4/19- 4/24 Landslide #2, more escojo, preparing the house for Mom and Rach's visit!!!!!!!!!

4/24 Friday: MOM AND RACH HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I woke up at 6 like I planned and I helped Wandi paint his lamp to look like a bumble bee. I made sure to give myself enough time since Tolo was giving me a bola again. I was ready by 7:15 and wouldn’t you know it, he showed up at 7:40- 20 minutes early but I was prepared this time. He said he’s going to pick Rach, Mom and I up in Navarrete on Sunday so we’ll see if he’s early then…

On the way to Navarrete today Tolo and Minga discovered that I still hadn’t met their son, Nolasco. He lives in Ohio but has been here since December. He has to go back to the states this week though until next December so they wanted to make sure I at least met him. This required a detour on the way to the bus stop in Navarrete to his house. So, we stopped by his house for a little bit, then stopped by the bank (so I could get out $5000 RD to pay the workers for my wall… which I don’t think is even all of it:( and then they dropped me off at the park.

When I arrived in Santiago I had two missions: get seeds from the Dept of Ag and get condoms from the Health Dept. I happened to see the Health Dept when I was on the guagua so I knew where to go. I first went to the hotel that Mom, Rach and I would be staying to secure a room for two nights but it was full. Thankfully there was one right across the street that had just one room with two beds left. It was on the 4th floor (no elevators of course) but better than nothing. Luckily the chick at the front desk told me we could leave the majority of the bags in a closet on the first floor. After I paid the $2000 RD for the two nights ($60) I headed off to the health dept for what I thought would be an easy mission.

When I arrived to the health dept I was sent on a goose chase. “Go to this door, go to that door… we can’t help you, go to that office…” Finally I arrived at the door of someone who seemed to have some authority. She asked for the name of the doctor in my clinic and I didn’t know it. She seemed like she was going to help me until that moment and then she said that I wouldn’t be able to get condoms from them, that I need a note from the doctor. I told her I was a PCV but she said that she can’t just give out condoms to anyone off the street, that people would come in, get free condoms and then sell them. Ok, so I need to go back to my campo where there are no condoms, ask the doctor for a note and then come back here? Or they could just cut out the middle mad and give ME the condoms… errr. I was pretty annoyed but the woman stood her ground. Feeling defeated I left.

I was outside, kicking myself for not putting my PC ID tag on while inside to look more official when I decided to try another tactic. I felt a little underhanded, like after one parent says no and then going to ask another, but it was for my community so I justified it. I remembered that there was another girl looking for condoms for a class she was giving and I didn’t see her discarded outside with me. I walked back up there, found the girl and asked if she got condoms. She told me not yet but that she was told to talk to another woman. I found the woman and explained my cause. She said it would be no problem and lead me back to the very first room I had been sent to. She told the woman at the desk to give me the condoms I needed and that it was no problem. Success! I left with my condoms and a little more poise. The fear of my limited Spanish being a handicap is finally going away.

Next stop was the seed shop. I went to the Dept of Ag and found them to be much easier to deal with than the Health Dept thanks to the fact that they are very familiar with PCVs. I introduced myself and didn’t even have to ask for seeds before they got me a chair and set off to get some weird seeds. I asked what the seeds were and they tried to explain what they were but they’re just too bizarre I guess. They didn’t even have pictures of them among the charts of fruits and veggies they had up. I’m not sure how I’m going to do garden projects with only 4 types of seeds (and uncommon ones at that) but it’s a start.

After my productive morning I piddled around. I went to the grocery store and then to use internet for free for a few hours until I headed back to the hotel to watch some tv. Finally 8 pm arrived and I got a taxi to the airport. It was soooooo great seeing Mom and Rach. I though that I would cry when I saw Mom but surprised myself. I am so glad that they are here with me. I wish that they could stay for longer but I will take what I can get gladly! It’s amazing what a difference a year makes; on this day last year I was miserable, getting my wisdom teeth out. And it was cold too! This year for my birthday I won’t be eating Friday’s soup (which I looooove) with a baby spoon but I’ll be partying it up at the discoteca, eating habichuela con dulce!! Yum yum!! Who would have ever thought!? Here I am in the DR!!!! :)


4/23 Thursday: Escojo part2, still preparing the house…

Yesterday I was writing the definitions of the body parts in my class again (since the boys were complaining that they couldn’t read the parts that one of the girls wrote for me) when Wandi came in and asked if I was going to help Ernie. I guess she took it upon herself to straighten out the hammock area. There was a pick ax and a machete. She used the machete and I went to help and used the axe making steps. The pick axe handle was broken at the end and before I noticed what I had done, I had a big, ripped open blister on the palm of my left hand. Fantastic. I was literally dripping sweat by this point so I decided it was as good of a time as any to stop. Later Ernesto saw my hand and when I told him what happened he told me I should have waited, that I knew he was going to have some muchachos do it. I told him they were all busy working on the wall and so I just did it. Not those muchachos, the little ones who are like 8… well I guess that makes a difference.
Today Ernesto had a migraine and so he stayed in bed all day. Poor guy, I would hate to have a migraine here in the DR- the noise is obnoxious when I don’t have a headache! Another bad thing about this is that he was going to put the shelves up today (since I’m a girl I can’t do it you know, and they’re not my tools) and disconnect the tubes from my water tank so I could clean it! So much for that, I just made some marks with chalk where I wanted the shelves and I guess we’ll see about the tank. I haven’t had running water all week though, something I’m not sure how Mom and Rach will respond to when they arrive.

The wall is really coming along. I have faith in this one, although I had faith in the last one as well. Even though they’re working really hard I don’t think that they will be able to get it finished by Sunday. If they do it would be great but on the other hand… that would mean that I have been waiting since Feb 7th for them to finish a wall that could have been completed in 5 ½ days. There are worse things in life I suppose.

In the morning I went to the clinic in my town to get some condoms for my next class. It’s the condom charla and it will be the most fun I think. I was disappointed to find that not only does a person have to go to the doctor and ask for a condom but there were only 22 condoms!! To make it worse, I took 20 of them and of the 20, half expired in 2004!! They were giving those out to people! Aye aye aye! The doctor told me he would stop by the Public Health office on Monday and pick up some more condoms but I’m not sure I want to put the fait of my class in his hands so I’ll stop by there tomorrow when I’m in Santiago. Although I’ll have to find it first.

Later in the day I had my Escojo class which was markedly different from the exact same class the week before. Don’t get me wrong, Wandi still fought a little, Ernie fought a lot and so did Vanji. I thought that if I gave them more responsibility they would act better, not the same. Then, Ernie, Karina and two guys who were there the week before just sat in the corner and talked. I get the feeling that Ernie is getting mad that she doesn’t have the same level of responsibility as when the class started. Aside from that, I didn’t think the class was as fun as this week either. It went well though. I need to rethink it a little is all. Better luck next time maybe.

Even later in the day I told Wandi I would help him with a school project. He made a light out of a gourd shell and I told him I would help him paint it. He tried very hard to just get me to do it but since it was homework I told him I was only there to HELP and lend some of the paint I just bought. Turns out the paint I bought was more like water and sucked really bad. I had a small container of orange so I told him I would help him paint something on it in the morning when the other “paint” dried. Ugh, that means I have to get up at 6 tomorrow!! But, YAY Mom and Rach get here tomorrow!!!!!!!


4/22 Wednesday: Escojo… think positive think positive think positive…

Today’s topic was Family Planning. I think I’m finally really getting used to this whole teaching thing. I’ve gone in stages from terrified to not so terrified but incredibly uncomfortable and kind of a doormat to mostly comfortable to teaching on my own and being stern (well you know, stern for me). Today when I had class only 11 kids were there which is much more manageable anyways. When they were talking amongst themselves I asked them to repeat what was just said. Or towards the end of class I would just announce in class that we had to wait to continue until whoever’s conversation was done. It worked really well. I was proud of myself that I even explained a somewhat complicated game. It took about 5 full minutes of explanation but after they understood they had a lot of fun. Yep, today’s class went really well.

There were 5 students in the class who weren’t in the last one. Since I plan on offering last weeks class again, I told them that I would be having class tomorrow, repeating the topic, since so many people missed it. BUT I said this would be the only time I was going to do this and it is the responsibility of the student to remember to go to class. If school gets out early they need to either wait for class or come back. Then there were a few students (the ones who weren’t at the last class even!) who were throwing a fit saying that the kids who missed today and last week shouldn’t be able to come back due to the attendance policy. I told them they didn’t have to worry themselves with that since it was a decision I would be making. And what do you know but that response worked! I’m not sure what I’m going to do about that. Maybe I’ll stick to it but I always forget to collect the attendance sheet from who was supposed to write it and so I doubt that they’re all still floating around. I told them that there was going to be an exam at the end and the people who don’t go to class will have a harder time with the exam. You have to pass the exam to graduate. Wandi was worried about this. He’s gone to each class but still is worried about failing. I don’t think that will be a problem because guess who is going to be grading the exams? :) Not that I would cheat for someone but I may pull them aside to clarify things. Escojo isn’t a hard topic and it’s not meant to make people feel bad and fail. I want as many people to pass as possible but of course if they completely fail the exam, it will be a problem.

Tomorrow I was supposed to go to the med mission but they ended up not needing me (bummer). It works out though since I’ll be teaching the body parts topic again. This time I have 4 peace keepers, one for each group and I’m not nervous at all. I know I can handle it. I’ve instructed the other students, the peacekeepers, of their jobs. The great thing about this game is that the participants are the ones who stand up in front of the class and read the definition of the parts and what they do. I don’t have to do any of it! Why didn’t I think of this game before so I didn’t have to freak out about the topic so much?!


4/21 Tuesday: Getting ready and doing repairs

Aside from the scramble to work on the wall (Ernesto has other people helping now so there are 8 in total) there are other things to fix up before the visitors arrive. Today I went to the hardware store to get some stuff to move my tinaco on my roof. I am very pleased about this. The problem was that the kids always play behind my house and they break the tubes leading from my tank to my house thus empting out the tank very quickly. This way the tubes won’t be on the ground for the little monsters to break and as an added bonus, the big, black tank will be in the sun where the water may actually heat up! I have to clean the empty tank out today and Ernesto said that we would move it later today.

