for a new one because they had listed my birthdate as June 21, 2005. Which would make me three years old. Which is inaccurate.)

Then we heard that Hillary Clinton was coming to the Embassy that evening as part of her diplomatic tour or something. We were mad at first because it meant that the Embassy pool was closed all afternoon, but then we found out that volunteers were allowed to come. There was a brief flurry of excitement until we learned that Formal Dress was required, including Closed-Toed Shoes. Um, like any volunteer has any of that? A few dedicated people rustled up appropriate attire, but I gave up and went to see the Watchmen movie instead. (Hey, I've already seen Hillary speak, and I'd never seen the Watchmen before!) Apparently Madam Secretary gave a short speech thanking everyone for their service (including a Peace Corps shoutout) and shook some hands.

Now I'm just taking last-minute advantage of fast Internet at the office and getting ready to head back to site, where my goals are: finish watching Queer as Folk, finish watching BattleStar Galactica, and get my host dad to fix my house so I have running water again. Also, I've been trying to show my English class Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure for a month now but no one has come to class. I sent out some threatening text messages, so hopefully tomorrow morning los muchachos will arrive and experience some true American brilliance.

what have i been up to

2009-04-16T14:17:00.000-07:00

I've had an eventful week-ish! For Semana Santa (Holy Week- the week of Easter), I spent a few days in my site, then went to Karina's site on Wednesday. The Main office was forcing her computer center to show a religious-themed movie that turned out to be sponsored by the Church of Latter-Day Saints, which made for... interesting viewing. I learned that reading a regular Bible is like going hiking with a map with a hole in it, compared to reading the Mormon Bible (presumably a map with no hole).

A few other friends came and we had a lovely, relaxing few days. We also made Easter eggs! It's not a Dominican custom, so they don't sell egg dye here, but we used Kool-Aid.

We tried for pink ones and orange but they all basically look the same.

Then, bright and early Saturday morning, Arianna and I left for our VAC meeting. (VAC is Volunteer Advisory Committee, or something like that--basically volunteers get together by region and talk about Peace Corps policies, but mainly it's an excuse to hang out and get officially reimbursed for it). So our region's meeting was up in the mountains in the town of Constanza. On our ride there (which involved two guaguas and a ride up a mountain in the back of a pickup truck) we overheard a hilarious conversation.

Cobrador (guy who collects money on guaguas and passes on information to the driver): Pa'donde vas? (Where are you going?)
Haitian passenger: Pa'lla (over there)
Cobrador: Pero, donde? (But where?)
Haitian: Pa'ca (over [slightly-closer] there)

It was so funny, because Dominicans ALWAYS use pa'lla and pa'ca to give directions, even though they are basically meaningless phrases.

Anyway, we got up to our destination, and we had arranged to rent a big truck to ride around in the back of to see two nearby attractions: the waterfall Aguas Blancas and the Pyramids monument that former president/dictator Trujillo had built at the exact center of the island. At the last minute, the big truck doubled his price and we hitched a ride in the back of the pickup truck of some Dominican tourists. (Asi es life here.)

At first, it's all fun and games:

And beautiful scenery:

Aguas Blancas was beautiful too:

But then it started raining, and it's COLD in Constanza. Not Caribbean cold, for real cold. See-your-breath cold. And the Pyramid turns out to be FAR away. Like two hours. (OK, not that far--but very bad mountain roads means it took longer.)

So, we're unbelievably wet and cold. For two hours. And we finally get there, and see:

Maybe you can't judge the scale from that photo. How about this one:

It was so tiny! And stupid! And so not worth two freezing, painful hours in the back of a pickup truck to reach! Dios santissimo.

All around, though, a good week. We did a lot of Region 6 bonding-through-freezing.

ouch

2009-04-02T09:45:00.001-07:00

Ah, the dangerous life of a Peace Corps volunteer! I’m currently nursing a pretty severe Peace Corps injury—I pulled a muscle in my shoulder while towel-drying my hair. Okay, it’s probably not life-threatening, but it still hurts.

Other than that, though, can’t complain—right now I’m sitting on the couch at the Hub, the hostel in Santiago, after a fun party last night. A couple other volunteers organized an “Art Interest Group” and kicked it off with a mini art-show/open mike night (okay, the mike was a water bottle). Plus we had a yummy potluck. I’ve been experimenting with my new olla de horno (stove pot—basically like a stovetop Dutch oven, so I can bake stuff even though I don’t have a traditional oven. I like it because it makes everything I make look like a Bundt cake) and I brought some cornbread and brownies. They both turned out pretty well, thanks to my constant vigilance. (You can’t set a temperature or anything, so you just have to set the flame mediumish and then check it every few minutes.)

Things in my site are okay. My computer youth group is still meeting and we’re learning Photoshop. I’m hoping to start some advanced computer classes in the next few weeks. Unfortunately, next week is Semana Santa—Holy Week, the week of Easter. In the US Easter usually merits a 3- or 4-day weekend; here, it is a 7+ day weekend. The entire week is a holiday, and then people are usually a little sluggish to trickle back to work after Easter. Anyway, so we’ll see about when I can get classes going.

A couple nights ago I had an awesomely awkward experience—it was around 9pm and I was sitting in my house, in the dark, watching the movie Sin City on my laptop. Suddenly, I hear “Hola, Renata!” and turn to see both my host parents’ faces pressed up against my open window. This is weird because a) people never come to visit my house, knowing full-well that I have only plastic chairs and no homemade juice to offer, b) people don’t go visiting so late at night, and c) men don’t usually go visiting. So—unexpected, basically. But I let them in and told them to sit down, and they’re like, “Wow, it’s dark in here!” I remind them that I don’t have an inversor, and that the power is out, like usual. I turn on my lantern and my host mom immediately notices the empty wine bottle on my table, left over from when Stacie was visiting last week. (I was thinking about re-using the bottle as a vase or something and never got around to doing anything with it, but I didn’t throw it away yet either.) So she goes, “Wow, you drank all that wine??” And I explain no, it’s from when Stacie was here… which still makes me seem like a horrible housekeeper, if not a drunk. Then my host dad drags over a plastic chair in front of the computer, which is still showing Sin City, which if you haven’t seen it is not like a pornographic film by any means, but the female characters tend to wear very little in the way of clothing. So he sits down, we both look at the screen and see a bunch of prostitutes in lingerie. I awkwardly say, “Um, the movie is in English” and flip my computer shut. (Last night I was retelling this story at the potluck, and I made a hand motion as I said “flip my computer shut” and I dropped my plate and broke it.) Then my host mom asked to use the bathroom—which, they live a block away, why didn’t she go before she left?—so I gave her my headlamp, which confused her. Then she spent an awkwardly long time in the bathroom, leading my host dad to speculate about why it was taking so long. Finally she comes back out and says, Renata, your toilet is broken. I say no, it’s just that there’s no water right now. (They have a working tinaco at their house that keeps them in running water all the time.)

Basically, my host parents came over to my house to experience Dominican shortages of public works, and to witness my sinful lifestyle. On the bright side, I’m hoping that word of this will spread and prevent any further late night visits, because God only knows what la americana might be up to in her house at night!

living "comfortably"

2009-03-26T08:25:00.000-07:00

Since I wrote my last entry about how I’ve adapted to living here, I’ve been thinking about my lifestyle. I wrote that I live “comfortably” on my US$300 a month, which is true. But I think maybe I should take this opportunity to say a little more about how I actually live here, if only to keep everyone from getting too jealous of me.

First of all, my house. It’s undeniably sweet, especially by Peace Corps standards: three bedrooms, indoor bathroom, kitchen sink, tin roof AND ceilings (a lot of people have a tin roof but no ceiling, so there’s like a gap between the roof and the wall and birds get in), tile floors (some people only have cement, or dirt), and a big cistern in the backyard.

But there are downsides, of course. For starters, on my Peace Corps stipend, the only furniture I have is plastic lawn furniture. This is fine—my tables and chairs meet my basic furniture needs, and they are easy to move and clean. Still, when I go visit people and sit on their padded couches, I do feel the occasional pang of longing. Then there are my electricity and water situations, which are sporadic. I generally get luz a few hours on, a few hours off throughout the day, which is really only annoying when the few hours off end up being 6-9pm. The water is more of a problem, since my town only has running water a few days a week (and then only when there is also electricity, since the pump that distributes water to houses is electric). I’m pretty set, since as I mentioned I have a big cistern, so I can fill buckets and drag them inside, but it’s definitely way nicer to have running water, let me assure you.

Then there’s something I never really considered before, but: glass windows and window screens are both super useful for keeping out dirt and insects. I have neither; instead, my windows are covered with metal slats called persianas, which are either open—thus letting in sunlight, breezes, dust, and mosquitoes—or closed, keeping everything out (kinda). As such, my house requires more sweeping and dusting than I am actually willing to do. Also, there are more mosquitoes than I would prefer to have. I sleep under a mosquito net, though usually one or two get in there with me.

There’s also the food situation, which for me actually isn’t that big of a problem, thanks to the huge influx of nonperishable groceries (and candy) my parents brought me, plus the lovely care packages I get from lovely people like you. But basically: Dominican food (and thus Dominican grocery stores) lacks variety.

Anyway, I’m writing this up not to complain—after all, I signed on for this, and frankly I was expecting worse. So I guess I’m blogging about my vida a) again, so you guys know not to be too jealous of my lovely, lazy Peace Corps existence and b) so you guys know: living in a developing country—not that bad. (Depending on the country. And the region of the country.) And maybe c), so that you guys don’t take your electricity and water for granted (but also so you know that it’s not actually that hard to live without it, at least not all the time).

a return to normalcy

2009-03-24T09:16:00.000-07:00

Whew! I’m getting settled back into my site after being MIA for so long (2 weeks gallivanting about with mom & dad; 1 week working on the Gringo Grita in the capital, 1 weekend barricaded in my house recovering from Grita and not socializing with everyone).

I just hosted a new volunteer for four days, which was a ton of fun. (As part of training, the new PC trainees go out to visit a volunteer in their site to get an idea of what the experience is really like). Having my visitor was a lot of fun, both because she was a super cool girl (who requested to watch High School Musical her first night here, yessss) and because all her questions were like a flashback to my early days (yes, the arrival of a new batch of IT volunteers means that I’ve been here for a whole year! Ay, Dios santissimo!)

For example:

Q. Wow, your house is huge! Do all IT volunteers have houses like this?
A. Yes, basically. We’re the swankiest of PC volunteers… we all tend to be placed in pretty well-off areas, so these are the kinds of houses available. So we really are living like our neighbors, which is a Peace Corps objective….it’s just that are neighbors are way better off than in the average Peace Corps site.

