A Day in the Life

10/9/08

Hey there fan club:) Say, that’s a nice way to look at this! Sorry but I just don’t have that much to talk about so far this week. Plus, I confess I’ve been working on a super long letter to someone and it’s put my time for blogging to shame. But, in true Betsy form, I’m sure I can find something to talk about so here goes:)

My Day In a Nutshell:

Since there isn’t really anything new going on I’ll take up space talking about the everyday annoying things here. Today was kind of interesting I guess. I woke up and went running (I have to get up at 5:45 to have time to run and shower before breakfast so I can eat with Kirses, my “sister” here), came home and took a “shower” (bucket bath or course with cold water), got dressed and doused myself with the first of three applications of bug spray for the day, and was greeted with pancakes for breakfast, yum! The past few days my family has just been feeding me bread (pretty much since I didn’t eat the hot dog- chicken noodle soup for breakfast) and I can’t help but feel like they’re annoyed with making food now. It works out ok though because I just bought a package of crackers and peanut butter and mangos to sustain me plus I haven’t been having a “hungry” week.

So, anyways, I next head to Darryl’s house because I seem to remember having some Spanish homework but it escaped me as to what it was. The day before we went to a family planning clinic in Santo Domingo (where I pretty much spaced out the whole time since it was in Spanish and it overloaded my brain to think that long in Spanish) and I bought this neat looking ready-to –eat pineapple. They cut it all fancy pantsy, to me it looked like pineapple on the cob, but I had eaten a lot of fruit so I decided to save it for the next day. So, the next day- today, I did my homework at Darryl’s house and enjoyed my pineapple on the cob while making a huge, juicy mess as usual. It was delicious and Darryl took a picture of it for me:) I put a link up to the right that leads to my myspace profile where a bunch of pictures are if you want to take a look.

After my wonder treat it was off to Spanish class and about half way though I realized I forgot something very important. A few days ago I bought what I thought was laundry soap to wash my clothes in and thought since I had extra time in the morning that I would wash my underwear. The directions said to put the clothes in a bucket with water and let them soak for like 10 minutes. Well, I remembered that I left them soaking but it was about 2 hours after they had been in the soapy water, ekk! Then my Spanish teacher tells me what I bought isn’t even soap, it’s more like Downy fabric softener!! Which I guess is good because my ropa interior was anything but soft, it felt kind of crusty- washing stuff by hand will do that.

When I got home I was going to take care of the super Downy smelling clothes but I’ve been so tired that I completely forgot. I told my Dona I would just eat later and went to bed. It wasn’t exactly restful because the lights went out about 30 minutes later and so goodbye fan. It’s ok though, I have developed coping mechanisms and I didn’t even sweat. (well, either that or I’m dehydrated…) Sadly, my coping mechanisms haven’t’ developed enough for me to sleep well so two hours later I had slept for maybe 45 minutes. Then when I was trying to get out of my mosquitero there were like 6 mosquitoes on my net, right where I needed to un-tuck it to get out!! I couldn’t get out because I didn’t want them in my net! They can live up to a month with me as their buffet every night, no thank you! So, I un-tucked a teeny bit and grabbed my bug spray (always close) and sprayed the perimeter of my bed. In the time I had my net open, a mosquito got in so I had to stay in my net until I could catch her in the air and kill her, no easy task with these super mosquitoes here. My victory reminded me that I had my clothes still soaking about 7 hours longer than recommended so I went to deal with that. Three buckets of rinse water later, I figured they were as rinsed as they could be and set them in the sun to dry figuring that should take some of the smell from them. Besides, when things don’t dry in the sun, they smell.

When I walked out to the living room my Dona was there to greet me, and so was lunch which had been sitting on the table for over 2 hours. It was chicken and rice with corn. I ate the rice and fed the chicken to the cats. In the meantime I was supposed to meet up with my Spanish group so we could set up plans for our next and final CBT presentation for next week. Darryl came to my house to see where I was and inform me that there was a big fight going on past his house so we couldn’t walk by anyways. It worked out well for me because I was working on that long letter.