Another thing we did was hang my newly purchased hammocks. When I went to John’s site, there was a guy who sold hammocks that he made out of rice sacks. Ernesto and Wandi think that 250 pesos a piece was a rip off but I don’t think so. They’re sturdy hammocks! I told Mercedes that I would need to clean up the area where they are and she said that she would have a kid go over there, clean it up, and level out the ground with a pick axe. Sweet, sounds good to me. I’ll wait until the afternoon and if they’re not doing it, I’ll just do it myself which is fine since I have so much practice using a pick axe at John’s site.

Yesterday evening Ernesto cut up the planks I have had in my house for the last few weeks. I bought them to make some shelves and I bought some paint from the hardware store today. I have been collecting seeds since the beginning of the month, end of last month to decorate the edges of the shelves and I think it will be fun to paint and decorate them with Mom and Rach. I want to hang them before Mom and Rach get here so we just have to worry about paint but I’ll see about that tomorrow maybe since we have to move the water tank and hammock-area cleaning today.

So, as you can see, having visitors is a BIG deal here. Ernie made sure I bought special cleaner for my floor and her and Mercedes insist on cleaning my entire house while I’m in Santiago picking up Mom and Rach. I have gotten really lucky here and still haven’t had to mop even once. Despite that my wall crumbled before my eyes, I won’t let that get me down. No one was hurt and the earth my (an under) my house still seems the same. I was a little afraid there for a minute that I was going to lose my house but nope! I am really grateful for that.


4/20 Monday: Encache? Adios…:(



This morning I thought that I would wake up nice and early and do my walking in the morning instead of after school gets out. While I was out I decided to take my sweet time and went really far again. After all, what did I have to get back for? Watching the guys work on the encache? Make them coffee? Buy them breakfast? No thank you, I will take a pass. So, after I had gone about 6 miles of running and walking I decided to take a break and I sat under the comforting shade of a mango tree and watched the clouds move. It was nice. When I got back, I went to Minga’s house in search of her delicious batata y coco flavored ice. It’s like sweet potato kind of and coconut. Delicious!

When I finally got back to my house it was about 11. I was on the porch talking with the guys for a while before finally going inside to shower. While I was picking out my clothes Ernie began yelling my name. I went outside to see what was going on and she pointed to her dad, Ernesto who told me that the wall had just had another little landslide. It looked the same to me but on closer inspection I realized that all the walls had cracks throughout. DANG IT! And they were almost done too. They were on the last wall of the 6. They got the tools out of the way and stood back. I asked if they could fix the cracks on it and Ernie said it didn’t look like it.

About 10 m minutes later, as we were all watching, the earth at the very top of the wall cracked and a big portion of it slid down, knocking the newly built, still wet, wall down. As that one fell, the next one fell and the next one and so on. It was a big bummer but I’m not going to lie, it was really cool looking. I felt bad for the guys working because the moral was really low after that. They said that all that work was just gone. So not true, I pointed out that we still had a LOT of rocks. I had jus been discussing other options for my wall with Mark the day before at his site. They do something here to prevent landslides on the roads where they take chain link fencing and essentially make a large pillar out of it, filling it with rocks. This was something that we had been discussing from the beginning so I thought I would mention it to Ernesto.

Ernesto was really upset about the wall. I feel a teeny bit bad because to get them working on it, I really laid on the guilt about my Mom visiting. I said that she would feel like they weren’t taking care of me if it wasn’t done and that she would be really disappointed. I said that she has a hard time walking since she has a bad back and the nice smooth entrance they were building would help her a lot. But at the same time I don’t feel bad. Ernesto told me that he was working in another town last Thursday and Friday but he came home to work on the wall when I was here. Why was he working in another place when the stupid wall wasn’t done still! So, if this lights a fire under his butt, great. Ernesto made an executive decision that my idea with the fencing and rocks wasn’t as good as building another encache out of the same thing, rocks and cement, but instead of having 6 pieces they would build one huge one. I am no engineer but wouldn’t that be worse because it would put more pressure on one singular wall? I have no idea. He said that the other one fell because as separate pieces they are weaker and it was the space between them that was their demise. I guess we will see won’t we?


4/19 Sunday: Getting back from Mark’s site

Yesterday I spent the night at Mark’s house. It was really nice, I love going to other PCV’s houses to see how they look. Mark has been building his house- that’s right, he built one- for a few months now, since January I think. This weekend he finished it and so this was his moving in party. Iain and I got a free ride from Sosúa to Altamira (from the Builders Beyond Border’s group or B3) where we took motors to the entrance of Mark’s site. Then it was a 10- 15 minute hike uphill on a dirt “road” with the type of mud that you helplessly sink in to as it eats your shoes, never to be seen again. And of course, it was raining when we were making the climb. At least it was a light rain.

His house is cute. I think that it looks like a tree house or something for a boy scout, which I don’t intend in a rude or unpleasant way but still it probably sounds bad so I refrained from verbalizing the comparison. The house is small but very efficient. It’s impressive that he was able to build it and the furniture. He built everything from the house to the mattresses in the bunk bed. (he made the mattresses by using foam and making a cover for them)

Iain and I got to Mark’s site Saturday around 2. We didn’t do anything at all the whole time. Well, that’s not true, at night there was power so we watched the movie Babel which we all found a little confusing. His site is very tranquil. My house, my site is NUTS compared to his. It got me thinking that it would be nice to have a mix between what I have and what he has. Mine is overwhelming but I have been afraid to send people away for fear that they will stay away and I’ll be completely solo in my house all the time. After Marks (even though it was just for a day) I feel like I could deal with that as well. No wonder others PCVs are shocked when they visit me, they’re used to more alone time. Although I have to say, even though it can be annoying, it’s nice to have so many people want to spend time with me all the time. It’s a good compliment.

I didn’t want to get back to my site too early because I wanted to avoid the discoteca so I went to the internet center for a while. I found out that a good friend’s boyfriend proposed to her Saturday night and I wanted to see if I could get a hold of her. My phone didn’t have service at Mark’s site except when it was in a very strategically placed cup which was nailed to the side of his house. But then there was the rain which made the little service available in the cup very hit or miss. I was upset the next day to see that she had called me to tell me about it and I didn’t’ have service! I was online for a while on Sunday seeing if I could catch her online to talk but no such luck.

I was also very disappointed to find that, for the first time in my life, when I checked to see what the top 10 songs were I didn’t know them!!!!! No, I didn’t say that I didn’t know 1 or 2 or the number 1 or even some of them, I said I didn’t know ANY of them! How did that happen? I knew them all in November. Then I tried to listen to the sample of them that iTunes provides but the internet connection I was paying for was so crappy that it couldn’t process them so I still don’t know!!!!! Ahhhhh!!!!!!

I maybe would have been dwelling on this but I was quickly distracted to find that one of my very best friends who I haven’t talked at all since I left, was online and I was able to chat with her!!!!! It was great and the best part? She bought a ticket to come out and visit in July!!!!!!!!!!! I CAN’T WAIT!!!!!!!!!!!! It’s going to be so fun!! Now I’m torn between the excitement of Mom and Rach visiting me for my birthday (they’re getting in on Friday) for the medical mission I was asked to help out with Thursday and Friday (as a translator… again, I’m a TRANSLATOR!!!!!!!! YIPPEEEEEE!) and for Lisa coming in July!!! Ah, life is good when your biggest problem is that you can’t pick what to focus on for being excited. I’m just excited in general:)

4/11- 4/18

4/16- 4/18 Thursday- Saturday: YAAAYYY!!
Today I woke up nice and early with Ali to each head our separate directions. I was to go back to Los Mangos, John’s site and she was heading back to Los Arrozes- her community. When Ali came the day before she happened to get on Noel’s motorcycle and he proceeded to tell her about how he was mad at me still. She told him that no one was perfect, not knowing the story, and that he should really get over it since it wasn’t a big deal. Then he told her that he was already over it and that she should mention that to me. Ali was solving all kinds of problems for me! I have yet to talk to Noel but I feel like it will be a lot less awkward now thanks to Ali.

So, anyways, she went down the mountain with him and I went up and over the other side with Camilo, Ann and Tim’s friend. Camilo is cool because he takes me the whole way to John’s so I don’t have to change motors. It took me about 45 minutes to get to John’s and then another 25 to walk to the aqueduct. I was there with the kids from about 9:30 until 11 working and then we all went up to the aqueduct (a large cement box constructed around a natural spring at the top of the hill) that the kids had done a great job painting and we took some pictures. After that we ate lunch and then headed out to Sosúa where they had reservations at a resort called Sosúa by the Sea. The PCVs who helped were invited and I was really excited I was able to go.

The first day we arrived we didn’t do much. John, Iain and I went to Sosúa to a bar that had free internet while the kids went to the 27 Waterfalls just outside of Altamira. We all met up at the hotel around 7 and stuffed ourselves with the delicious dinner. The hotel is beautiful. Our room has a huge bed in one room, another room with a tv and a bed with one of those pull-out beds-in-a-drawer underneath. I took that room and Iain and John shared the massive bed. We were so tired when we got there that we went to bed pretty early, especially John who fell asleep in his clothes on the bed at 8.

The next day was sooooooo cool. Despite the fact that we brought the PCV plague with us (somehow the water “broke” there was no water in anybody’s room in the morning and in our room there was a problem with the air conditioning so not only did our bathroom flood but the light broke the night before so we had no power in the bathroom) we can’t think any less of the hotel. The service was great and the view was breathtaking. We ate a delicious breakfast by an ocean view and went out on a boat all day. The boat had some really interesting workers who entertained the kids by dancing, singing, doing awkward impressions of other cultures and cross dressing. Dominican humor. We stopped twice to snorkel and the guys on the boat tossed some bread and hard boiled eggs out to the fish. It was awesome because the fish would eat it out of your hands and there were tons of beautiful fish. On the way back we saw some dolphins playing by the boat. It was the coolest boat trip I have ever gone on.

When we got back to the hotel somehow the kids found the energy to hang out at the pool the rest of the day. I went for a walk and bargained a sarong for 300 pesos cheaper than the guy originally told me which made me pretty happy. I walked to the grocery store, which was the most Americanized grocery store I have seen so far, being fully stocked with Doritos, pop in cans and American candy. I found some cheap ground spices and then headed back to the hotel. After a hot shower in a new room (our old room was still flooded) I watched some tv and then went to dinner. I tried to focus and write my blog but I was too tired and too distracted. I went back to the room and read an issue of Cosmo from December while watching music videos in Spanish. Some people may think that is boring but to me it was a relaxing end to a sweet day.