Q. So how much work do you do in an average week?
A. Like… six hours. I mean, I try to plan more activities… and also I sort of count every time I have to speak Spanish to someone as doing work, which raises the amount of work I do…

Q. What do you do in an average day?
A. Well, I get up whenever I feel like it, usually around 9… I make coffee and hang out and read or watch a TV show on my computer, then maybe I go run errands or go hang out at the teachers’ lounge at school… I don’t really have any work to do at the school, but they get mad at me if I don’t just go hang out there at least a few times a week… then I come home, make lunch, clean up, hang out more… lately in the afternoons I’ve been trying to fix the computers at the other computer center, if I feel like it, and then sometime at night I have English class if anyone shows up, which a lot of times they don’t. Then maybe I go visit a doña, or maybe I just go home and watch a movie or read until I go to bed. ….it used to drive me crazy that I had so much free time, and I felt really guilty about it, but now I basically just think it’s awesome. I’m reading so many books and catching up on tons of TV shows I didn’t have time to watch in the States.

Q. Are they really strict about the 2 vacation days a month thing?
A. Pfffft.

Q. OK, I thought so, because like, how do they even know what I’m doing in my site?
A. Exactly.

I hope this doesn’t make it sound like Peace Corps volunteers are lazy. Well, I guess maybe we are, a little. But it’s a learned laziness; a response to the general community apathy we encounter in response to our projects. It’s either embrace the free time, go crazy, or quit the Peace Corps. Insanity sounds unpleasant, and we hear jobs are hard to come by in Nueva York these days, so we’re all staying put in the county where we’re guaranteed $300 a month (and can live comfortably off of it).

the all-inclusive diaries

2009-03-13T11:07:00.001-07:00

(This is a piece I wrote for the Gringo Grita about our all-inclusive experience. It's targeted at PCVs so it might be a little heavy on the Spanglish and PC in-jokes, sorry.)

The All-Inclusive Diaries

Monday, February 23, 2009

11:00am: Despite universally agreeing upon the fact that we are “not really Resort People,” given that my mom found a $50 per person rate online, my visiting parents and I depart for a four-night stay at an all-inclusive resort in Puerto Plata.

3:00pm: We reach the turnoff for Playa Dorada and realize that we have lost the printed-off email confirmation for our resort. My mom remembers that it is called “Something Village.”

3:30pm: After stopping at the Caribbean Village Resort, the Caribbean Occidental Village, and the Wyndham Viva (because, maybe?), we successfully check into the Puerto Plata Village and receive our blinding neon yellow bracelets, the caste mark of the rich white tourist.

3:35pm: After entering our room for the first time, I set my suitcase down, step outside, and immediately realize that I have locked our only key inside the room.

3:40pm: I sheepishly return to our room escorted by a security guard with the master key. He opens the room and I retrieve the key, which I will wear on a lanyard around my neck for the rest of the week to avoid future such incidents.

4:00pm: My mom and I change into our swimsuits and head to the poolside bar, where we both get fruity pink drinks.

4:10pm: My mom and I get second fruity pink drinks. I get a stomachache and have to go lie down. My mom makes fun of my low alcohol tolerance. Doesn’t she know I am a mujer seria?

5:45pm: We head off to the all-inclusive buffet dinner. I survey the buffet’s myriad meaty options and have the following exchange with one of the waiters:
““Um, what food is vegetarian?”

“The vegetables.”

I eat a plate of vegetables (and chocolate cake) and drink water. My mom points out that I could just pick the chunks of meat out of the beans and eat them. I decline.

7:30pm: We return to our room, watch CSI, and enjoy the air conditioning and hot showers. After a couple hours, rather than check out the undoubtedly lame hotel discoteca, I lamely go to bed.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

7:00am: I wake up disoriented. Where am I? (The Something Village.) Why is it so dark in here? (Curtains!) Why is it so cold in here? (Air conditioning!) What time is it? (7am. Try to keep up, here.)

9:00am: My parents and I head over to the breakfast buffet. I eat four different kinds of bread, although one of them is gross and I only eat one bite before discreetly slipping it onto my mom’s plate.

9:05am: My dad fixes our wobbly breakfast table by wedging a butter knife under one of the legs, to the approbation of two passing waiters.
10:00am: We take the shuttle to the beach, where all of the non-broken lounge chairs are already taken by extremely tanned individuals. We find three empty broken chairs and lie down in them.
10:30am: My mom sends me to the beach bar to get more fruity pink drinks, from which I abstain.

11:30am: I get up from my broken chair to swim for awhile in the ocean.

11:45am: I accidentally swallow a lot of saltwater and have to come drink some fresh water and lie down for awhile.

1:00pm: We get lunch at the resort’s beachside restaurant. I am again disappointed by the highly carnivorous options available and my mom tells me to pick the bacon off the rice.

2:00pm: My mom buys a magnetic bracelet from a passing vendor. My dad and I conduct important experiments to find out what will and will not stick to it. (Yes: silverware [kind of], the other end of the bracelet. No: the room key, other bracelets, Mom’s iPod.)

3:15pm: My mom considers getting her hair braided. I point out another middle-aged white woman with braided hair and say, “That’s what you will look like.”

3:16pm: My mom decides against getting her hair braided.

4:45pm: I take the shuttle back to the resort and take a really long hot shower. I shave my legs for the first time in, um, awhile, and cut myself and bleed all over the shower.

5:30pm: I take a walk around the resort grounds and discover that what I had thought was an abstract sculpture is actually the giant pot that was used to make the Guiness World Records-certified World’s Largest Sancocho. I mentally add one star to our hotel’s original three-star rating.

6:45pm: My parents and I play a game called “Seriously, Look What that Person’s Wearing.” It’s a game everyone wins, except for the people wearing those things.

7:00pm: Seriously, that man is wearing a Hawaiian shirt with only the middle button buttoned, look at him!

8:10pm: Returning to my room, I stop by the lobby to see if they have wireless Internet there. They do, but it costs US$2 per 15 minutes. That’s like $250 pesos an hour! I thought everything here was included. This is una basura. I go back to the room and watch TV instead until bedtime.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

10:00am: After a leisurely breakfast, we depart for Playa Sosua. (The resort offered US$40/person Snorkeling Excursions to Sosua, but we figured we could just drive there and rent snorkels on our own. We’re not really Resort People.)

10:45am: We arrive at Playa Sosua. (It’s not that far from our resort, but my dad kept stopping to take pictures of potholes and motorcycles.)

11:00am: I regetear for our chairs. Having my parents in tow significantly dampens the effectiveness of my standard No soy una turista line.

12:30pm: After offering oranges to some hungry kids, we learn that beggars can be choosers and we agree to give them our Pringles instead of the oranges. (We try for in addition to the oranges so at least they would get some vitamins, but they did not want them.)

3:00pm: My mom and I rent snorkels. Dad takes a look at the rough ocean and decides to stay on land.

3:45pm: I get kind of seasick and swallow some saltwater and have to go lie down for awhile. I am not very good at the ocean.

5:30pm: We return to the safe confines of our resort and I take the most amazing hot shower ever.

8:30pm: We arrive to the Caribbean a la carte restaurant and I am dismayed to discover that it is basically just an upscale plato del dia place. Um, if I wanted to eat moro, I could have stayed home. At least we get free wine with dinner here, unlike most Doña places.

10:30pm: Bedtime. We turn up the air conditioning to give us an excuse to use all the blankets on the bed.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

10:30am: I sit out by the pool. I am surrounded by cautionary tales who remind me to apply (and re-apply) sunblock.

3:00pm: My parents and I leave the resort once again to ride the cable car in Puerto Plata. The car breaks down for awhile right before we board, but they fix it and we all survive the trip up the mountain.

5:00pm: We all survive the trip down the mountain, gracias al Señor. My mom does a little shopping in downtown Puerto Plata, but I get stressed out by the in-your-face sellers and we leave quickly. I don’t care how cheapie-cheapie it is, I do not want to buy a T-shirt with Bob Marley on it or a bottle of mamajuana.

8:00pm: We get dinner at the Italian a la carte restaurant, which notably has multiple veggie options. Plus, according to my parents, my spinach ravioli was better than either of their seafood dishes. The vegetarian wins one! Plus, I drank a ton of red wine without getting sick.

Friday, February 27, 2009

9:00am: My parents and I vow to eat three meals worth of food at breakfast, since it’s our last all-inclusive meal. I probably get one and a half, maybe two meals worth. I could have done more if the waffles had been good, but they were absurdly tough and chewy. I do take delight in the label for pancakes--all the buffet food is quadrilingually labelled (Spanish, English, French, and German), but apparently the word for pancakes is the same in every language, leading to an excited-looking sign that reads "Pancakes/Pancakes/Pancakes/Pancakes."

10:00am: We check out of the resort. The receptionist cuts our bracelets off and stashes them somewhere. Plastic resort bracelets must be big on the black market.

homeward bound

2009-03-13T10:55:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of updates! I've been in Santo Domingo since last Wednesday, working on the Gringo Grita, PCDR's trimesteral magazine. It's been a lot of fun but also a lot of work. We've been spending 12-hour days at the office (which, okay, include a lot of breaks for meals, snacks, and YouTube videos... but still).

Anyway, it's been a lot of fun but I am looking forward to getting home to my site. I have a new garden to water, a school to do work at (si Dios quiere), and some naps to take.

some fotos

2009-02-28T05:54:00.000-08:00

Just a few. Mom took way more but I can't get them off her camera for some reason.

The fam at Carnaval.

A super rad Carnaval costume.

Us at Jarabacoa. You can't really see the river behind us, but it's there. AND IT'S PRETTY.

This was the best whale picture any of us got (Dad took it).

a nice, stress-free vacation

2009-02-28T04:52:00.000-08:00

That’s why people go to all-inclusive resorts, right? For a nice, stress-free vacation. Well. We set off from our regular old non-inclusive hotel in Samana after a leisurely (because of how long they took to get our coffee, and then how long they took to get the check) breakfast and made it to Puerto Plata with relative ease. Most of the way the road was still fairly pot-holey and rough, but not nearly as bad as the road to Las Terrenas (where a 20-mile trip took over two hours). The real trouble came when we took the turn-off to Playa Dorado, which is a beach just east of Puerto Plata that’s home to over a dozen resorts.

Mom had lost the printed-off email reservation for our resort, but we remembered that it was called Something Village and figured they’d have our name in the system. So we pulled up to the Caribbean Village Resort only to be told that this resort had closed two months ago. He directed us to the Caribbean Occidental Village, which we drove too far past and ended up nearly at the beach and had to get re-directed from another resort’s beachside bar. We roll up at the Occidental Village, where Dad, now a cocky Dominican-style driver, left the car right in front of a “No Parking” sign, only to get sent back out to move the car by a bellhop. (The resorts don’t really count as Dominican.)

Anyway, the Occidental Village was also not our resort, and after some more driving and sweaty back-and-forths between several hotel employees & passersby, we finally arrived at the Puerto Plata Village. There, the receptionist asked for our email confirmation, although he had our names written down and had an envelope all ready for us with our plastic bracelets and room key. He sent us over to the “guest services” desk to open and print our email, but the “guest services” woman insisted that we did not need to print our email confirmation, so she walked back to reception with me and engaged in a glare-off with the receptionist, which she won. So! We got our neon yellow bracelets, the caste mark of the entitled, and were led off to our room. I started to unload the car, wheeling my suitcase in the room, marveling at the air conditioning and double beds, then went back to the car, locking our only room key inside. So I walked back to the reception building, explained my plight, and had to wait awhile for a security guard to come back with me with his master key. (Apparently it would be out of the question for us to simply have two keys. Whatev.)