After a little while we went to the park to meet Kenzie who had been waiting for about 45 minutes but wasn’t upset because we are on Dominican time after all. Plus, I brought a mango as a peace offering. There were two other girls there and we all sat around and talked about lots of different things, sometimes even our Spanish homework that we were supposed to be doing. After an hour or so it started to rain which was nice because it cooled everything off and gave us more of a reason to sit there even longer. After a tough afternoon we decided to go to the river, well I decided to walk to my house while they went to the river, but we made plans for them to meet up at my house later for some more mango.

When I got home I found all my underwear neatly stacked on the fan in my room. The problem with this is that the clothes were wet from the rain (since they were still outside supposed to be drying), and they were on top of the fan that which I noticed this morning had dead flies hanging from it. So much for the sun making them smell clean, now they’re stinky and have dead bugs in them. At least the rain rinsed them a little better. My room still smelled overwhelmingly like fabric softener though, cosas de la vida I guess.

After that the other PCTs all ended up at my house somehow and we hung out for a while. Then I worked on my letter more, read Newsweek some since it’s my only source of outside news (although I don’t really have a clue what its talking about, I figure its like Spanish and eventually I’ll catch on) Later my Dona asked me what I want for dinner. Generally this happens and when I say what I would like she says oh, how about this…. And that’s what I get. So, I’m not sure why she asks. Tonight she asked with the same enthusiasm as a kid in a circus and a huge smile, “How about bread!?” Mmmm- bread again, can’t wait! I asked if she sill had mac n cheese and she did so I narrowly avoided another meal of bread. It tasted weird this time though so maybe next time I should just eat the bread, after all it is wheat bread. After all that, I wrote in my blog a little, as you can see, and then it’s time to shower by lantern while the mosquitoes feast on me. After that, who knows? Sex in the City? I have to say, season 4 is pretty good and I can watch a couple episodes before my battery dies. (remember the lights go out around 8:30) Once I’m in my mosquito net there’s no leaving until 5:45 am so I better make sure everything I need is in my bed!

Interesting comments recently:

Darryl: “I think my plate this morning that had my breakfast on it had a bugar too. (spell check doesn’t like the word bugar, did I spell it wrong?) I just ate around it, it’s amazing how far I’ve come. I used to be a bit of a germ-a-phob (spell check doesn’t like this either) in the States.”

Jessica: “Yeah? Well, my site has electricity, twenty four hour electricity” (we have to clarify that here in the DR and that’s something to envy for sure!)

Kenzie: “My Dad told me he found this thing for like $180 that he can send me so I’ll be able to watch whatever tv they watch at home wherever I am. I just need internet. Thanks Dad.” (If we had internet at home wouldn’t we have tv?)

PCT : “The mosquitoes that bite are all females so I really can’t call them basterds anymore. Bitches doesn’t sound strong enough so I call them Fuckers. That’s what they deserve, Fuckers.” (so true, these are some type of evolved super mosquito here. If I ever would drop the f bomb and not feel bad about it, this would be when.)

On that note, I hope you enjoyed a day in the life of Betsy. For not having much to talk about I still managed to write 4 pages, thanks for the genes Dad! To everyone, the next time you squish a mosquito, please dedicate its death to a PCV and remember to mentally celebrate. One for the team, go you! And as always, feel free to send me a note telling me of anything new in your lives. How are things at BCHD? Also, I heard that Uncle Greg and Karen moved into a new house? That’s exciting, congrats; I’d love to see some pictures!! Hope you’re all doing well there, I miss you all.

Love

B

PS: We went to the PC office yesterday but they had taken our mail to the training center in another part of town so we weren’t able to get it. It looks like I won’t be able to get anything until a week from Sunday or Monday (so either the 19th or 20th). So for those of you who sent something, don’t worry about it maybe being lost since I haven’t mentioned that I received it. It may be waiting for me but I won’t be able to check for a while. And Dad, I’m only moving to one more town so feel free to send me anything you want, I don’t mind really:) Yes, a flashlight is something I can still use since the one you shake (the one I have) is not really efficient. I can buy the common stuff like flashlights here in country though. I’m hoping when I get to my site (which is just three weeks from today, ekkk!!) and have some freedom I’ll be able to get out some and pick up some stuff I need. So don’t worry too much about it and save some cash (or of course feel free to donate it to my bank account:)