The next morning I loaded up big time on breakfast since I would be skipping lunch. We were all going to meet in the lobby at 11:45 to leave for good. The kids all had to pack up to get ready to go to Santiago where they’ll be spending a day shopping, dropping Iain and I off in Altamira on the way so we can help Mark move into his house finally (poor guy has been living with his host family still since he has been building a house this whole time. His new house is finally done though, yay!) The kids leave tonight to go back home and then Monday they’ll be back to school.

That seems surreal to me, to go back to school in two days after a week like this. I really have to commend this group of kids. I guess the group (Builders Beyond Borders or B3) used to plan two weekends of fun in their trips but the kids would always write on the suggestion sheets at the end of the trip that they would have rather worked longer and played less since they were there to work. Because of that they worked Saturday- Thursday and only had two days very much deserved days of relaxation. They were able to dig enough 2 ½ ft trench line that they put in a little over 100 tubes, with each tube being 19 feet. They dug the trenches, cleaned and glued tubes together, laid the tubes in the trenches and then buried the tubes. Before they left on the last day they were able to put in a tap to a woman’s house and turn the water on. The tap wasn’t completely finished since it still needed to be enclosed in a cement casing but it is usable and now, for the first time in the woman’s life, she has water at her house.

It really is amazing what people can accomplish when they put themselves aside and think of others. These kids are a great example of that and I really hope that they continue to do things like this with their lives. I hope that this made a big impact on each of them they way they will have impacted the lives of the people they have helped.

4/15 Wednesday: Escojo…. Just breathe.
Today was to be the big day: the day that Ali (another PCV who has really great Spanish) was going to come to my site and help me prepare and teach a charla on the reproductive system: something I did not want to talk about at all. She arrived at 12:30, we ate lunch, caught up on things and began to prepare the presentation around 2:30. Normally I have the presentations done a day or two at least a head of time but we were supposed to work on it together so I waited. Vangie had gone to the school the day before to remind the director we were going to have class today at 5. So, imagine my surprise when at 3 Ernie called me from school to tell me that I needed to be at the school by 4. She said I had to have the class early since school was getting out early. That wasn’t going to happen so I asked her to remind the kids that we were going to have class and that I would be there as soon as I could. We had only been working on the thing for 30 minutes, it was nowhere near done! Then, adding to the surprise, at 3:30 Wandi, who should have still been in school still, showed up at my house telling me all the kids had gone for the day so I couldn’t have class. That means that they got out at 3:15! I asked Wandi to tell the kids that I was going to have class at 5 and to have them come back and he said no.

I was getting more and more frustrated since Ali could only help today. She has to leave early tomorrow and so do I since I told John I would be back to help out more on Thursday. Ali and I continued to work on it but were constantly stopped by distraction. Vangie showed up and I asked her if the director had mentioned to her the day before that school was getting out early. She said he did but she forgot to tell me. I guess I should have just gone myself to ask so that was my fault. Then Ernie comes home and starts telling me that I should have been ready because she called me to tell me. Yeah, she called me 15 minutes before hand! Not that it mattered really, I appreciate the effort on her part but the whole blame game is really old. Then Wandi, who for some reason was being AWEFUL starts calling me a procrastinator and says I should have had it done, that the whole thing is my fault. Breathe. I was about to SNAP. Here I was, sitting on the floor in my kitchen/dinning room, drawing a huge penis diagram with 5 people in my house staring at it. I couldn’t even draw the other one in front of them, I had to move to my room. I get too embarrassed about that stuff. And all the while I was in my room I could hear Wandi complaining about how I am a slacker while Ali defended me.

We finished everything and arrived at the school a little after 5. When we were preparing the charla I happened to think of a game where the kids have to match the function with the body part and then have to put up all the names of the body parts on the diagram. It went fairly well but I thought there was going to be a throw down. There were only 9 kids in the class and I thought that they may have killed each other. We made it a competition between the girls, who were in charge of the man-parts and the guys who were in charge of the woman-parts. It seemed like it was going to be fun but they were fighting the whole time about how the other team was cheating. The girls were able to match up what the guy parts and functions were fairly well but the guys had no clue. They didn’t even know where the vagina was. I found out this is because it is largely thought here that the girls are to please the men and should know about their functions but the men aren’t expected to reciprocate. I don’t know how many in my class have had sex but I’m guessing not many of the guys have since they would at least have to know where the vagina was. So, I guess this could either be a good thing or a very disturbing one, explaining why I have a very low pregnancy rate in my community.

During the class Wandi was unbearable. He was angry that I let the girls go first to explain what parts they had and started yelling about how I think men are trash. I know calling him out on this in front of everyone will get me nowhere so I ignored him. He was doing stuff like this the whole time, fueling the negativity of the class. Ernie and Wandi are leaders for sure; people naturally do what they do. Ernie was being very rambunctious on the girl’s side as well. After class Wandi walked up to me with a smile like nothing happened. I wasn’t sure how to respond so I told him I would talk to him after class. I talked to Ali and told her I was planning on choking Wandi later during our talk and thankfully she had another suggestion. She majored in Social Work and her patience shows. She is a really amazing person.

Per her suggestion, I sat Wandi down afterwards and told him that I have higher expectations for him. I said that I felt he is a natural leader and capable of a lot. I told him that I knew other people were behaving poorly in class but that since I have higher expectations for him I was let down by him. I told him I thought that he had the special ability to really influence people around him, an ability that seems to come very naturally to him, something hard to find in people, and that this is why I expect more. I said I wanted to give him more responsibility because of this, and this is why I expect more. I asked if he wanted the responsibility and he said he did. He said he didn’t know when he was acting poorly and so I told him when he told me that I treat men like trash. He didn’t like that the girls got to go first, which I understood but I pointed out that he is always the one telling me, “Ladies first.” Then he said he was really just upset that he didn’t get picked to go to the conference and that I always have Ernie help me with the class. I told him that I would love it if he would like to be a promoter for the new class in the Fall but there are requirements. He would really need to think about things before acting out of emotion, that he needs to be an example. I said that I didn’t bring him to the conference because he hadn’t been setting a very good example during the first few classes we had before the conference. I pointed out that my job is to find leaders who want to be promoters so of course I’m happy that he is interested. The reason I always have Ernie help prepare the course is because he was able to help me with the interviews I had to do during the first three months and I wanted to be able to share my experience with as many people as possible. (Really it’s because she’s the best at coloring of the group) So, I said, this means that if you really want to be a promoter, you need to be a good example to the rest of the course. There are a few other people I have been considering asking at the end of the course if they would like to be promoters and participate in a workshop I’ll have on how to teach and prepare charlas. To my credit, I listed another boy from the class.

All this seemed to really satisfy Wandi and so I am really glad I did it. I have never been one to cater to another’s feelings when they are acting out or acting what I think is overly sensitive. Normally I ignore people, get mad at them or just tell them to suck it up. This is not easy for me but I know that it is the most productive road. I am learning how to look at things differently, trying to be more creative in my solutions and learning how to solve problems doing things another’s way. It’s frustrating and I have to swallow my pride and remind myself to think this way. I think that this will be a very valuable thing for me to take home to the States and well worth the trouble.

4/13 Monday: A Community Meeting
Monday when I left John’s site I was in a big hurry. There was a community meeting scheduled for the afternoon where there were two things on the agenda: the crappy road and the lack of trash pickup service. The meeting seemed like a really big deal since a few people went around on Friday handing out papers announcing the meeting, organization I had never seen from a community in the DR. I was pretty pumped about it, really looking forward to the trash discussion and plan of action so I didn’t want to miss it. The meeting was supposed to be at 4 pm so when I left John’s at 12:30 I thought I was leaving more than enough time because I only live about an hour from him. The problem was that I didn’t leave enough time for the Dominican black hole. I can compare this to when I go to my Dad’s house in the States. It just eats the time somehow and before you know it three hours have passed, and not because you’re having that much fun.

Anyways, I stopped in Altamira to use the internet for a bit and ended up scrambling to get to my site in time. Of course I had to end up on a super crappy motor up the mountain that probably couldn’t go more than 40 miles per hour. Lucky for me, I had just learned how to say that I was in a hurry (thanks to reading the 501 verb book for leisure) and so I relayed this to my driver who dutifully increased velocity to the impressive top speed. I was really dirty from digging at John’s still but I arrived to my house at 4:10 and didn’t have time to shower. I changed my pants at least which were thick with dirt thanks to my rubber boots. When I hurried to the meeting 15 minutes late, I was the 4th one there. I was happy that I didn’t miss anything but thought that it was weird that there were just three women there. Mercedes was one of them and she assured me that the community meeting was still going to happen. While that ended up being true, I wish I had known what everyone else in La Lamota knew: the meeting was going to take place AFTER the Woman’s Meeting. So, I ended up sitting through the Woman’s Meeting but I decided that was ok since I should be going to them anyways.

When the Community Meeting did happen I was very happy to see that there was a fairly large turnout of about 50 people. What was a bummer though was that they were so busy talking about the road and planning strikes for it that the trash issue didn’t even come up. I understand that the state of the road is important but don’t they see how important a trash pick up service is?! People could get sick. It’s horrible for the environment. It attracts rodents. It pollutes water sources. It’s plain old ugly. Sure we can put our trash in the ditches and the rivers and let it be an issue for the people who live at the bottom of the hill but that’s no solution. Not to mention a lot of the community has family at the bottom of the hill. No no no, this is not ok. I obviously need to rethink how to approach this. I don’t think people know how big of an issue it really is so I guess I’ll have to try to get the word out there. I will have to be more proactive in getting people to make the change and move this up on their list of priorities. Hopefully we can have another community meeting talking about the trash issue instead of complaining about how the community closer to Navarrete didn’t help out with the last strike.