So, back in our swank room, we changed into swimsuits, consulted our resort map, and headed over to the pool. And to the swim-up bar. Mom and I both had a few yummy fruity drinks while sitting in the pool. Unfortunately, I hardly ever drink, and after 1.5 (kind of strong) sugary pink things, my tummy hurt and I had to go lie down. I am a lame resort-goer.

Then we went to the all-inclusive buffet dinner, and I tried to go to the taco bar and their beans appeared to have giant meat hunks in them. Just to be sure, I asked if they were vegetarian, and a waiter-guy said no, and then I asked what was vegetarian, and he told me “The vegetables.” I said, “Anything else?” and he said “The vegetables over there.” Hell yeah, all-inclusive resort! I can have all the drinks I want, until I get a tummyache, and all the vegetables on two different foodbars! I also have a pretty unlimited supply of guilt about things like how much energy and water my long hot shower took, how many resources are being used to maintain this giant resort when people are living in tin shacks like 10 miles away, and how little money I assume all the resort employees are making. It also really doesn’t help that my poolside reading is No Logo by Naomi Klein, an anti-consumerist (though that is a reductive summary of her more complex argument) tome that fills me with joyful trivia about how the average sweatshop worker in China makes 13 cents an hour.

Ayyy, Dios. But if I can build up my alcohol tolerance and suppress some of my middle-class guilt, I think this will be a good vacation week. It takes a lot of planning, navigating, and translating stress off of me. And I will definitely enjoy the hot water and soft-yet-supportive double mattress that I get all to myself, not to mention the air conditioning.

greetings from samana!

2009-02-23T05:38:00.000-08:00

My parents have been in the DR for over a week now, and it’s been a pretty jam-packed time. Sunday we went into La Vega to see Carnaval, which is a Mardi Gras-esque festival celebrated in a lot of Dominican towns every Sunday in February. Each town has a slightly different tradition, but they all involve masks & parades. In La Vega, the tradition is to hit parade-goers with cow bladders. Well—they used to use cow bladders, but these days actual bladders are apparently a little hard to come by & synthetic replacements are used. They still hurt real bad when a passing joven gets a good whack at your ass. Later I hope to post some pictures to show off the Carnaval costumes. They are mostly very colorful devil-ish masks with matching colorful (often sparkly) costumes—they look like they would be very very hot to wear, even in the relatively cool (70s-80s) Dominican winter.

On Monday we went over to Jarabacoa, a beautiful mountain town that’s often used as a jumping-off point for adventure sports like white water rafting (it’s where Reid & I went rafting in December) and canyoning. We decided to skip the sports and just admired the scenery at a nice restaurant right on the river. It was the kind of place that would have been so complicated to visit without a rental car—a carro publico from my town to La Vega, a guagua from LV to Jarabacoa, and then either a long hike or a taxi ride out to the river. With the car, though, it was almost a snap, despite the rough mountain road up to Jarabacoa, the frightening other drivers on the 2-lane road (which usually functioned as a 3-lane road), and the scarcity of street signs in the DR.

We also went to my beginners’ English class that evening, which was entertaining though perhaps not that educational. My students quickly exhausted their English vocabulary & instead just told me things in Spanish. Mom spoke to them slowly and animatedly, but with complex verb formations and vocabulary way beyond my students. Dad was pretty good at saying sentences the kids could get, though they would often be non-sequitirs. (“I have two children” after a long discussion about the weather, for example.)

Tuesday we went into Santiago to meet my friend Karina for lunch and to visit the Centro Leon, which is an art museum and also has a small cigar factory. Mostly Dad took a lot of pictures of the cigar factory and Mom, Karina and I used wireless Internet at the museum café and played cards. Afterwards, we spent a long afternoon shopping at La Sirena (Dominican Wal-Mart), buying such necessities as flip-flops, new plates for my house (which, I believe, already has perfectly functional plastic plates with flowers on them, but Mom insisted on some classier ceramic ones), and boxes of Skim Ice popsicles.

Wednesday morning my parents worked on rearranging my modest furniture collection and cleaning my house, over my vague protests. Then we went into the town of Salcedo to have lunch with my friend Evan and tour the Mirabal sisters’ house. The Mirabal sisters—Minerva, Patria, and Maria Teresa—are three Dominican heroines, who (particularly Minerva) led an underground movement against the dictator Trujillo and were eventually murdered by his secret police. Julia Alvarez’s novel In the Time of the Butterflies (“Mariposas--butterflies—were the sisters’ code names in the underground movement) is a fictionalized account of their lives, and it’s wonderfully written and a very compelling story of that era and those women. I highly recommend it to all of you.

I also had a quick youth group meeting that evening, followed by a visit to my host family where Dad quizzed my host dad about Dominican plumbing and electrical systems and Mom mostly described snow to the host parents. Also, we drank juice. Then we set off for a drive south to my friend Keane’s site, an outlying suburb of Santo Domingo. We visited the community radio station where he works and sat in on a show being recorded. Dad in particular enjoyed the DJ’s extended trilled r’s (“Merrrrrrrrrrrrrrrengue!”) Afterwards, we went all the way into the capital and searched out a restaurant that would be open at the late-by-Dominican-standards hour of 10:30pm, eventually finding a pizza place that was almost-but-not-quite closed. Que delicioso.

Thursday and Friday we spent in the capital having a variety of adventures, including lunch and swimming at the Embassy, a brief historical tour of the Zona Colonial (led by me, and with a lot of blank spots and extremely approximate dates involved), extended shopping time for Mom, a visit to the Museum of Dominican Man (with a lot of time spent on their Carnaval exhibit), and a special solo adventure Mom & Dad had while I was at a Peace Corps meeting—they went out to visit a car dealership and then apparently spent 3 hours trying to find a cockfighting ring before giving up.

Saturday morning we had a deluxe breakfast at the fancy, newly-remodeled McDonald’s in Santo Domingo, while I tried to explain to my parents that American fast food places are among the few places to get breakfast at a restaurant in this country, and also that McDonald’s is considered kind of a nice restaurant here. I know, right? But it’s true.

Then we made a brief stop back at my house to pick up and drop off a few things, and also to continue my parent’s project to improve the feng shui of my house. We then hit the road for Samana, a small peninsula in the northeast of the DR, known for its beautiful beaches and for being a key spot in the migration of humpbacked whales. Unfortunately, it’s also known for having really bad roads, which made for a long day of driving. (Well, that, and the extended shopping break we took at La Sirena in San Francisco de Macoris along the way.) But we eventually made it and even found our hotel, which turned out to be across the street from a small town carnival. We went over to investigate and Dad and I rode the Ferris wheel, which was extremely terrifying. We’d watched other people ride it for awhile and noted that everyone seemed to be surviving the experience, and Dad looked behind it to check out the generator, which he deemed sound, so we decided to risk it. But from the ground we’d failed to really understand how FAST the Ferris wheel was actually going; the way down was almost a free-fall. And unlike cheap American Ferris wheels where you get maybe one or two spins around, these guys gave us good value for our peso and we were treated to at least ten frightening revolutions. The whole way around, Dad made helpful comments like, “You see that really corroded beam? Don’t worry, it only controls the spinning mechanism, so if it breaks, we won’t fall, we’ll just spin aimlessly,” and “Wow, see that metal hook? They made that out of concrete rebar, which is basically the worst kind of steel ever.”

But hey, we survived.

Sunday morning we got up early to go on our whale watching trip, which was probably my favorite part of the trip. (If anyone is ever in the DR in the winter, I really recommend Victoria Marine tours, FYI.) The tour company was started by a marine biologist, Kim Beddall, who came out on the boat with us and taught us Whale Facts on the way out. (DID YOU KNOW: When whales migrate south they don’t eat for like five months because there is no food they can eat in southern waters. They just live off their blubber and the females lose 10 tons of weight. Then they go up north and eat a ton of fish a day. WHALES.) We’d been warned that the ocean would be pretty rough, and it was, but we had a good-sized boat and everyone took Dramamine beforehand so it was okay. Fun, actually—kind of like a Dominican Ferris wheel. Soon after we got out to the marine mammal sanctuary zone someone spotted a whale spout, and we saw a mother & newborn calf! Kim said the calf was 2 or 3 weeks old and it was pretty rare to get to see one so young. They hung out by our boat for a while and we got to see the baby rolling around on top of its mom, playing and slapping the water with its baby whale tail. It was ADORABLE. Mom got a few good pictures, which I’ll post later.

Afterwards, we got lunch at the slowest Chinese restaurant ever. Mom and Dad actually fell asleep at the table while waiting for food. (The Dramanine may also have had something to do with this.) Then we decided to take a “quick beach trip,” although we didn’t leave until around 3:30pm because of our slow lunch. Then we had to spend a long time finding gas (we found 2 gas stations easily, but they were both out of gas—not that unusual in the DR—and finding a 3rd with gas took longer), then awhile getting lost, then we got stuck behind a town’s Carnaval procession, and anyway we didn’t even get anywhere near the beach until 6pm. But we passed a cockfighting ring on the way to the beach, so mom and dad stopped to watch a cockfight while I waited in the car. Because, gross. (Apparently they didn’t fight to the death here, so I maybe could have watched it. But I saw Mom’s pictures and that was enough.)

Now we’re waiting to have breakfast before heading off to Puerto Plata for our all-inclusive resort week. I’m pretty excited about the beds with box springs, the hot showers, the food… also the beach should be nice, I guess ;)

the violence is purely hypothetical

2009-02-13T05:02:00.000-08:00

Well, it’s been awhile since I last blogged. I thought about writing a blog entry a couple times in the last few weeks, but it would have been something like “Dear Diary, Wahhh Peace Corps sucks, I hate the DR :( :( :(” so I decided to just hold off. Plus it was raining for a week straight, so obviously I can’t be expected to blog when it rains.

Anyway, so I don’t really want to go into it but the last few weeks have been a little rough around here. But the sun came out, and my Peace Corps boss visited my site to help straighten things out, and I’m feeling cautiously optimistic about life.

I’m also feeling better after a long phone conversation with my friend Justin, in which we complained about our project partners and then pondered the age-old question, “Who would win in a fight, our project partners or Edward Cullen [a vampire from the Twilight series]?” Obviously we decided on Edward Cullen, and then spent probably longer than necessary envisioning the throwdown that would (hypothetically) ensue.

Plus my friend Tim volunteered to come to my site and break some kneecaps if necessary. (Again, it won’t be, and I do not wish to advocate violence as a solution to problems, but sometimes it is nice to envision, is all.)

Also, my landlord stopped by and it turns out that I am not being evicted from my house, as I was previously led to believe, for whatever (malicious) reason, by my project partner. Avoiding homelessness is always enough to put a smile on my face.