4/11- 4/13 Saturday- Monday: A weekend in the shoes of a Water PCV
There is something to be said about being in PC and actually having a tangible project. Educating is a semi tangible project since the students will hopefully graduate and don’t do something demonstrating that they aren’t practicing what they learned- like become pregnant when only being 15 years old. Water PCVs are envied in a way since they are for one treated like Gods for “bringing water to a community” and two, they are the only ones on this little island of PCVs who have a tangible job. They get their assignment, they design a system, get funding, and then put in a system. Easy right? No. I just spent the last 2 ½ days at the site of a water PCV while he was lucky enough to score a group of high schoolers willing to donate their spring break digging trenches to help complete the “put in a system” part of the process. I was supposed to just be a translator but really, what kind of a slacker feels ok just standing there for two days while everyone else is working? So, I was using the pick axe and I was shoveling and getting blisters alongside the 50 kids from Connecticut. The difference was that I was just there for 2 ½ days, they were there for a week and John, the PCV who lives there, does this four days a week! There is something to be said about being able to be a Health PCV. Sure I get blisters but they’re from holding the colored pencils too tight not from digging for 9 hours a day.

The weekend was hard but it was really encouraging too. The kids, as I found out on the first day, had to each raise $2000 to pay for their trip and to largely fund John’s water project. In the short time that I was there nearly all of the kids were working hard and not complaining at all. And these were long days to be digging the whole time. Let me tell you, digging a 2 ½ foot trench in cocoa and coffee fields, or in direct Caribbean sun, or on a steep slope- is NOT easy. It’s especially hard the more days it drags on. We would wake up around 6:30 or 7 after sleeping on a cot which I think was the most uncomfortable sleeping arrangement I have had in country, and then we would go to breakfast. At 7:30 it was off to get the tools (all the picks and shovels) and then we would head up to the worksite where we dug trenches until 12. We ate beans, rice and some variation of meat for lunch that boys brought up for the day so we didn’t have to leave, wasting time, and were able to eat right at the worksite. Then we would return to digging from 12:30 until around 4:30.

The first day when I was pick axing I backed into some barbed wire and cut my hand. The second day I tried to tape it shut and clean it but my whole hand swelled up. Monday, after it was still very swollen, I decided that I would be better Monday if I took it easy and didn’t work too hard. Let me tell you that it was difficult not working that last day but I found a way to do it and successfully only picked up a pick once that day (and that was to pose for a picture).

When I left I went to this dude’s house looking for a hammock. There is a guy who sells them in John’s community for a bargain of 250 pesos. They’re made from rice sacks and a must have for the season you know. I went to his house but he wasn’t there. While I was walking out of John’s site I was lucky enough to pick up a companion along the way, a man who told me it was his responsibility to protect any visitors in the community and he was fulfilling his duty by walking me to the entrance and helping me look for a motor. He also walked with me to the Hammock Man’s house and when the man wasn’t there he told me that he would talk to the man later and get me two hammocks. This will hopefully work out well since I will be back in John’s site on Thursday to help some more. I would like to get the hammocks before my mom and sister get here on the 24th but who knows?

Anyways, the point of this blog is to point out that everything really does happen for a reason. I talked to some other Water PCVs who were there and they were telling me how they would so much rather be doing that work that trying to teach classes to a bunch of kids. Not that I’m a huge fan of teaching classes but I am much less of a fan of digging every day so I guess I’m pretty lucky in that sense. There’s always something to be grateful for isn’t there?

3/27- 4/9

I don't have much time right now (as normal I know) but I read the two comments I had from Lisa and Deb and I wanted to say... YYYYYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYY Mary Alice!!!!! That's so exciting!! Could you email me some pics? I'm so happy for her!!!! I wish I could have seen her prego but thats ok, she'll just have to have another one when I'm there! lol. Thanks for the comments, its so nice to know that the blog is being read. As far as packages go, it takes anywhere from 10 days to 4 months to get a package but I think the average is about 6 weeks, so that's not too bad right? Anyways, I hope you all are doing very well and I'll be sure to keep writing!

love
b


4/9 Thursday: Semana Santa
Monday marked the start of Semana Santa or Saint Week. Most people go to the beach or a river during this week to celebrate. Last Sunday was called Domingo de Ramos (literally translates as Sunday of Branches) and this Sunday is the Domingo de la Resurreción, which I think you can figure out the meaning of. While there aren’t many people who left for other towns in my town (or came for that matter) a lot of people in other places go to a relative’s house for a mini vacay. My community doesn’t seem very religious at all but even the people who I have never seen go to church are either planning on going on Sunday or went last Sunday. I apparently am going to violate a rule that pretty much everyone follows which is not working from 12 noon on Thursday until Monday. Unfortunately I already told a water PCV that I would go to his site on Saturday to help out with a group of high schoolers who volunteered to help build his aqueduct. The only thing that makes me sad about the whole situation is that I’ll be missing out on an awful lot of habichuela con dulce which is delicious.
I know, saying that I love a dessert made out of beans is weird coming from me, the girl who detested beans when arriving into country. What is this delicious treat you ask? It is a ingenious mix of beans, coconut, crackers and a pumpkin type of veggie thing along with I’m sure a LOT of sugar and cinnamon and whatever else the person cooking wanted to toss into it. It’s delicious. It’s so good that Minga was going to make me a cake for my birthday (as a gift) and I traded it for the bean dish. Nuts I know.

4/7 Tuesday: Drama, Machetes and Bites- OH MY! (say it 3 or 4 times fast…)
Today I became a Dominican I think. I spent two hours with Wandi cutting my yard with a machete. Lots of people do this here but I don’t recommend it. I recommend letting the yard grow out and having bugs and snakes instead. I now have 6 blisters on my right hand, two of which have explotaron and me duelo mucho (aka they popped and they suck). Tomorrow, si Dios quiere we’re going to dig up the dirt in a nice large square for the garden. What fun.

In other news, I know that I should be a good representation of the great USA but a person needs boundaries right? Well, thanks to those boundaries Noel is pissed at me. I’m not sure what all I have written about this and am too lazy to re-read everything again but long story short he was mad at me last week for not switching to his motorcycle when I was already in town with another kid. Then he took me to Navarrete in the morning on Friday when Ernie, Karina and I had to leave. Ernie and Karnia got on the other motorcycle and I got on his. I paid 70 pesos for me and 140 total for the girls. On Sunday when the three of us were leaving Jarabacoa the girls asked me if we could go shopping in Santiago to which I said sure. I sent Noel a text telling him that we would be in Navarrete around 5 more or less and that he should send me a text if that was ok. He had called me earlier twice but my phone was still on silent from the conference and so I didn’t hear the call. I didn’t have any minutes on my phone to call him so I could just text. When the girls and I arrived in Santiago, the stores were closed so we left earlier than I thought. I sent Noel a message saying that we were on our way from Santiago and we called from Karina’s phone but he didn’t answer. When we arrived at the entrance in Navarrete he wasn’t there and I still hadn’t received a text from him. I wasn’t sure if he was still mad at me from before or if his phone had service and he had received the messages so we just got on a motor each and went up. On the way we passed him and he began yelling “It’s not 5 o’clock!”.

Well, I knew he would be mad at me even though any sensible person could see that’s just not right. I found out he was working at the entrance all day so it’s not like he made a special trip for me or anything either. I figured that it was crappy of him to be mad at me either time, last week or now. If he thinks that I’m just peachy with him being unjustly angry with me, making me feel like I should apologize whenever I go with someone else then forget that. I also think that it’s sucky that he has always charged me more when I make sure to always give him business.

When I saw him today we got into an argument. I didn’t intend to get in an argument; I just wanted to stand up for myself without apology. On Friday when he took me down the mountain I apologized for any misunderstanding and he was still pissy with me. This time I thought I would try a different route. I said hello to him and he asked what happened on Sunday. I said, “Yeah, what did happen on Sunday? Why didn’t you answer your phone or text me back?” He said he didn’t have any minutes on his phone. I said he called me twice on Sunday though. He said that I shouldn’t have told him 5 and then showed up at 3:30. Then he said that it was him that looked for me at 6 am on the day that I left (which, by the way it was 7:30) and that he should have been the one to have two passengers not the other guy so he was mad about that. That took me off guard. I told him that I can’t control other people and it’s his job not mine to get people on his bike. If he wanted two passengers he should have said something. Obviously I wasn’t going to pay him for taking two people when he took one person and pay the other dude for one person when he took two. Duh. (although I’m not sure how that translates) To that he told me that he wasn’t going to look for me anymore and I would have to find someone else. Like that’s going to be hard; there are like 10 dudes working at a time at the entrance. I almost said great because it would save me money to go with someone else but instead I just said that was fine with me.

And so, I wasn’t exactly being a representative but I’m glad I’m not being a doormat. I think maybe I could have handled it better but maybe being stern about it will help me. If he only wants to be friends with me to get my money or my cakes when I bake them then good riddance. Although this is a little concerning since now I can’t go with Franklin, Noel or Neno (I can with the other two but I feel weird). Plus I have this little paranoia that once one person doesn’t like me here a bunch of people won’t. Although, who knows? Maybe he’ll get over it.

Another fun story would be Wandi’s little brother, Argeni. I continue to get texts from him and looking back at some of the first texts, they’re a little disturbing. Of course when I read (that’s past tense) the first ones I thought they were a joke from someone so I didn’t think anything of it but now…. Ick! Let me give you an example of these texts:

“Betsi, I would like to tell you that I am very happy (happy written in English even) to, see you, to know you, and to be able to look at those eyes and those lips which are so lovely. I would like to be your friend. Many kisses for you forever, ~Argeni”

Or then there’s this one:

“Although you don’t think Betsi that I love you with all of my heart, I love you like no one else. Although not right now, I would like to give you a kiss. Please think in how I love you. ~ Argeni”

Pretty deep for a 14 year old right? Well, he did just turn 15 on Saturday maybe its not that impressive. I’m not sure how many I have received from him but I’m guessing like 20 or so. I can tell you one thing; I think that Wandi thinks that we are in some type of weird-dating relationship. Last night he even tried to brush my hair! What a weirdo!!! What the heck am I supposed to do with that? Ugh. He’s been staying home from work the last two days (which he has also had off of school) due to a “stomach ache” and today Argeni stayed home due to a “sore arm”. Wonder where they were most of the day? On my porch with me making bracelets.

Ah, bracelets. That’s another short story. Yesterday Ernie wanted to walk to Ann and Tim’s house to learn how to make bracelets since Ann knows how to make really cool ones. I have never made a bracelet in my life. I missed that phase in my teenage years. Was it because I never went to camp? Was it because I was homeschooled in 7th and 8th grade? Who knows? I didn’t know how to make them and Ernie wanted to learn so we can sell them for our Escojo class. So, we walked an hour and a half to Ann and Tim’s house and learned two ways to make bracelets. When we get good at these we’ll walk back again and learn a more complicated way. I’m not sure what we’ll be fundraising for but I guess it’s better to be prepared right?

Well, the power has gone once again so I guess that’s all for this letter today. This may have been a slightly negative letter so I would like to throw something good in there. When I got back from Jarabacoa I noticed that the water in my bathroom doesn’t smell like beach so maybe someone filled it while I was gone! I just hope that they put the lid back on tight so nothing gets in there and dies again. Maybe I should check that…

One more thing back to the negative, I am covered in mosquito bites and these other nasty bites where the bug bites you, leaves a tiny blood spot, and then the exaggeratedly large red spots itch incredibly the next day. All from playing in the “grass” today. So, if it’s cold there and you all are miserable just think: at least you’re not wondering if something has died in your bathing/brushing teeth source, not covered in 50 weird bites that itch a LOT, aren’t getting creepy love letters from the 15 year old next door neighbor, DO have power all the time, don’t have a 17 year old boy trying to brush your hair, don’t have several blisters on one hand from cutting the grass in your yard with a machete and don’t have the great privilege of looking forward to more blister-forming work tomorrow shoveling up the yard which is actually a steep hill. At least I have a toilet (yes I know you do too but at least I have a toilet). Ah, life in the Peace Corps; it’s a beautiful thing.

4/3- 4/5 Friday- Sunday: Escojo Conference Weekend.
This weekend was the weekend of the Escojo Conference in the Ciabo, the region where I live. Let me take a minute to explain what Escojo is exactly first since I don’t think I’ve explained it well enough. It is a “movement” started by a PCV just 5 years ago. It’s a class/course for youth between the ages of 12- 25 that lasts anywhere from 12- 14 weeks generally. A PVC begins the course teaching from a manual created by the PCV who began the course 5 years ago. The manual is modified each year and updated by a committee of PCVs. There are a lot of chapters in the book which are focused on HIV/AIDS/STDs and pregnancy prevention but also have chapters on drugs, alcohol, making healthy decisions, discrimination, gender equality, body parts, abstinence, how to use a condom correctly… ect. There are about 24 chapters in the book and the course should cover at least 12 of the topics. I have the class once a week and it generally lasts for about an hour and a half but I would like to extend that to two hours. The idea is that the PCV has the first course and then graduates whoever met the requirements of the course. After that, if there were outstanding students, the PCV picks a few to help teach the next course. Then the course after that they teach with less help from the PCV. After a little while the student leaders or promoters should be able to teach completely alone. Then they will begin they cycle of picking leaders and teaching them how to teach thus making the project sustainable since the youth themselves will probably leave when they get older. In theory it sounds great but it is a lot of responsibility and a lot of times the course ends up falling through after the PCV leaves. In a perfect world it would work and sometimes it does. PCVs do what they can while they’re here and try to be positive about it.

This weekend I took Karina and Ernie with me to Jarabacoa, the town where we had our training. We were in a center and the kids weren’t allowed to leave so they didn’t get to see the town but there wasn’t time anyways. We began the days with breakfast at 7:30 and had activities until 10 pm at night. We arrived on Friday around 11 am and left Sunday at 1 pm. I am really excited about the whole experience because I feel like my girls were really empowered by it. They’re really enthusiastic and motivated now. One thing that I really love about this course is that the majority of the students really want to learn, there’s just a lack of information which the course helps to pacify. Most of them are sponges for the knowledge. Ernie often sits in my house for hours and pours herself over a book I have which is called Where There is no Doctor (about how to treat things in an extremely simple way for people who live in areas without care).

As you all know, it’s not perfect in my course. There are just a few who are in my course because somehow it became cool to be in my course and they want to be cool I guess. They’re annoying but I’m trying to deal with it. I think that when I switch the place to the Mother’s Club on Saturdays and people have to make an effort to get there it will weed out the slackers, or so I hope.

There is such a lack of education here about sex it’s shocking. A lot of people think that if a girl urinates after sex she won’t get pregnant. They don’t know that the vagina is a separate entity from the urethra so they believe urinating will flush out semen. I asked Ernie and Wandi last week if they thought a woman could get pregnant if she urinated and one said no the other wasn’t sure before saying yes. Wandi and Ernie also told me last week that a teacher was teaching that if a woman uses a towel after a man used it and didn’t clean it first, she’ll get pregnant. I didn’t say anything about it since I didn’t want to devalue the teacher but I will mention things in my class about it and let the kids form their opinions about it after they have proper information.

One of the highlights of the weekend for me was Saturday night when we had a talent show. Two acts that stood out to me among the joke telling, dancing, and singing were when a PCV and her youth sang a song. First the youth went, singing the song in Spanish. Then the PCV sang the same song in English. Then they sang it together, each in their native language. It was such a great example of what we are doing here. We’re mixing with the culture, bringing our own, not changing ours or theirs much but adapting together and learning together. When the two cultures are together, accepting differences and mixing well it can be a great and beautiful thing.

The other thing that I really liked was when a group of about 6 people, 5 youth and 1 PCV did an African dance. The DR is a mix of culture from Spain (the conquistadores) and Africa (the slaves) and as I have mentioned before, the culture here generally wants to “purify” themselves back to the Spaniards and have lighter skin. Seeing that the group knew the dance already (the talent show wasn’t announced until Friday when we arrived) and that they embraced it was really great. It showed me that Escojo really is having an impact on youth and their views and ideas. The dance was so well received that the crowed began to chant that they wanted an encore. The performers got ready to do the tiring dance again and about half of the crowd ran up to the front where we had the “stage” to learn how to do it and participate. It was really great.

During the weekend we played a LOT of games, or dinamicas. I told Ernie and Karina right away that they were going to be in charge of leading a game or two in each of our courses so they should write them all down this weekend. They loved the responsibility of it and I loved that I wouldn’t have to try to learn all these songs in Spanish in two days! Not to mention that now I don’t have to try to be all enthusiastic, looking like a freaking weirdo leading these games. What a relief.

One other great thing about this conference is that I was able to meet the regional coordinators. Every one in a while there is a youth that is outstanding and so is nominated to be a regional coordinator. These youth are invited to give presentations at conferences and when PCVs need help they can call these youth and invite them to go to their communities to give presentations, lead games or just give advice. I think that it was inspirational for my girls to see youth, the same as them, given this responsibility and gave my girls something to shot for. One coordinator that seemed especially good to me is a guy named Wilkin. Lucky for me, although he moved to Santo Domingo recently, he used to live in Altamira- which is about 30 minutes from me. So I asked him if when he is visiting his family if he could let me know and come by to help out. He said he would be more than happy to and that I should call him for anything I need. Sweet.

Last December I wrote a grant for a coordinator who lives close to me. A small problem with sustainability is that when the PCV goes, so does the money and these groups need money. Fundraising can only go so far and it’s hard to motivate people to do as well. So, I was assigned a girl who has a PCV still but her PCV is done with her service later this month. The girl’s name is Maribelis and she’s just 13. She is in charge of her group completely and seems pretty cool. We set up a date that I’m going to take either Karina or Ernie and go to her town to give a presentation in her course. We also tried to set a tentative date when she or one of the two other girls who were with her could come to my community to give one. Maribelis leaves each summer for Santo Domingo to stay with family so we’ll have to work around that. Although I still don’t know if I’ll be having my group meet during the summer since I’ve heard from other PCVs it’s very hard to continue in the summers with so many kids gone. Ernie told me not many people leave La Lomota for the summers though so we’ll see. When Maribelis needs money we’re supposed to meet up and she has to submit a report along with a budget (or receipts if it’s a reimbursement) to me, which I review before giving the money. I hope that this will work out well but we’ll see. Now that I know her, I’m not nervous about talking to her on the phone like I was before. Talking on the phone is Spanish is tough.

So, anyways, that was the weekend. I was sick the whole time with digestive issues and almost had to go to the capital but aside from that it was good. I’m really looking forward to the next conference, Celebrando el Ciabo in August.


4/1 Wednesday: Happy April!!! So much to be happy about!
Happy April Fools Day!! I have been thinking a lot lately and I decided I have a lot going for me here right now. First of all, I have my 4th Escojo class today and I am feeling so much more comfortable with these classes. I also talked to another PCV who lives by me and she’s coming to visit me on the 15th to help me with the body parts class. I talked to Idonnah (the PCVL) about getting an Environmental Manual to help me teach an Environmental class. I think its soooo important and I really love issues with the environment so I’m excited for it. Idonnah suggested I do it in my Escojo class but that class already has a very full schedule. I figure that I’ll have it open to whoever wants to do it (at least 12 years old) and if the people in my Escojo class don’t want to go to two meetings a week (one for Escojo and one for this) they don’t have to.

Then I was thinking about starting an English class soon. There’s been a lot of power today so I was able to look through a CD I have that has a lot of tips for teaching an English class. There is a lot of interest in my community for this or so it seems. These classes cost me money to have, to print things or even to write out stuff on my paper. Because of this, I think I’m going to charge an entrance fee which I think would keep people motivated to go as well.

When I walked to Minga’s today I saw that they are painting the club de Madres building and so I’m going to talk to Idonnah about what types of murals the PC Office has. I need to talk to Mercedes and the Club de Madres as well of course and see if they’re interested. If it’s ok and goes well, I would really like to do one with the community at the school as well.

Another thing I plan on doing is meeting up with Kenzie this month to write a grant together to try and get some computers for the school. I think that it’s really important to have at least a basic knowledge of computers and most people here don’t even know how to turn one on. Depending on how that goes I would really like to find a way to help finish building the library that the school has.

What other projects are there you ask? Well, I could always do nutrition classes (not much of a fan of that though) and I plan on building/planting a garden in my yard as an experiment (also not much of a fan but it could be beneficial). After I learn how to do it a little better I’ll see if there’s interest in the community for it. If so then great. If not, at least there’ll be a garden here for Ernesto and his fam to use.