If things weren’t already looking up enough, tomorrow my parents are coming to visit! Not only will it be great to see them, of course, but they are also bringing me suitcases full of American food! I told my Doña I was excited about the American food they were bringing, and she said, “What kind of food do Americans eat? Not beans and rice?” I tried to explain that yeah we eat beans and rice sometimes, but we also eat other things. I mean, now that I cook for myself I’ve expanded my diet as much as possible, but I’m still facing grocery stores whose target audiences pretty much only eat beans and rice. (Okay, okay, they also eat meat and plantains.)

We’re planning to spend a few days around my site, visiting and whatot, and taking daytrips to La Vega and Santiago. February is the month of Carnaval (not a typo, that is the Spanish spelling of “Carnival”) and every Sunday there are huge parades and stuff in most cities, and of course my mom would never miss a parade. We’re also planning to go up north on a whale watching trip, which I am super excited about because I’ve never seen a whale! (This is kind of a minority status among most of the PCVs I’ve talked to, and they are kind of blasé about whale sightings, but I am not! I am excited to have one! Whales whales whales! Whales!) Also, we’re going to do a few days at an all-inclusive resort in Puerto Plata. My parents think it is hilarious that I am most excited about the prospect of hot water; I think it is hilarious that they are most excited about the free drinks. I mean, there are plenty of drinks in my site, but the only hot water comes off my stove.

a week of ups & downs

2009-01-31T13:10:00.000-08:00

“We’re going to see a movie, do you want to come?”
“What movie? Where’s it playing?”
“Twilight… it’s at the White People Mall.”
“The White People Mall?”
“You know… it’s on Avenida Churchill… uh, hey, what’s the actual name of the White People Mall?”
“The Acropolis Center, I think?”

I think I’ve blogged about the White People Mall before, but it’s still a trippy place. But it was the only place in the capital showing Twilight, so a group of us went there last weekend. (You might recall that I already saw Twilight last week, and that I don’t even especially like Twilight, but this second viewing was with a group of more Mystery Science Theatre-esque friends, and thus was extremely enjoyable.) We also went out to TGI Friday’s to celebrate a friend’s birthday. TGI Friday’s in the DR is considered to be much more classy than it is in the US, though the food is just as mediocre as at home.

The rest of the weekend was basically devoted to hanging around the Peace Corps office and partaking in the free Internet and laundry. Glorious.

The rest of the week I:

Suffered from la gripe (aka a cold)
Slept a lot
Read all the Twilight books
Composed text message haikus regarding the Twilight books (sample: Done with this garbage/Twilight is the new Secret/And both should be burned)
Taught my English class how to tell time in English
Realized the kids didn’t really know how to tell time in Spanish either and taught them how to read a clock
Had a committee meeting at the other computer center in town, which was fairly productive and did not end with me in tears (unlike previous committee meetings at the school)
Had the first meeting of my youth computer club with an attendance of 4—even though it was raining!!
Went to visit a nearby town that is potentially getting a Peace Corps volunteer
Explained to a disappointed committee that I was not the town’s new volunteer, I was only there for one night, and they were just going to have to wait a few months to get their actual volunteer
Took too much Sudafed and had some out-of-body experiences but passed it off to the potential host family like I just didn’t speak Spanish that well
Slept some more

Next on the agenda:

Saturday morning English class
A trip back into the capital for a Gringo Grita meeting
Attempting to avoid Super Bowl Sunday festivities
???
Profit

day in the life

2009-01-24T11:00:00.000-08:00

Day in the life! January 6. 2009. This is a holiday in the DR—the Epiphany. I would offer the holiday as the reason why I didn’t do any work on a Tuesday, but the actual reason is just that Peace Corps isn’t a real job. Without further ado, here is a day in my life.

I wake up and gaze out through my mosquito net at some of the many teen idols that decorate my house.

Then I lay in bed for awhile and play Brick Attack, the game that comes with standard issue Peace Corps cell phones and to which many volunteers are addicted.

Next I head for my bathroom, only to discover that I still don’t have running water. (Water and electricity are sporadic in this country.) No problem, I head out behind my house to fill a bucket from my cistern.

I put cinnamon & nutmeg in my coffee, which is probably the most Dominican thing I do.

It’s done when it steams! Or when it explodes all over my stove.

I start my day with a balanced breakfast and an episode of Arrested Development.

I light a mosquito coil to keep my feet from getting bitten. Also, because I like inhaling toxins.

Why did I take a picture of my clean dishes? WHY NOT.

The Jesus sticker came with the house; the tinsel is just for Christmas.

Here’s my street! My house is the yellow and white one in the middle-left.

Here’s the school/prison I sometimes work at. It’s not really a prison, but that would explain the huge barbed-wire wall, right?

This is the only restaurant in town. It put up that big new sign a couple months ago, except do you see how there’s a picture of a taco under the “Plato del Dia” sign? They didn’t used to have the Plato del Dia sign so I mistakenly (and excitedly) thought they were going to start serving tacos there. But then I finally went to the restaurant and they don’t have tacos :( And then they amended the sign to stop giving people false Taco Hope. They do actually have pizza though.

Here’s a colmado! These are mini-convenience stores where you can get everything from cold drinks to bootleg DVDs to giant cans of ketchup. Or you can just buy a spoonful of ketchup and they’ll put it in a little plastic bag for you. I stopped at this one (which is larger than most colmados) to get a Gatorade on my way to the carro publico stop, since it was a pretty warm day and I was sweating a lot.

Here’s my carro stop. The way public transportation here works is that it’s actually privately run and it’s basically just some dudes with cars and minivans that drive along set routes. Carro publico drivers will fit 7 people in a regular-sized car and at least 10 in a minivan like this. They’ll get you where you need to be, but you’ll be sweatier when you arrive than when you left.

Luckily, I still have my Gatorade to combat the sweatiness. Mmm, limon fria.

Here’s how much it costs for me to get from my town into La Vega, the nearest city (about 25 minutes away). It’s 30 pesos, aka about 90 cents.

Taken out the window of my carro; this is pretty much what my ride into the city looks like.

Welcome to La Vega! It is way less exciting than Las Vegas.

So, from La Vega I got a guagua (small bus) into Santiago, which is the 2nd-largest city in the DR and it has nice restaurants and fancy grocery stores and movie theatres and such.

Look closely! One of the businesses in this complex is called FAG and I always giggle when I go past it on my way into Santiago. I am a 12-year-old boy, basically.

I met up with my friend Karina at La Sirena (The Mermaid), which is basically like Dominican Wal-Mart. LOOK: peanut butter!!

So lifelike!

Next up, we went to the post office. (I don’t have one in my town.) Sandy’s getting some mail!

For lunch, we stopped by this restaurant called Satay that we always used to walk past on our way to the grocery store, and we always assumed it was Thai food because of the name. Turns out: nope! Still pretty delicious, though.

This (a Caprese salad with eggplant) was seriously the best thing I’d eaten in at least a month. Yum.

SKIM ICE PENGUIN!!! Skim Ices are these awesome tube-popsicles that guys sell in the streets for five pesos. (They are way, way better than American tube popsicles.) Usually the dudes just have lunchbox-coolers they wear around their necks, but sometimes they have big penguin-bicycle-coolers, and they are basically my favorite things ever.

This was the fanciest day ever! First swanky stacked-salads, and now a coffee drink that includes its own paper pinwheel? This is really not at all a typical day in my life. But it was a DELICIOUS day in my life. (All Peace Corps volunteers are obsessed with food. It is highly likely that you reading this are currently taking for advantage the wide variety of food available in your community. Please think of me while you are eating it.)

We witnessed this brutal Barbie carnage on the way to Karina’s site, near Santiago.

Bienvenidos a la casa de Karina!

Observant readers will note that this is the second time this day that I drank something out of a Hello Kitty.

When Peace Corps volunteers get together, the first thing we do is exchange movie files on our laptops.

Also, we went to Karina’s Centro Tecnologico Comunitario to check our email.

No porn allowed :(

We started making dinner, and I was given the important task of draining the beans!

Karina busied herself with other tasks, like opening the cans.

I didn’t take any pictures of our completed burritos, which were delicious, thanks for asking. After dinner: Scrabble time!

APEOLEI is totally a word, right?

Then: bedtime, under Karina’s rad stripey sheets!

Rain, Rain, Go Away

2009-01-23T06:02:00.000-08:00

This is my first blog entry written under Presidente Obama! How exciting! On Tuesday I headed up to Santiago with a bunch of my compañeros to watch the CNN coverage of the inauguration at the Hub, our favorite hostel. The coverage itself wasn’t overly exciting (we did like the CNN “FACTs” at the bottom of the screen and had a good time making up our own. FACT: The guy who writes CNN FACTs gets paid minimum wage. FACT: Newseum. FACT: Joe Biden is the first white vice president. FACT: We were just kidding about Biden.) but it was nice to share the moment with other Americans. I would describe our overall attitude regarding Obama’s presidency as: cautiously optimistic. Obviously we’re all a bunch of crunchy hippies who have more or less swallowed Obama’s message of HOPE and CHANGE, but—from abroad, anyway—it seems like there are nearly-impossibly-high standards being set for President Obama right now. We hope he can meet them. (Also, we’re really counting on him to fix the economy by the time we come back to the country and enter the job market.) Obamanos!!

We also took advantage of some of the other things Santiago has to offer, like a giant American-style grocery store. We bought frozen waffles!! The Hub, unlike any of our campo houses, has a freezer and a toaster, so we could make them! And they were delicious! Plus I bought whole-wheat tortillas and some honey-almond cereal to bring back to my site. So awesome.

The next day, I had a relaxing morning and afternoon at the Hub, then went back to my town in time for my 6pm English class. On Monday, my students asked if there was going to be class on Wednesday. Since it’s a Monday/Wednesday class, I said, “Why wouldn’t there be class on Wednesday?” They told me that Wednesday is a holiday here—Dia de la Altagracia, one of many Catholic holidays that I don’t really know much about. So I said, “Well, if you guys don’t want to have class on Wednesday, that’s fine.” To which they replied, “No, we want to have class!” I was surprised, and somewhat skeptical, but we agreed we’d have class on Wednesday.

So I got back to my site on Wednesday around 4pm, giving me time to unwind a little bit before the 6pm class. As soon as I arrived at my house, it started raining. I wondered how this will impact my class turnout, since Dominicans generally don’t like to go out in the rain. “Well, whatever,” I though, and laid down to read for awhile. It was really raining HARD, and when I got up to go to the bathroom I noticed that a spot in my bedroom ceiling was leaking, so I put a bucket under it and went back to my book. Meanwhile, it was raining so much so fast that my paved-over yard was becoming a moat, which began to seep under my front door (which has a small gap between the bottom of it and the floor). When I left my bedroom, I realized that my entire front room had a good 1/4 inch or so of water over it, and it was also spreading into the kitchen. I tried to put a towel in the door gap, but by this time it was really too late. Since my whole house has tile floor, and what little furniture I do own is plastic, the house flood wasn’t really hurting anything, so I shrugged and headed off for my class, figuring I’d clean up my underwater house later. (Incidentally, I think that my putting a bucket under the leak in my room while remaining completely oblivious to the rest of my house flooding would probably make a good metaphor for something. I’m putting that story up on public domain; you should all feel free to co-opt it for your own personal metaphorical use if the need arises.)