Yesterday Ernie randomly came over with shovels and said it was time to clean up the yard to make it pretty for when Mom and Rach visit (23 more days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) They then proceeded to weed the entire yard of the grasses and other stuff growing by shoveling the whole thing. Yes, I said shoveling. One person had a machete and was cutting stuff down with it, two people had shovels, and an 8 year old and I were picking up all the trash. Vanji was sweeping my yard. It was a good idea but shoveling the yard like that made it nearly impossible for me to walk through now with it’s current still-damaged from the landslide state. Ernesto told me that they would start working on the wall this week but now he changed it to the week after Easter. I told him I was worried about pushing it off so much since I wanted it to be done before my Mom got here, something that I thought couldn’t be a problem since it was so far off: wrong. He’s not working on it right now since he’s working on someone else’s house now. He told me he would work during Semana Santa which is next week, a week normally reserved for doing absolutely nothing. We’ll see. I guess if it’s done, it’s done and if not then we’ll just have to walk the long way around to get up to my house. I have to pick what things to be stubborn about and this isn’t one of them.

When I got back on Monday, Ernesto told me that a doctor from Navarrete had visited that day and he had talked with her about the trash issue. I guess she has ties with the municipality somehow and she said it wouldn’t be an issue to get trash pick up here once a week. I found out that the garbage pick up only happens about once a month at the school, not each week like I assumed. I have doubts that this doctor will be coming back to the community since that’s the way things work here so I would still like to get a committee started to monitor the trash pick up.

Aside from all the potential projects, I actually have a lot of compromisos this month. It seems like each month (well, except March) I look at it and I’m like, “Dang, where’s the time to do all this stuff?!” I told a water PCV I’d go to his site for three days to help dig trenches and translate to a group of 30 or 40 high schoolers who are going to be here to help build the water system. I don’t know how much vocab I have with water stuff but I guess we’ll find out! I’ve got another trip planned to SD to work on a grant with Kenz, my mom and sister will be here the last week like I mentioned, and I have an Escojo conference to go to this weekend! I wanted to get in on the bola race really bad but I guess it’s for the better since I don’t really have time for it.

I’m beginning to feel a little more enthusiastic about my Escojo class as well, adding my own little touches and trying to make it more game filled. Today’s topic is about making health decisions and recognizing that there are pros and cons to every story. I initially skipped this one since there was a lot of discussion with it and I was intimidated. Now I’m figure I’ll take a stab at it and if I don’t understand what they’re saying I’ll just nod my head and ask the class what they think about that. That’s what I did in the last class and it worked like a charm. Plus when I feel bad about my Spanish I just stop and think: “Hey! I’m actually teaching a class in Spanish for heaven’s sake! I must know something so don’t get discouraged and keep going.” Ah, the ups and downs of the Peace Corps…

3/27- 3/30 Fri- Tues: My time in La Capital
This past weekend was pretty fun. I arrived in Santo Domingo around 12:30 on Friday, just barely missing my opportunity for a free lunch with Romeo. But I was lucky in the sense that I actually caught my bola with Tolo down the mountain in the morning. He told me to be ready to go by 8 or 8:30 and he “showed up” at my house at 7:30. I was brushing my teeth when I heard a car honking. I went outside to see if it was just someone driving by or it if was Tolo and there was no one there. This is because he honked as he drove past, obviously thinking that I would know that it was him. Despite the fact that I have only had one experience with him where he was early or on time (the last time I was going to get a bola with him), the fact that people drive honking their horns all the time here and the fact that he didn’t even honk and then stick around, I had a scary feeling that it was Tolo who was honking for me and then left without me. I hurried and very soon after the honk Marvey showed up at my door telling me that I had to get to Minga’s. When I showed up, about 10 minutes after the honking, Tolo told me “Oh, you sure like to sleep a lot. You sleep a ton. I went to your house looking for you and you were sleeping.” First of all, no I did not get completely ready and walk to his house from a sleeping state in just 10 minutes and second of all, I explained, that when a person goes to bed 3 or 4 hours after someone and they wake up an hour after them, the person is actually getting less sleep. I don’t think he got it. Ah well, at least I got a free ride.

My first day in the capitol was spent the same as every first day there; on the internet catching up on a month’s worth of stuff. Friday night I did absolutely nothing after the office closed at 8. I was tired. I felt lame. I get out of my site for the first time in a month and I all I do is go to bed! This is what age does to a person…

Saturday Jess, Kenzie and I left for Baní. I guess we were supposed to get there by 11:30 but we missed that memo. There was a Mini Vac meeting we wanted to go to (if you get to them then you get 550 pesos reimbursed to you someday (still waiting on mine from mid Feb) plus transportation costs if it’s in your region) and to make it better; the Mini Vac was on the beach! We took what we thought was the bus to Baní, and it was, but it wasn’t an Express bus so it stopped… a lot. All kinds of vendors got on the bus here and there trying to sell things from sunglasses to apples to pizza. I bought an apple, my first one in country. What was supposed to be just over an hour ride took 2 ½ hours. We arrived to Randi’s house and then all headed off for the beach Palma de Ocoa. We went to this one in CBT and it’s really pretty. After ordering some food and waiting an hour and a half for it we had the meeting with the other PCVs and headed back to Randi’s site. There was to be a beauty pageant at the local discoteca that night so we were pumped to be able to get out and dance.

As a little side note, Randi’s house is very large. It’s got TWO bathrooms (with toilet), a latrine and a kitchen SINK!!!! I couldn’t believe it had a sink, that’s luxury right there. We all got ready and headed over to the discotec around 9:30, which I thought was pretty late since in my community things are winding down or down by that time. I was already being a fun sponge before we left, being the only one laying on the bed half awake while the others split a drink. To our surprise, the pageant didn’t start until 11:30 at night! We left before it was over since we’re all lame-o PCVs and are used to going to bed by 11 or earlier. On the way we stopped and bought some jimmies or street burgers. Being a former food inspector I knew that I should not eat a burger from this place but having eaten one before and being hungry I thought I would take my chances. We all indulged in once very delicious, small burger (I had a burger and slit a hot dog) and the next day Randi and Kenzie were both really sick. 2 out of 7 people isn’t so bad though right?

We were going to visit the host fams from CBT on Sunday but with two of the 5 health PCVs there at the time being sick we decided not to. We were also going to stop in Baní for their Carnaval but didn’t since Jess wanted to get back to her site and Kenz wasn’t feeling so hot. I was pretty dang proud of myself because I single-handedly flagged down a bola for Danny, Jess, Kenz and I to Baní from Randi’s site, saving us each a whopping 25 pesos. It was the first time I actually caught a real bola.

When we got in Baní we walked around looking for the bus stop from the random side street where our bola let us off. When a bus came up it wasn’t an Express but the Cobrador was so dang pushy and then I swear there’s always somehow a random person on the street that is pushy too, so we ended up taking another stupid bus that wasn’t an Express. Luckily it was Sunday so not as many people were traveling and it didn’t take as long to get to SD.

On the way to SD we passed a pretty bad car wreck. People on the bus were yelling that there were kids involved. It must have just happened because there were limp bodies in both of the cars and the people who were awake were still in the cars, just staring off into space. Not a good situation but amazingly only the 2nd or 3rd accident I’ve seen here.

About 5 minutes after the car wreck, our bus had to deal with more drama: Kenzie. She had her head out of the window and was throwing up. There were some dudes sitting behind her who were trying to help. When she began to throw up they were yelling at the one sitting closest to her to do something so the one jumped up and began patting her head while it was hanging out of the window. I was going to tell him not to but then I thought, “Well, I don’t know- maybe she likes it…” she didn’t. Then they were yelling at the bus driver to “give her air” since the bus driver was pissy the window was open and had shut the air conditioner off. The Cobrador had told her earlier to shut the window but she said she was about to vomit. He had a worried/sickened expression and kind of backed away without saying anything. When she did throw up the Cobrador suspected so but to be sure he opened the door of the bus and hung out to the side for a better view. Yep, there was vomit alright.

By the time we got to SD, Kenz was feeling much better. We spent the rest of the evening at the office, working on things we needed for some projects, and then headed off to the Pen. While I was at the office I overheard one PCV, Todd, offering another PCV a bola back to Santiago. The second PCV couldn’t take it so I asked if I could. Todd said sure and that we would be leaving sometime after lunch the next day. Sweet.

The next day, Monday, I went to the office when it opened since I was trying to get a different cell phone and that can take a while. Mine has developed a new problem where people can’t understand what I’m saying now on top of the fact that it hangs up on people all the time. The guy at the front desk told me that I would have to give him at least 3 days to get a new phone. Great, so much for that. Guess it’ll have to do until May when I’m in SD for like 10 days due to language training and some other stuff.

While in the office, I made some SDI (Sexually Transmitted INFECTION- that’s right, they’re not called DISEASES anymore people)- or ITSs as they’re called here- slides for my Escojo class and I had to get them printed and laminated. They took forever to make thanks to PC’s security internet blocks. I wanted graphic stuff to show these kids! I know it’s contradictory since I’m embarrassed to talk about freaking body parts with the kids but for some reason I’ve never been shy with STIs. Hey that could be a song!:

“Don’t be shy,
Check that STI!”

What do you think? Anyways, I took my flash drive to a print/copy store which I discovered to be really busy. It was pretty funny when my power point popped up on the computer screen of the guy helping me: BAM! A big picture of a woman’s vagina covered in huge, red warts/sores. Right away about 4 other people crowed around to look as the man scrolled through the images. As they walked away I heard one girl say to another, “Ya tú sabes…” (now you know). I noticed when the other man was laminating them there were two other guys standing there silently staring. It was hilarious. Expensive too. I hope those slides last for a loooooong time.


I was lucky enough to catch a free lunch with Romeo and some other PCVs around 12. Pretty soon after I sat down with my food Todd called me and told me the bola called and it was on its way meaning it could be there in 10 to 30 minutes. Yikes! I wolfed my food, said thank you and power walked back to the office from the restaurant. The rest of the afternoon the bola kept calling and saying he would be there in 20 minutes but he really showed up at 3:30- over 3 hours after he first called. I wasn’t complaining though, this bola was saving me 255 pesos! I ended up being dropped off even closer than Santiago; they dropped me off in Navarrete! I caught a motor that tried to overcharge me 10 pesos and then was relieved to find motores at the entrance of my street still. It had gotten pretty late since we stopped at a sweets store so I was worried no on would be there. I tried texting Noel but didn’t get a hold of him. I made it up to my house before dark and the whole thing only cost me 90 pesos! What a deal! I got a ton of freebies this time around:)

Practically the whole month of March all in one blog!

This is a lovely pic of a toilet I had to use when I went to the beach a few weeks ago. Public bathrooms here are SICK.

3/26 Thursday: Sick and Escojo
Tomorrow is finally the day that I will be leaving the campo overnight… it will be four weeks straight, a new record for me! I’m proud of myself because I don’t even feel like I’m going nuts. I think maybe I’m finally beginning to getting used to this whole campo thing. Or maybe it could be the fact that I had a visitor and went to Ann and Tim’s site twice. Who knows? Either way though I’m going to La Capital Friday, Sat to Randi’s site in Baní for a meeting and then Sunday maybe to visit the host fam from CBT since Randi’s site is like 15 minutes from there. Sunday there is another carnaval in Baní so we may hit that up on the way back. Either way we’ll all be getting together (Jess, Kenz, Randi and I) so It should be fun.

Tuesday wasn’t the best day for me. I had a headache all day (which is really rare for me) and felt like something wasn’t right. Sure enough, 8 hours after the headache began the other digestive issues commenced. It was a long night in the bathroom but at least I had my cat at my side the whole time. She was pretty cool; she came when I called her, she ate a spider and then she sat and chilled with me. I think that she is part dog maybe and so I’m starting to get attached.

With a night like Tuesday, it doesn’t really need to be said that I felt pretty crappy on Wednesday. I was supposed to have my Escojo class later that day. I didn’t want to change it to another time since it was the first time the director let me have it on the day that we discussed. I really want to try to have some type of regularity. I was a little concerned about how I was going to teach sex versus sexuality when I still lacked the concept myself. Well, I am happy to say that Wednesday’s class went surprisingly well. Despite the fact that the class began at 5 since none of the teachers let the students out early, I feel like we didn’t lose our flow. First we played Peso Caliente where the kids made two lines and then had a race where each line had a peso that they had to pass through their clothing. Not only does this reward people with clothing that isn’t skin tight but it put the class in a really great mood. We didn’t have enough time to do the Sexuality part of my lesson so we just did the part on Auto Esteem. At the end, kids each put a piece of paper on their backs and went around writing things on other’s backs. Then they wanted to read all the things people wrote about them out loud. It was a huge success. I think that the next class I may try to either do body parts or STIs. We’ll see how brave I am, I’d rather do STIs.

When I went to Minga’s house today she sat me down to have a very serious talk with me. She explained that I have hot blood and people with hot blood simply should not be out in the rain. I could be paralyzed but more likely than not I will have at the least have a headache from it. She said that if I want to go running or walking when its sunny then that’s great but in the rain, well that’s why I “got sick” three days later with my headache (which is all I told her I had). Of course this is the advice from the woman who has been given information as accurate as putting deodorant or vaginal cream on your eye will cure whatever is wrong with it or the same women who was told that medicine for acne will cure a stomach infection (the directions were in English and when I explained what it said it was for she graciously gave the pills to me explaining that I could use them. Then the next day, after she talked to the man she bought them from, she asked for them back since she decided that they were to cure stomach issues). This is life in the campo.

3/24 Tuesday: Preparing for Wednesday’s class
Sunday I was supposed to go to the 27 Waterfalls with the two PCVs down the road from me and with their trainee who was visiting (remember how I went on a PCV visit when I was in training?). But, surprise surprise it was raining and cold so we decided not to go. Instead we went to Santiago where I ate a sandwich where the “bread” was a fried plantain. It was so tasty! I really like fried plantains, they’re like French fries kind of and so when you have them for the bread it fills the void of having potato chips accompany it.

I’m happy to say I went grocery shopping in Santiago so I once again have bread and peanut butter. The down side is that the only grocery store open didn’t have cheap peanut butter so I had to splurge and get Peter Pan honey roasted pb at a whopping 189 pesosa a jar!!!! That’s like 80 pesos more than the knock off brand!! But, dang, it does taste GOOD!

Yesterday it was still raining and so I had no phone service. We also didn’t have power at all yesterday until around 9 or 9:30 at night. When we woke up today, it was gone again. Bummer. Lucky for me the power came back around 11 stayed until around 7- right around when I turned on my computer. I think it’s correlated with the weather. I think that when it’s raining we don’t have power as often. Maybe I should write down when we have power and the weather to prove or disprove this theory. It could also very well be that when its raining there’s not much to do but dwell on the fact that I’m cold and when it’s dark I feel even colder so I sit, cursing the “power companies” of the DR.

I felt a teeny bit bad last night because I was a snot to Wandi. Sometimes I get annoyed with having absolutely nothing to myself. One time people were even commenting on what was in my trash; it’s ridiculous! Well, I had my cheese (another costly extravagance I have) in the fridge and Wandi of course was going through my stuff. I was ignoring him, trying unsuccessfully to get some songs on Ernie’s iPod for her which was only after my sister had been trying in vain to call for an hour just to get through literally long enough to tell me she had been trying for an hour before the phone hung up. At the risk of sounding ungrateful, I’m going to say that I really hate my PC phone. They gave me a new one, which is definitely so much better than the first one they gave me but this stupid thing phone broken. The 500 peso phone I bought in CBT is better than the one they gave me in the sense that it doesn’t hang up during the conversations. I would bring the phone to PC and ask to trade it but I can’t afford to be in SD waiting 3 or 4 days to get a new phone (it takes forever to get things done in the office… scratch that- it takes forever to get things done in the DR) when I’m buying Peter Pan pb- a jar of that cost more than it costs to spend a night in the Pen!

So back to Wandi; it’s not like I thought he was going to eat my cheese or anything but he sat there and baulked at the price (the sticker was still on it) and he asks me all these annoying questions like a freaking 5 year old. Whats this? Why do you have that? Where did you get this? And on and on and on… He’s overwhelming sometimes like I’ve said. He even pokes at tugs at you like a child, and I’ve told him I don’t like that. Anyways I finally snapped at him and told him to leave the stuff alone; that sometimes I like to have things that aren’t for the whole freaking world to mess with so bug off. After some silence I began to feel a little bad. I told him that I understand that here people don’t care much for any privacy but that in the States it’s pretty much the opposite. I said it was fine that that’s how they do things here but I am still American and I’m not going to instantly be ok with all my stuff being on display to play with all the time. He was quiet for a minute and told me that if I didn’t feel like talking because I was in a bad mood I could have just said that. Ha! I told him I would have but then he would have said, “Why are you in a bad mood?” And the cycle continues.

Overall, life is good. I have my 3rd Escojo class tomorrow. I still haven’t talked to the humping boy from class. I guess I’ll have to do it before or after class next time, tomorrow. The Director is actually letting me have class on Wednesday so that’s good since I wanted to go to SD on Friday. There is something embarrassing though- so I was supposed to teach Values and Auto Esteem in my last class but ran out of time. So, now I have been looking for a short topic to go with Auto Esteem. But, remember I am the person who was embarrassed to even teach about Abstinence in CBT and now the topics I had to chose from for this next class are waaaaaaay more forthright than that. I don’t want to take human anatomy into a classroom and teach about the female/male reproductive system to small class with a boy making humping motions behind my back or to my face for that matter. Not to mention the other kids…. I could do it with a little more faith if they had even the same as low maturity level as the 17 year olds in the States but it seems worse here, although I have never had to teach sex ed to teenagers in the good ol’ US of A. Who would want that job? Me I guess. Live and learn.

I found a topic I thought would be ok; sexuality. Sure this seems dangerous to teach as well but I thought it’s vague enough that I can handle it. Problem is, once I began to look at it, the vagueness thing may be an issue. What is sexuality? Sure it requires some critical thinking, no big deal right? Wrong. The kids here aren’t taught to think critically at all. That’s why they wanted to copy the whole test in my last class; they’re used to being fed information word for word and not having to think about it much. Just read and copy things. I saw a “summary” a girl wrote for homework and it was just some key sentences she had copied word for word from the book! So, I’m trying to get something together for class tomorrow but we’ll see how it goes. I’m surprisingly not worried about it. I feel like this whole first class is a bit of an experiment and if I can see the last session in a positive light I think that I will think good things of this one as well. Wish me luck!

3/21 Saturday: How long have I been in the campo?
I’ve been in the campo for a long time… too long. I’m running out of food but I think I can live off of trigo and carrot cake. Yes, that is something that needs to be mentioned: the carrot cake turned out to be delicious. By the end of the night tonight it was all gone, after just one day, and there was a lot of it.

Today was kind of a crappy day. It was still rainy off and on. I went for a run, and after getting another blister on top of an old one I came to the conclusion that my feet have grown- or rather my right foot has grown. Is it possible to develop a callous on the top of my toe that’s strong enough to bear the shoe rubbing on it for at least 4 miles? When I ran today it wasn’t raining but by the time I was on my way back it was pouring. Aside from the salt water in my eyes the rain felt really good. I kept going but was a little embarrassed since there were crowds of people here and there that I was running past (since they all packed together from whatever they were doing to get out of the rain) who were just staring at me, yelling things. I felt like I was in a marathon or something.

After I got home I took a shower and got ready for dinner. Ernie, Vangie and another girl whose name I always forget, came over and hung out. I went outside to study a little and Wandi came over. I decided that telling him I was disappointed was the way to go in regards to the class. It seemed to work. We had this whole long discussion about expectations and why I didn’t invite him to go with me for the Escojo conference. I’m not sure if I mentioned that but I had to pick two youth to take with me for the regional Escojo conference which is April 3-5 in Jarabacoa; coming up soon! I invited Ernie (which I may regret) and another girl named Keyla. She participates, listens and went to both of my classes. I thought it would be hard to pick who I thought would be good to take with to the conference after only two classes but it’s pretty obvious who the serious students are and which aren’t.

Well, Wandi was hurt that I didn’t ask him so I was a little relieved that he acted like such a butthead in class because I told him he wasn’t setting a good example and thus had a good reason not to invite him other than he drives me nuts. I explained that there are some students who may be in this class to learn for themselves and may not want to be health promoters, and that’s ok. I told him that since he wasn’t participating and also because I outright asked him if he had interest in being a promoter earlier in the week, to which he said no, I figured he wasn’t interested in teaching others about the topics aka being a promoter. I asked him if he understood where I was coming from and he said he did. His little brother I still haven’t talked to about anything. He’s so strange I feel like if I tried to talk to him he would just walk away from me. I’m going to see if he’s better the next class since I’m sure Wandi will talk to him about what I said. Guess we’ll see!
3/20 Friday: Escojo Part 2; What is in my water tank?
This is annoying but last night I had to have another talk with Wandi about how we are friends and NOTHING MORE EVER. He left almost immediately, surprisingly without an attitude so maybe I got through. Who knows? Anyways, after that I went to my bathroom to get ready for bed and when I turned the water on, a weird noise came out of my tube instead of water. That’s not good. I was hoping it was just that my water tank was empty and not that it was another broken tube. It has been raining a good amount here. Without Wandi coming to my house harassing me, I knew I would have to look for someone else to lend me a helping hand. Lucky for me Ernie came over before 10 am. I explained my problem and she jumped up (literally) to help. She can be pretty bossy but she loves to be given responsibility and loves to help.