So anyway, when I get to the school, I realized the flaw in my brilliant Have Class on a Holiday plan: the school is locked, and I don’t have a key. Grumpily, I stood in front of the school until about 6:15, figuring if anyone comes I can at least tell them in person that the school is closed but I tried, sorry. (Ordinarily I might have offered to have it at my house, but it’s flooded. And also the power is out and by this point it’s almost dark, given the rain and clouds.) At 6:15 I gave up (normally, given Dominican standards of time, I would wait half an hour or 45 minutes before deciding no one was going to make it, but I wasn’t especially thrilled about standing out in the rain myself) and headed back towards my house. Three of my four students were standing on the corner under umbrellas and called my name. “We were waiting for you,” they said. “I was waiting for you… at the school… where we have class,” I said. “Are we having class?” “The school is locked and I don’t have a key. Sorry. See you Monday.”

Then I grumpily went back to my house and watched a movie on my computer and went to bed without mopping up my house.

how to eat a guanabana

2009-01-18T05:34:00.000-08:00

Step 1:

Find a guanabana tree. Luckily, I have one in my yard.

Step 2:

Pick a guanabana. Do not get confused and accidentally pick a spiked Koopa Troopa.

Step 3:

Split it open. When they're ripe, this is way easier than it looks.

Step 4:

Eat the guanabana! It is super soft and slippery inside its spiky shell. I use a fork so I don't get my hands all slimy.

hello again

2009-01-12T07:40:00.000-08:00

Hello again, friends. I’m taking another stab at writing up a blog entry to account for the last week or so. Mainly I’ve been feeling extremely unmotivated to do anything, even write blog entries, which I generally enjoy, being the Internet attention-seeker that I am.

Right now I’m heating up some water to take a warm shower, with the hopes that I will feel clean and warm and will be able to work up the motivation to visit the nuns. I’ve been meaning to deliver a gift to them, and they’re always very nice when I visit, but somehow I’ve been able to talk myself out of going over there (2 blocks away) very successfully. It’s just less appealing than lazing around my house.

I should say I haven’t just been lazing: I swept and mopped one day, and I also washed a lot of clothing today. And I pulled them all off the line when it started drizzling 20 minutes later. (Luckily, I have some clotheslines inside my garage-like area, so they can still hang up to dry, albeit more slowly than if they were exposed to sunlight. You can’t have everything.)

I’m also pretty excited about the fact that my running water came back!! It’s been out for so long that my huge cistern almost ran dry. Okay, probably not almost, but it was like two-thirds empty, which is the lowest it’s ever gotten. Usually I barely make a dent in it before the water comes back. Plus, I’m typing this at 3:30pm and I have electricity in my house! All week it’s been going out for 10+ hours during the day, so it’s exciting to have it back in the afternoon. Things are definitely looking up.

I’ve also been busily planning activities for when my parents come next month. There are definite perks to having a job with no real responsibilities or duties—if I’m not doing anything, no one minds if I take a vacation every month :)

happy new year!

2009-01-09T06:56:00.000-08:00

I haven't really written up a long blog entry or anything, but I just thought I'd check in and say hi! It's 2009!

I rang in the new year on the beach in Cabarete, which is a beautiful beach. We had good weather & good people there. All in all, a good way to start a new year. (Also: hola to Pedro's girlfriend Ashley.)

Since then, I've mostly been trying to get used to being in my site again, since I spent almost all of December not being here. I'm working on re-conquering my Dominican Social Anxiety Disorder, which manifests with me not wanting to leave my house ever because I'll have to speak Spanish to someone. I started with baby steps, like going to the colmado and getting a new botellon of water, then worked my way up to paying my electricity bill, going to the Internet center, and going to the school to try to teach English class (but no one came). Today, Dios wiling, I'm going to swing by my host family's house.

Also, I might do some laundry, which doesn't require me to speak Spanish but it is something that I don't really want to do.

In other news: I'm working on uploading photos, but the Internet has been pretty slow.

send me a text message!

2008-12-29T10:44:00.000-08:00

Hey guess what, you can send me a text message on the Internet! For free!

Just go here. (It's in Spanish but I'll talk you through it.) Then, above the picture of the cell phone where it says "Envia mensajes del texto Numero" put in my number: 8097236552. Type your message in the phone window, then hit the green checkmark. Then when the popup window opens, type in the number it shows and hit "Enviar."

Make sure to sign your name at the bottom because otherwise it will be anonymous and I will not know whose text message brightened my day!

Vignettes from Reid's Visit

2008-12-29T05:54:00.001-08:00

I. The Case of the Lost Luggage
(All loosely translated from Spanish)
American Airlines Customer Service (AACS): Please hold.
Me: (Holds.)
AACS: Hello, how can we help you?
Me: Hi, I’m calling about a lost suitcase. You’ve been telling me it will get delivered for the last two days and it’s still not here.
AACS: Let me just check my computer system for an unnecessarily long time… oh, we can’t deliver that suitcase! You have to come back to the airport [a $30US taxi ride from central Santo Domingo] and get it.
Me: Seriously what.
AACS: Yes, you have to come identify it in person. We have it right there at the airport.
Me: You seriously can’t deliver it like you’ve been telling me the last two days?
AACS: Nope. Have a good day!

--

Me: Hi, I’m calling to check on a missing suitcase. Do I seriously have to come to the airport and get it? Someone told me that earlier this morning but I was wondering if maybe you could deliver it anyway.
AACS: Oh no, ma’am, you have to come to the airport and get it.
Me: Eff.

--

(At the airport)
Me: Hi, we’re here to get a lost suitcase.
American Airlines Guy: Come with me to our lost suitcase office. (Leads Reid & I on a hike around the airport, eventually ending in a small hangar behind the main building.)
Me: Here’s the tag.
AAG: That should be in this section.
Reid: It’s not here.
(We examine every suitcase in the hangar, determining that none of them are Reid’s.)
Me: (Muttered) If they’re delivering it to the airport I am seriously going to kill someone.
AAG: Well, I’m sure we have your suitcase somewhere! Let’s just go to our other office.
(We follow him on another airport trek.)
AAG2: Let me just flip through a giant binder of luggage information. Please wait while the three other guys who work in this office stare at you…. Hmm…. There sure is a lot of information in this binder… let me make a phone call…hmm… oh, your suitcase is being delivered to your hotel today! It should be there in ten minutes.
Me: Really. (Long glare)

But hey, at least they did eventually deliver it, and in one piece!

II. The Christmas Party
(Reid & I have foolishly arrived at the school Christmas party in my town at 10am, exactly on time. The Nun and two other teachers are setting up tables in the gym. It is otherwise empty. Once more, loosely translated from Spanish.)
Me: Hi, Nun! This is my brother, Reid.
Nun: Hello, Reid, nice to meet you.
Reid: Hola.
Me: Um, do you want help setting up?
Nun: Oh, no. I know I said the party started at 10am but people will come later. Why don’t you two just sit down over there?
Me & Reid: (Sit down over there; wait for an hour during which one other person arrives).
Me: Let’s run back to my house and get some bug spray. (We do so, and also watch an episode of Arrested Development on my computer. We return to the party half an hour later, which now has at least a handful of people, all of whom wish to practice their English on Reid, who answers the questions “What your name?” “How are you?” and “Do you like Dominican Republic?” many, many times.)

III. The Rafting Trip
(Reid & I are waiting to go on a white-water rafting drip in Jarabacoa. Our trip includes free breakfast, which we are eating. Well, I am.)
Me: You’re not hungry, Reid?
Reid: I feel kind of sick.
Me: Oh, why didn’t you say so earlier? Do you still want to go?
Reid: I think I just need some water, maybe…
Me: Do you want some Pepto Bismol or anything?
Reid: (Abruptly stands up and pukes in the bushes) I feel better now.

(We go rafting, which is fun and exciting, although the experience is slightly marred by our obnoxious German guide, who kept pulling bullshit like getting us to paddle our raft in a circle, or steering us backwards under waterfalls. Also, I was sitting directly in front of him and he kept dripping water down the back of my neck. Afterwards, on the open-air truck ride back, Reid threw up again. That evening, I started down my own journey through Vomitland, making for a super-fun few days of vacation.)

Bonus from during the rafting trip:

(We are pulling up on shore for a mid-trip snack.)
Me: (Steps out of boat, promptly trips over a rock and scrapes my elbow wicked bad)

(Conversation repeated many, many times thereafter)
Other Rafter: Wow, your elbow’s bleeding a lot! Did you fall out in one of the rapids?
Me: Umm, no, I just tripped over a rock during our snack break.

IV. Christmas Vignettes

(We spent Christmas at my friend Keane’s house with some other volunteers. Keane made Indian food for us and we hung out, ate, and played Scrabble and charades. We didn’t have a tree, although I did bring some Christmas lights and haphazardly strew them on the floor. It was a pretty awesome Christmas.)

Jo: Where’s the nearest vet?
Carly: There must be some in the capital.
Me: Lissette would know.
Jo: Aww, this joke never works with Peace Corps volunteers, you’re all so helpful. Ask me why I need a vet!
Carly: Why do you need a vet?
Jo: (strikes muscle pose) Cuz these pythons are SICK!
Me: … well, I’m glad your cat’s okay.

(We are playing charades.)
Me: (Mimes “book,” “two words.”)
Keane: The Secret!!*
Me: (Nods, sits down.)
Evan: You guys spend too much time together.

*A self-help book, that we and some other PC friends are obsessed with making fun of, and of which certain other PC volunteers are devotees.

Carly: It’s baby Jesus’ birthday!!
Evan: When is adolescent Jesus’ birthday?

Jo: Evan, how do you spell Chanukah?
Evan: There’s no right way… it’s transliterated from Hebrew so it doesn’t really matter.
Jo: I mean, is there a c? Is there one k or two?
Evan: Seriously, there’s no right way. Any of those is fine.
Jo: Okay, how do YOU spell Chanukah?
Evan: It really doesn’t matter.
Jo: What about C-h-a-n-u-k-u-a-h?
Evan: Well, I wouldn’t put a u at the end.
Jo: I thought you just said there was no right way!!
Evan: Yeah… but there are some wrong ways.

V. Public Transportation
(Reid & I are waiting for a guagua to leave Keane’s site to head back to the capital. An old man has approached Reid seeking money. He speaks English, although with a speech impediment.)
Man: My name is Miguel, do not forget my name!
Reid: Okay.
Miguel: What’s your name?
Reid: Um… Reid.
Miguel: This street is called Enriquillo! That street is called Duarte! That other street is Bolivar! Give me five pesos!
Reid: Um, I don’t have any money.
Me: (Returns to conversation)
Miguel: My name is Miguel, what’s your name?
Me: Renata.
Miguel: Do you know about God?
Me: Yes.
Miguel: Are you two married?
Reid: No, we’re brother and sister.
Miguel: You’re brother and sister? You look very different. You’re tall, you’re short; you’re skinny, you’re fat; you’re white, you’re dark… very different.
Me: Well, we’re all God’s children.
Miguel: That’s true! That’s true! How did you know that?
Me: (Smiles)
Miguel: That hill is called Loma Verde!
Me: (Smiles)
Miguel: Goodbye! God bless you!
Me: Same to you.
Miguel: (Leaves)
Reid: … that was hilarious. I can’t believe you said that.
Me: Ohh, I tell that to guys on the street every day.

travel itinerary

2008-12-29T05:52:00.000-08:00

How to plan a Deluxe Dream Caribbean Vacation (Peace Corps style):

Dec 13: Reid arrives finally, at midnight, two hours late. We search for a food place that will still be open and find a gourmet 24-hour hot dog stand, then go back to our hotel, a classy establishment that runs $US30 a night for a room with 2 beds, a standing fan, and hot water (sometimes).

Dec 14: We begin harassing AA about Reid’s luggage. In the afternoon, we go to the Zona Colonial and visit the Artisan’s Fair and take a quick walking tour of some of the older buildings. We spend the evening eating sushi (after a painful 10-minute ordeal of plascing the order by phone) and playing Scrabble with some friends at the picnic table in front of the hotel. The night watchman brings us an extension cord so we can plug in my laptop to play music (and use the Scrabble Word Checker program I downloaded). You couldn’t get better service at the Hilton. (Or can you?? Maybe at the Hilton they have a fulltime employee who just walks around with an actual Scrabble dictionary.)

Dec 15: We continue seeking our luggage and talk about maybe visiting a museum, only to learn that everything is closed on Monday. We consider hiring a private cat burglar to help us break into one, but tnstead, we get lunch at the American Embassy cafeteria (super classy, plus you can get lunch for under $150 pesos) and relax in the posh Peace Corps volunteer lounge, which includes a couch, some chairs, cable TV, wireless Internet (sometimes), and air conditioning (sometimes).

Dec 16: We continue seeking our luggage and visit the Museo del Arte Moderno, which turns out to contain a whole lot of art. Plus, we get Italian food at a very nice restaurant that is on the upper echelons of affordability for Peace Corps volunteers (at around $300 pesos/$10US per plate).

Dec 17: We call our driver so we can make stupid pointless trip to the airport in search of luggage, finally receive the final suitcase, and return home by first-class air-conditioned bus to my charmingly rustic cottage, where I teach Reid how to get water from the cistern and bucket-flush a toilet. We set up his bed on the finest air mattress I own which turns out to still be leaking so we also set up the second-finest air mattress I own. (Which I guess is now the finest, since it doesn’t leak.)

Dec 18: I take Reid to visit a few families in my town, thus giving him an opportunity to sit on nicer furniture than my own plastic chairs. I also use my home entertainment center (aka laptop) to get him hooked on the TV show Heroes, while we have electricity, which is sometimes.

Dec 19: I take Reid to the school Christmas party where we partake in finely catered Dominican food and dance music. Later, we also continue watching Heroes.

Dec 20: We continue relaxing around my private all-inclusive compound (it includes all the limes you can pick off my tree, of which Reid, perhaps fearing scurvy, eats many) and finish up Heroes, only to begin Firefly.

Dec 21: We go whitewater rafting in Jarabacoa and get sick. We lay around my house, slavishly attended by our personal butler. (Okay, our personal butler is just me sucking it up and going to the colmado next door to buy Gatorade and saltine crackers.)

Dec 22: We spend the morning and afternoon still being sick, then muster up the strength to go to the Museo Folklorico in Santiago—it is so important to absorb culture when one travels, you know. We also visit La Sirena, a glamorous large all-purpose store where all the most important people buy their groceries and flip-flops, and buy some peanut butter. Plus we celebrate not throwing up anymore by visiting the 5-star Italian establishment Pizza Hut.

Dec 23: Another trip into Santiago, this time to the Centro Leon art museum. Centro Leon is seriously classly, possessing both elevators AND a working escalator. Plus they have really nice bathrooms, with toilet paper, soap, and paper towels. Also, their cafeteria has Portobello mushroom sandwiches. Truly a must-visit stop on any swank Caribbean vacation.

Dec 24: A quick trip to the capital to drop off stuff at PC office, then a guagua ride to Keane’s site, a scenic suburb… er… slum (slumburb?) of Santo Domingo, where we eat approximately seven thousand pounds of delicious Indian food and have a rad time celebrating the alleged birthday of Jesus in the traditional manner: through dance parties and board games.

Dec 25: Another fun-filled day at Casa de Keane, eating cold Indian leftovers and watching movies. There is brief talk of going hiking in the nearby mountains, but we are visited by torrential Caribbean rainshowers all day. We drink the red wine we bought in the capital, which was carefully-chosen by my wine butler for its desirable qualities of costing under $300 pesos and having a picture of a cat on the label.

Dec 26: We leave Keane’s and head for the capital, where we pretty much just eat pizza, do laundry at the PC office, and hang around the Pen, the hotel favored by PC volunteers due to its low price and proximity to the PC office. I mean… due to its award-winning customer service.

Dec 27: A trip to the Zona Colonial, including the Alcazar de Colon (the mansion built by Diego Columbus; it’s nearly as nice as the accommodations to which we’ve become accustomed) and the Amber Museum, plus some shopping. We also attempted to go see the movie El Dia La Tierra Se Detuvo (The Day the Earth Stood Still), only to discover—after already having bought tickets and sitting through a long, dialogue-free mountain-climbing scene—that it has been dubbed into Spanish. I hadn’t even thought to ask when we bought tickets, since seriously every movie here gets shown in English with subtitles, except for cartoons. Boooo.

Dec 28: We return to the Zona Colonial for some more brief souvenir shopping, then visit the Parque Mirador del Sur, which Lonely Planet bizarrely described as being “riddled with large limestone caves” including a huge cave containing a restaurant. We walked over 10 kilometers (I know, it has kilometer markings) and did not see any caves, nor did we find the Cave Restaurant (the Cavearaunt, as we took to calling it) despite asking various park employees/passersby, all of whom assured us the mysterious Cavearaunt was nearby. We ended up calling a taxi to take us to another restaurant, randomly chosen from Lonely Planet, which turned out to be closed. Then we got rice & beans & French fries from a stand on the Malecon, and it was awesome.

Dec 29: Breakfast at the Embassy, then a taxi out to the airport for Reid’s flight home (first-class, of course. Well, the one above steerage, anyway). I hop on my bus back north.

feliz navidad!

2008-12-24T11:01:00.001-08:00

Hola everyone! Just wishing you all a merry Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, et al, from the DR! Reid & I are spending the holiday with some Peace Corps friends. Later I'll update you guys on our adventures (which include an obnoxious German rafting guide, crowded public transportation, and copious amounts of vomit), but for now I'll just say: happy holidays!

checking in

2008-12-16T08:36:00.000-08:00

Reid has arrived safely and we've been having a pretty low-key weekend in the capital--mostly hanging out with other Peace Corps volunteers (including a visit to a friend in the hospital--not a stop included on most Caribbean vacations). We were planning to go back to my site today but American Airlines has revised their claim that Reid's lost suitcase would be delivered "early this morning" to a claim that it will be delivered "sometime before 10pm." So. Hopefully it will get here in enough time for us to still be able to leave today, but we might end up sticking around another night to wait for it. This afternoon we're now going to try to hit up the Museo del Arte Moderno. We wanted to go yesterday, but it turns out all the museums in the city are closed on Monday. Who knew? We did spend some time at the Artisan Fair, which was really cool. It's organized every year by some Peace Corps volunteers and their local artisan groups, as well as some non-Peace Corps-related artisans, and they just sell tons of cool art. I bought some ceramic leaf earrings and a polished coconut shell necklace for myself, plus some gifts (which I won't describe, so as not to ruin their surprisingness)!

Anyway, I'm going to cut this short and head out for some more sightseeing (si Dios quiere), but I will leave you guys with a few recent photo uploads. As always, the full set is at my Flickr.

Sunset at Playa Miches.

My plate at Thanksgiving! Yum.

Karina & I at Thanksgiving.

Some Scrabblefriends!

Further parasite-related postscript: seriously, I'm fine. Everyone here gets parasites sooner or later.

postscript on the best weightloss plan ever

2008-12-12T13:13:00.001-08:00

It's called a parasite!

I took some Paramox though and now I'm better!

Around the World (Without Leaving Santo Domingo)

2008-12-12T12:55:00.000-08:00

Hola & bonjour! This past week I’ve been back in the capital for an inservice language training, to brush up & improve my Spanish skills now that I’ve been out using them for awhile. It’s been fun and helpful overall, although six hours a day of language training gets to be a little draining. This afternoon, for example, we spent almost two hours rehashing por vs. para. (Spanish has two words for the English word “for,” and also both words have other meanings, like “through” and “by.” In some cases the distinction is more clearcut, like “por” is used to express definite amounts of time. So “for an hour” is “por una hora.” (“Para” can also express time in some cases, like “Yo voy para 9,” is roughly “I’ll go around 9.” It’s less commonly used, though.) In other cases it’s a little fuzzier. For the English “I did this for you,” “por” is “for” if it is something that was done because of something or someone, but “para” is “for” if it just means, well, for. Um. Anyway, it’s confusing, and most non-fluent Spanish speakers, myself included, tend to just use “para” anywhere you would use “for” in English.”

… ay, mi madre.

Anyway, we’ve had our training every day until 3pm and then have been having fun reunions within our PC group. On Tuesday we took an excursion to the Acropolis Center, aka “Land of Rich White Dominicans,” aka “Seriously, Are We In America?” I bought a CINNABON! Others bought iced mochas and TGI Friday’s burgers. It had escalators, which I haven’t seen since I left the airport. (No wait, the mall in Santiago has an escalator too but it’s been broken every time I’ve gone there.) It was basically amazing.

We also saw the movie Max Payne, which was pretty terrible, although we had fun laughing at unintentionally humorous scenes. The best part of the whole movie was when one character said, “She’s a bitch,” and the subtitle, instead of saying “Ella es una zorra”* said “Ella es una basura,” which means, “She is a garbage.” And in Spanish it’s just as weird sounding to say “a garbage” (instead of “the garbage,” or “a piece of garbage,” or whatever.) Also, a garbage does not mean a bitch. So we’ve incorporated that into our slang in both English and Spanish. I encourage you to do the same: next time someone cuts you off in traffic, shake your fist and yell, “You are such a garbage!” I’m sure it will make you feel better.

*"Zorro" means fox, "zorra" is a female fox. Or a bitch. Also, this is what was used for bitch at other points in the movie, thus making this instance of "una basura" even funnier.

This afternoon we went to Carrefour, the Dominican branch of the French version of Wal-Mart. We bought Brie cheese and baguettes and it was impossibly blissful. Then we went to the colmado and played Travel Scrabble, which I brought with me this week and have been happily spreading as an alternative to dominoes. (Not that I don’t like dominoes, but why play that when you could be playing Scrabble?)

Tomorrow is our last day of training, and we’re planning to spend the afternoon at the Embassy pool. It should be amazing. Who knew being in the Peace Corps could be so posh?

On Saturday, my brother Reid is arriving for a visit, which should be great! (And not only because he’s bringing a suitcase full of American snacks.)

world aids day

2008-12-02T06:41:00.001-08:00

So I didn't get to Internet yesterday, on actual World AIDS Day, but I just thought I'd mention it anyway. Here in PCDR AIDS awareness & prevention are some of our goals, but it's not quite the priority I'm sure it is in African PC nations. AIDS is definitely a bigger problem here than it is in the US*, but nothing like in Africa. The highest incidences of AIDS in the DR are among sex workers in tourist towns, so... watch out for that if you come visit me.

*Here, 1.1% of the population has AIDS. In the US, it's about .3%. In Nigeria, it's 3.1%.

Anyway, so I know you can get AIDS awareness T-shirts at The Gap these days, but I thought I'd chime in too cuz it's my blog and I'll tell you to use a condom if I want to, tell you to use a condom if I want tooooo.

Why No One North of the Mason-Dixon Line Will Ever Take Me Seriously Again

2008-12-02T06:34:00.001-08:00

Since coming to the DR, I’ve had to adapt to a lot of things. I used to think that the maximum occupancy of a Toyota Corolla was 5; I now know that it is 7 adults plus a few children. I used to think it was rude to show up at people’s houses unannounced and expect coffee; I now know that it’s more rude not to. For that matter, I used to think that coffee should be served in roughly 6-8 ounce portions; I now know that you really only need about a shot glass of coffee (with at least a tablespoon of sugar). I used to think it was perfectly fine to leave my house when it was raining; I now know that passing through the rain will ruin my pelo bueno and give me a potentially-fatal case of la gripe.

Perhaps most critically, I used to think that a 75-degree Fahrenheit day was a warm and pleasant temperature. Now, however, having adapted myself to 80 and 90 degree days, I know that this is in fact terribly cold and I don’t really understand how people get by on such days without sweaters. I am not joking. The other day it dropped down to 68 and I was wearing jeans, socks, a long-sleeved T-shirt, a hooded sweater (with the hood up), and I was huddled in bed freezing. Of course, my bed has only a sheet, no blanket, because I didn’t expect to need a blanket here in the Caribbean. And judging by my old standards of temperature, I still probably don’t need one. But my internal thermometer has adjusted, and while I can now withstand 90+ heat much better than I used to, I can’t deal with anything below 75. Basically: I have become a reptile. If you need me, I will be sunning myself on a rock (unless it’s raining, in which case I will be inside, protecting my hair and shivering).

dia de los pavos (turkey day)

2008-12-02T06:28:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving (now belated)! Hope everyone had a great day of food, friends, and family. I’m going to go ahead and guess that most of you did not spend your Thanksgiving poolside the way I did… suckas. (Granted, it rained all afternoon so I didn’t swim much, but it was still a pleasant location.)

The PCDR Thanksgiving committee spent a long time organizing our festivities, which took place at a country club in the capital and involved enough American Thanksgiving-style food for 100+ people, a dominoes tournament, a dance contest, and a talent show. It also involved a fair amount of drinking, so by the time the talent show rolled around…well, let’s just say it was an entertaining event. The country club’s restaurant waiter also put on an awesome show every time someone tried to cut through the restaurant (which was open air and poolside) between the pool and the locker room (which, being in the DR, was disappointingly cold water-only, despite being in a pretty nice club). Some friends and I spent a couple hours sitting at one of the tables, playing travel Scrabble and watching the poor dude flip out and explain, in an increasingly put-upon fashion, that it was forbidden to walk through the restaurant without a shirt on. A lot of the other volunteers were resentful of this Shirt Nazi, although I’m pretty confident that behind this waiter must have some even more forceful manager who terrorized the waiter in the same way that the waiter terrorized the post-pool volunteers…there’s no way anyone cares that much about restaurant dress codes without some kind of outside coercion.

Anyway, dress code aside, it was a little strange to have our fun, giant meal and know that soon we would return to our little towns in this little impoverished nation. Of course, it’s true that in America we have our family feasts within miles of people who don’t know where their next meal will come from, but here in the DR the disparity is more obvious. Our country director led a Thanksgiving toast: That one day everyone in the world may enjoy what we have now. It’s just something to keep in mind, I suppose. It’s nice to take time out to be thankful, but it’s hard to think about the fact that the things we’re grateful for often come at the expense of the developing world. (NOTE: sorry to be a big Debbie Downer. I promise not to even talk about the meat industry ;) ) I guess what I’d really like to promote is a more active Giving of Thanks; not only should we acknowledge what we have to be grateful for, but we should all do more to see that everyone has something for which to be grateful. Also, I don’t think that this should be limited to the last Thursday of November. Anyway, I sense that by now many people still reading this are tired of my hippie shit, so I’ll cut this short. … In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make?? (That was encore hippie shit, in case you weren’t tired of it yet.)

a few notes on mail

2008-11-21T05:44:00.000-08:00

Hello, all! First of all, thank you so much to all who have sent me letters, cards, and care packages! I can’t even tell you how exciting and meaningful it is to get mail down here.

Second of all, let me say that I think some of you have sent me things that I have not received. The Dominican mail system is slow and somewhat unreliable, so it’s possible that these things will reach me eventually, but for the record: if I have not specifically thanked you for a letter or package, I have not received it yet.

Here are a few more tips I’ve gleaned about handling the Dominican mail system:

Things in large manila envelopes tend to have better luck than smaller cards. Even if you’re sending a small card, please consider sticking it in a manila envelope. The postage cost will go up a little bit, but it seems like it will be much more likely to reach me.
Make sure you have the address right:
Renata S., PCV (Use my whole last name, I just don’t want to put it on my blog)
451 Avenida Bolivar
Apartado Postal 1412
Santo Domingo
Dominican Republic
If you are sending a package (thanks!!), try for a padded envelope rather than a box. Also, on the customs form say that you are sending me “religious materials.”
For letters or packages, it seems to help if you make it look like you actually are sending me some sort of religious materials. Try drawing crosses or writing “Que vaya con Dios,” something like that.
This should be obvious, but—don’t send me money! It’ll get stolen.

Also, here my top 5 most-desired things in care packages (just in time for Christmas ;)):
1. Soy nuts! Delicious, crunchy sources of protein and fiber; completely unavailable in the DR.
2. Dried fruit/trail mix. Again—not available here. Nuts you can get (although they are very expensive), but not dried fruit.
3. Non-perishable, vegetarian box dinners—things like Annie’s pasta, Tasty Bite Indian dinners, and Thai Kitchen boxes (check the labels on those please, not all the Thai Kitchen stuff is vegetarian but a lot of it is). Nothing microwaveable though, it has to have a stovetop cooking option.
4. Chocolate, particularly individually-wrapped items (fun size candy bars, etc—they hold up better to this climate) and particularly peanut butter/chocolate combinations or dark chocolate items. But whatever, really, beggars (and Peace Corps volunteers) can’t be choosy!
5. Magazines. I’m partial to celebrity gossip and commie pinko political magazines, but really anything in English is great.

BUT SERIOUSLY I’m super excited to receive anything in the mail, and I promise to return the favor with postcards of my beautiful, impoverished republic.

Also, for those of you looking to support my community with school supplies or whatever—honestly, right now it is best if you don’t send me things to distribute here. Peace Corps tries very hard to get our sites to view us as human resources, not as sources of handouts. So instead, support the volunteer who is trying to teach them English! Also, I usually do share my candy with my classes. (Alternate suggestion: donate some money to Oxfam, they are my favorite charity and they do great things where they are most needed.) Also, later on in my project it’s possible I will write up a Peace Corps Partnership Program (PCPP) grant, which is basically where I beg for money from friends, family, and local (meaning Illinois, not the DR) organizations to support a project and you guys give it to Peace Corps and then they give it to me. Rest assured I will let you all know if I start something that needs PCPP support and will happily accept your donations then :) (Check out the PC donors page if you are interested in this project.)

Anyway, thanks, guys! You are rad, and sorry if the Dominican mail system lost something you sent me.

pretty good day

2008-11-21T05:43:00.001-08:00

Hmm, now it’s 8pm, which I’ve (somewhat arbitrarily) decided is too late to visit people. I’ve been putting off visiting this woman in my neighborhood for like… a month now? I’ve visited her a few times, and she’s always very happy to see me, but it’s also always fairly unpleasant. HERE’S WHY: she ostensibly invited me over so she could practice her English with me, but instead she likes to nitpick my Spanish (which, though imperfect, is much better than her English). This is annoying (I know I should just accept and grow from the criticism, but I am frankly not yet a big enough person to do this and not be annoyed), but much more uncomfortable is the way my visits always turn into family therapy sessions, in which she tells me everything that is wrong with her 11-year-old son—while the kid sits across the table from us! I try to stick up for him—I don’t know him that well, but I figure with a mom like that his self-esteem could probably use a hit regardless—but my attempts are always shot down by mom. Still, though, I should visit her and keep working on the kid’s self esteem, and also to stave off guilt trips when I see the woman around town.

Well. Another day, I guess.

But! I will not let this failure detract from my other successes of today!

TO WIT:

This morning I did laundry a mano! Lots of it! Here is how I do laundry when possible: I take it to the Peace Corps office and do it in the American-style washers and dryers there. However, this is complicated because: it’s tricky to travel with large amounts of clothing, it’s expensive to travel to and stay overnight in the capital, and the high demand on the Peace Corps laundry machines means it’s improbable to get all one’s laundry done in one day. So I can only do laundry there when I’m already planning to travel to the capital for some reason, and also when I’m not planning to be there at a time when lots of other volunteers will be there. When too long goes between acceptable trips to Santo Domingo, then I get out my washtub and my bucket and do my laundry in the shower. I use fresca lavanda (fresh lavender) scented laundry detergent, and white vinegar in the rinse water, and a little scrubby brush which I use (with limited success) on stains. Then I hang everything up on the network of wires that looms over my paved-over backyard. Today I was forced even to wash my jeans, which I strongly resist washing by hand because they are so hard to wring out by hand and they take so long to dry and they can go so long without being washed. Today my jeans smelled really bad. But no longer!
Plus I washed my bathmat, which is even more of a pain to wash than my jeans!
Also, I finally put some oil on the padlock I use to close my gate at night. For the last, oh, two weeks, it’s been too rusty (or something?? What am I, a lock scientist?) to shut, so I’ve just been putting it over my gate latch and swiveling it so it looks closed. This has, in fact, prevented any break-ins, although this could also just be due to the fact that I live in a very safe neighborhood and also my house is about 6 inches away from my neighbors’ houses. Still, though, now I can actually lock it again.
I went to the far-away grocery store (it’s like a 20 minute walk… but that is far-away when it’s 85 degrees out, okay) and bought wheat bread, canned mushrooms, and a tomato! Hooray!
I took out the trash today. When I first moved here, Thursday was trash pickup day, but lately they’ve just been picking it up on random days. This morning I noticed that some of my neighbors had put out their trash so I thought maybe… but the trash is still there. Whatever, it’ll get picked up eventually?
I swept off my porch! My porch accumulates trash at a rapid rate because Dominicans tend to be severe litterbugs and cough drop wrappers and chip bags constantly fly around this country in a whirlwind of non-biodegradable tidbits. For this reason, most doñas sweep their porches at least once a day. I’m not a very good doña so I shoot for like once a week. Whateverrrr.
I did all my dishes from dinner before the power went out! I hate doing dishes in the dark.
I wrote up this blog entry. (This I’m doing in the dark, but it’s cool cuz the laptop has 2 hours of battery left.)

So yeah, pretty good day!

my weekend in the wild wild east

2008-11-21T05:34:00.000-08:00

This past weekend, Karina and I embarked on a trip out east to visit our old host families from our CBT (community based training, you may or may not recall) days. It’s about a six-hour trip, and the second main leg is in a small, cramped guagua (as opposed to the air conditioned, Greyhound-style bus of the first leg). Actually the trip had five legs: a carro publico from my town to La Vega, a bus from La Vega to the capital, another carro publico from the bus stop to the Peace Corps office, a taxi shared with Karina from the office to another bus stop, and finally the small guagua to our final destination. (FYI: Peace Corps frowns on us giving out the names of PC sites online, hence the vagueness. The reason is so that terrorists don’t find out where volunteers live and, you know, terrorize them? Which is a little dumb since any terrorist would just have to ask around for Donde la americana vive and would not even have to bother with my blog, but whatever I don’t want to get in trouble from any PC PTB who happen to stumble across the Paz Dispenser.)

So anyway! After this long journey (sustained by care package jellybeans and attempts to read People magazines on the bumpy ride), we arrived in our old neighborhood and were welcomed by our doñas. I discovered that I’d come on the oldest daughter’s birthday, although in typical Dominican fashion the family wasn’t doing anything to celebrate it. (Quinceañeros, 15-year-old birthdays, get a party if the family can afford it. Otherwise, the kid might get their favorite food for dinner, but tends to be about it.) I gave out a few gifts to all the kids—candy taken from my care packages, plus a coloring book and a deck of Uno cards, with which I was promptly induced to play. Luckily, I haven’t played too much Uno since I finished living with my training host families, so I’m pretty over my Uno burnout.

I also met their new kitten, who the family keeps tied to a pole on the patio with a short length of string. This is one of the more pathetic sights I’ve seen in this country—people here do generally keep their dogs tied up, but I’ve never seen a cat tied up before! And this one is so teeny, and on such a short string, and it desperately would like off of its string… oh, it broke my heart. (Also sad: the fact that Americans probably spend about as much on pet food as the average lower-class Dominican family spends on human food. But seriously the kitten is cuter.)

Other than the birthday and the kitten, it was a pretty standard weekend with them—I went to church, hung out with the kids, and ate doña food. The latter was an excellent reminder of why I love living on my own so much—she was the best cook of any of my host families, and I still had to cope with things like her having forgotten about my vegetarianness and giving me weird fish, cold rice, gross hot milk, and nasty gluey oatmeal. (Look, I lived with it and tried to keep a positive attitude about it for six months, but I might as well say, cultural sensitivity be damned: a lot of Dominican food sucks!)

Karina & I parted ways with our host families Sunday afternoon and caught a guagua to our friend Stephanie’s site, about an hour further east of our CBT site. The road from the capital to our CBT site is not in the best condition, but it is at least paved. Further east, no such luck! I don’t tend towards carsickness, but that was definitely a nausea-inducing ride. The pain was relived, however, by the fact that Stephanie lives about ten minutes from the beach, where we spent the afternoon relajando and getting to know some of the other volunteers in the area. (Her town has FOUR volunteers, although one of them is officially finished with Peace Corps as of this month and is sticking around to work for an NGO.)

Afterwards, we continued hanging out and also met some of the people who are there doing marine research for Columbia University. (Seriously, Stephanie has soo many people to speak English with! I’m jealous.) It was a fun night, but our 6:30 am guagua ride back was somewhat less fun, and just as nausea-inducing as the ride in. Ah well, vale la pena (worth the trouble)!

awkward in any language

2008-11-11T06:24:00.000-08:00

Well, I didn’t get to post my last entry in La Vega as planned, since the power went out at the Internet center just as I got settled at a computer. We all glanced around, waiting to see if an inversor was going to kick in, but the lab encargada made a throat-cutting hand gesture, understandable in any language, and we all grumpily filed out of the center.

Aside from that, though, it was a pretty successful trip. I went to the post office, where how much it costs to send a letter to the US depends mainly on what size the envelope appears to be, what the clerk’s friend thinks it should cost, and how successfully I am able to make the case that “Siempre cuesta veinte pesos!” (It’s always 20 pesos! Which is clearly not true, as evidenced by the fact that I have to bargain over postage every time. But it is frequently 20 pesos, and I believe it should always be 20 pesos, coño.) Arianna and I had some delicious lunch at our favorite restaurant, and received the best piropo ever: some guy yelled “Americanas!!” at us, which we ignored. Then he followed it up with an excited “Ganó Obama!” (Obama won!) By this point we’d already gone past him, so we couldn’t really acknowledge it, but it was a welcome change from the usual “Americana, te quiero, tu eres preciosa, que linda…”

I had a good weekend after that, too. Everyone showed up for English class on Saturday morning, despite the two-week break. I’ve been following a basic English syllabus that Peace Corps gave us, complete with handouts. This week the theme was hotels & restaurants, and I spent way too long trying to define “concierge” in Spanish. I mean, let’s be real, I barely know what a concierge does in English. I ended up telling the kids something like, “He is someone who works only in expensive hotels. He can help you make a reservation at a nice restaurant, or… find a theatre.” Then the students asked, “Is he a receptionist? Is he a waiter?” “No… those are different people. His job is only to help people find things.” “Is he a tour guide?” “No… he helps people, but he doesn’t leave the hotel.” (Meanwhile, the only time I’ve ever stayed in a hotel nice enough to have a concierge was in Chicago, where I shared it with about 10 other people after a Tori Amos concert, and I had to ask the concierge how to get to the aquarium using public transportation.) We finally decided that there isn’t a Spanish word for concierge, the kids wrote down “guide who doesn’t leave the hotel” on their vocab sheets, and I mentally shook my fist at whoever put “concierge” on the Peace Corps basic English syllabus.

Another exciting adventure in beginner’s Spanish happened when I visited my host family and we talked a little bit about the election…

Doña: It’s strange that a black man won!
Me: But it’s exciting! Barack Obama is from my state, Illinois!
Don: But his father is African.
Me: Yes, but Obama was the senator from Illinois.
Don: He is African, but also American?
Me: Yes, exactly.
Don: (Recalling an earlier conversation we’d had about Americans, when I said my family was originally German but we were still Americans, and how all Americans are from somewhere else except the Native Americans) All Americans are from somewhere else.
Me: Except the Native Americans.
Don: The Indians!
Me: Yes, the Indians.
Host sister: Is it true that the government gave land to the Indians?
Me: Ummm… well… it’s complicated. The government stole land from the Indians… well first of all, there are many groups of Indians, and each one has different… agreements… with the government… and sometimes the government… doesn’t do what it says it will do.
Don: It doesn’t comply with its treaties?
Me: Yes, exactly. Anyway, so some groups of Indians got pieces of land from the government where they can live. But it isn’t enough.

… Anyway, it went on in that awkward fashion for awhile. Later, I talked to my friend Keane about how I felt bad being unable to fully explain the situation, and also how I wanted to make it clear that while my government had done this, it wasn’t something I supported. He told me I shouldn’t worry about it too much, since their government did the same thing to the Haitians. Oh, what a world.

The only other thing I have to report is that we’ve been having tons of electricity here lately! The power will go off and then come back 20 minutes later, instead of 3 hours later! We’re having at least 16 hours a day of power. It’s so weird. The tradeoff—since every silver lining must have its cloud--is that we haven’t really had running water for about a week now. I’m doing fine, since I have a cistern—and we must be getting occasional running water, since the cistern has refilled at least once this week. My neighbors with their working tinacos are doing fine, but since I haven’t been able to refill my tinaco (I don’t have a pump, so I can only fill it when there’s running water and I physically turn the knob), I’ve been making do with buckets. It’s a pretty good workout—if we keep being low on agua de la calle (“water from the street,” which is what we call running water. The first time I mentioned “water from the street” to my mom, she thought I was drinking out of a gutter or something), I’m going to have really buff arms.

dia de elecciones!

2008-11-11T06:18:00.000-08:00

Felictaciones a presidente-electivo Obama! (Full disclosure: I’m pretty sure “presidente-electivo” is not actual Spanish for “President elect,” but I do what I want.)

For what it’s worth, Dominicans are generally pretty excited about the US election results, as are Dominican PCVs. The election night party in Santiago was a blast, although I’m feeling a touch of campo guilt for being out of site for the conference AND Halloween AND the election… but, again, I do what I want. Accompanied by intermittent feelings of guilt. (This is standard operating procedure for PCVs, who tend to feel that the more time you spend in your site the more productive you are, regardless of what you’re actually missing out on by being out of site. Peace Corps is a really weird job.)

I haven’t done too much during my time back in site… yesterday turned out to be a school holiday, which also meant that only one student showed up to my English class yesterday. Also, the school building was locked, so we had class for a while just sitting on the curb. In the dark. (If more students had showed up, I probably would have just moved the class to my house, but since it was just the one [male] student, I didn’t want to appear remotely inappropriate.)

However, upon return to my town, my joven asked me to help him form a youth computer group! This was something I’d been meaning to do eventually, like when my school has working computers again, but he proposed having meetings at the town’s other computer center (which is like, across the street from the school), which has a working inversor. The other center’s proprietor is apparently down with this, so I’m going rogue and branching out from my school. (It’s not really going rogue; Peaee Corps supports working with whatever’s available. I just think it sounds a little sexier if I say I’m going rogue, Sarah Palin style.)

So anyway, not much news to report here. Today I’m meeting up with Arianna in La Vega (out of site again! Ack!) for lunch, fast Internet, and fancy groceries (yogurt, tortillas, olive oil). This weekend I’ve got my English class, and I’m planning to andar a bit and visit some people in the neighborhood, since I have been so perdida. Just another glamorous weekend in the life of a Peace Corps volunteer!

Me, Karina, and Justin sporting our snazzy Obamanos shirts.