We went to my tank to see if it was empty. Up until now I didn’t even know where the tank was so I suppose it was good that this happened. It’s a bummer though, the tank is in a spot where it won’t get much sun so I doubt I’ll ever really have decently warm water from it. We opened the lid and were surprisingly assaulted with a mal olor. Next, I was assaulted with Ernie, who was the one who opened the lid, shouting what I thought was “Ay! La gata! La gata se murió aquí!” What?! Not my cat!! It’s just been a say since I last saw her!! I thought she said that my cat was dead in the tank so I started yelling, “La gata?! No, no la gata! Mi gata?!” To which she corrected me and said lagarto (lizard) ... Oh. Well at least it’s not my cat but at this point I still didn’t know what lagarto was so I walked over to see for myself.

What I saw was a little disturbing. There, in the tank with the water with which I bath, cook, sometimes drink and always use to brush my teeth was a dead, bloated, smelly, floating lizard. I went too see this dead lizard for myself and in hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have. It’s safe to say the thing had been in there for a while but at the same time comforting to know that el tinaco was filled about 3-4 weeks ago so at least no longer than that. I’m guessing that lizard was larger than it was about a month ago. Another informative piece of information was to see was the inch or two of dirt in the bottom of the tank. You know, I had noticed my bathroom had a kind of stinky smell so earlier this week I tossed some some bleach in there but didn’t think anything of it.

Mercedes found out about this and started cursing all the little boys that she has apparently told many times to leave the lid on the tank and leave it alone. What a funny joke those little boys played on the Americana! Of course I couldn’t say anything about how I more than just bath with this water since Ernesto recently gave me some advice. About a month ago I was telling him how I could just cook with or drink the water from my tinaco… right? And he responded with an enthusiastic NO, don’t use that water! Well, I figured it was just a concern because sure we didn’t exactly clean it before using it but hey- that’s not such a big deal. I had been using the water for all of the above and more and also, in the Dominican spirit, sharing the fruits of my labor with my neighbors and whoever else happened to stop by. But don’t worry, no one got sick that I know of.

To resolve the issue we decided it would be a good idea to put some bleach in el tinaco after running water through it for a bit and, of course, fishing out the dead lizard. Thanks, but who are we kidding? Unless we drain the thing and clean it, the dead lizard-ness is still in there! For some more comfort I bought a 7 peso thing of bleach and had a muchacho toss it in there for me. Maybe it was a little too much for the size of my tank. It smells really strongly like bleach in my bathroom now. On the brightside, I can use that water to mop; it’s a built in air freshener/ breathe mint and free perfume since I smell like Mr. Clean after each shower. ¡Que buuuueno!

Now for the other part of my day: my Escojo class. I was feeling better about my class for this week than I felt about the class the week before, more prepared for some failure but also I went through the entire class with Ernie and Vangie in the morning so there were some people who would be able to help me if I needed it. I tried to bake some banana bread before hand but didn’t have any baking soda or bananas. I asked Noel to go to Navarrete to get some for me but he couldn’t find the soda. I figured that I didn’t want to have to pay for him to come back up to my house from town just to bring me bananas so I told him no thanks. I decided that I would try to make carrot cake since I had all the ingredients for that already, except the baking soda. I didn’t end up having enough time to bake it before my class so I guesstimated the ingredients (since I have no measuring utensils whatsoever), tossed them all together, and put it in my “fridge” until I could bake it later.

I headed off to the class with Argeni and Geraldo. We arrived at the school and the director, despite remembering that we were going to have class today at the same time as before, didn’t have a room for me. Let me correct that; there was an empty room but it was being cleaned by the cleaning ladies so I guess that meant that we couldn’t use it. Apparently school got out early because the teachers needed time to tally up the grades of all the students. The teachers were still in their classrooms though, sitting at their desks, figuring out the grades. No one wanted to take their notebooks to another classroom to work on them and open up a room for us. So there it was, 4:15, and I still didn’t have a classroom to have class in. Finally one of the teachers told me that he would move so I could use his room. We set up class and had to wait for the one teacher who was actually still having class to let the students out. We began class around 4:45.

There were a lot of problems with it. Ernie, who was supposed to “help” me decided that she was going to try to take over the class and wasn’t a student, therefore she didn’t have to participate. Not to mention she was correcting me on what I was teaching, the order and my responses to questions over things not pertaining to the material but to how I was going to teach the class. Holy power trip. I plan on talking with her before the next class.

Then there was the boy who seemed really helpful but later I found out he was making humping motions at me behind my back the whole time. There was actually note passing (yes, during a once a week, one hour class) and there was a boy who insisted on hitting on Ernie the whole time with comments I’m pretty sure (but not completely) weren’t appropriate to announce to the class. Of course this was only when he wasn’t talking to Wandi, who was sitting next to him.

Ah Wandi, him and his brother wouldn’t participate AT ALL. They wouldn’t stand up to play the game, they wouldn’t write anything- well, Wandi at least was writing and was sitting in the circle of desks but Argeni refused to write during the majority of class and for a while refused to sit in the circle. It was absolutely ridiculous. Of all people, I thought that THEY would be helpful! So, of my neighbors, I had a power-tripped girl and two non-participatory boys; great examples. Also, I had written out a simple pre-test on a large sheet of paper to for everyone to do. Despite me telling them several times, and even writing an example on the board of how I only wanted them to write the number and then the letter corresponding to their answer (ex: 1. A, 2.B, 3.C) , they all wrote out the ENTIRE test. Something that took so much time I didn’t have time to do the second lesson I had prepared for the day (a lesson on auto esteem). On top of that, there were two women who were standing outside, snapping the windows open and closed during the last 20 minutes of class or so. It was actually kind of creepy when they snapped the windows open since they were standing there, stone faced, looking in, and it was raining outside- then SNAP! The window was closed. I thought that they were some weirdo parents or something but it turns out they were the cleaning ladies, impatiently waiting to clean the room! To top it all off, the rain made it dark and very loud so we had to try to shout over the sound of the rain on the tin roof, and we couldn’t see very well.

Despite all this, I’m happy with my class. I think that it turned out way better than the first. At least it wasn’t boring. We even played a game (a different one) and they seemed to have a lot of fun with it. I’m looking forward to the third class. I just need to figure out how I’m going to talk to the humping boy since class is the only time I see him. Should I give him the extra attention he seems to want and pull him out of class to talk to him a bit? I have no idea but that seems better than not doing anything so I think that’s what I’ll end up doing.

I walked home in the rain and Wandi was trying to talk to me. I was pretty disappointed in him and his little brother, Argeni. I told him I didn’t want to talk to him right then until I knew what I wanted to say (I had to look up the word for disappointed for one thing…) Well, he took it as I didn’t want to talk to him at all and that I was pissed at him so he kept his distance the rest of the night.

And what a surprise his little brother is! Let me give a little background here: when I got back from my beach trip last Sunday, Ernie and Vangie had been in my house most of the day. There was a “love” note supposedly from Argeni on my bed, written in English. It was something about how I was a beautiful flower. Argeni is extremely shy so I was certain it was from the girls. I called Vangie out on it when we were alone and she all but confessed but when I talked to Ernie about it she acted much more surprised. I am one of the most gullible people ever though and I really can’t tell when someone is messing with me. Vangie and I had been discussing all of her admirers earlier that weekend and she showed me the text messages they send her. They are about the cheesiest thing you could possibly think of but at least very inventive. Well I began getting text messages from Argeni the same day the “love” note was left for me. Since I had just had the conversation with Vangie about cheesy love messages and I figured she had left the note for me, I laughed out loud when I would get the texts from Argeni since I assumed they were from Vangie. I didn’t even have Argeni’s number so I wasn’t sure if they were even from his phone.

Well, after getting the texts from “him” all week I was beginning to wonder. After all, it costs to send texts; would Vanige really want to pay to send me more than two or three as a joke? Then, after my class I began getting apology texts from him. I noticed that he was just sitting out on my porch for hours, silently ignoring Ernie when she tried to call him to sit inside. (I said this kid is a little weird. He’s pretty emotional I think but I really wouldn’t know that well since I can’t remember ever even having an actual conversation with him!) It was after I got the first apology text, after he left my porch, when I realized the texts are actually from him!!!! Its sooooo weird! He’s super shy; he’s barely ever talked to me! The first month and a half at least he would only intently stare at me the entire time I was in his presence, which was weird but hey, I’m in the DR. How is it possible the same kid be sending me love messages saying something about how if he was a submarine he would guard the opening of my heart…. And what the heck does a submarine have to do with a heart anyways? Maybe I’m just not that romantic.

To make things worse… earlier this week Ernesto told me to invite Argeni out with Wandi, Ernie and me when we go out because he was feeling left out. And of course I had been doing that since I felt bad for the kid. So basically since I got the love note and the texts began I’ve been inviting him to do stuff with us. Since I didn’t think the texts were from him I didn’t act any different except invite him out with us. Is he unaware that he is FOURTEEN YEARS OLD?!!! I mean for crying out loud, I was in 3rd or 4th grade when he was BORN! And his brother has a huge crush on me, isn’t there like an unspoken rule about that? It’s so retarded that last night, sitting alone in the dark in my house I just started cracking up. I mean, you have got to be kidding me! I’ve been ignoring the texts the whole time because I thought they were from Vangie and now I feel a little bad because Argeni keeps telling me to text him to let him know if I’m mad. But, I kind of feel like I’d rather not acknowledge the fact I’ve gotten any of the messages. I still don’t know who the love letter was from but I suspect it was from Vangie since in the texts he writes my name “Betsi” and the love letter was “Betsy”. Although, nobody calls me Betsy here… the world will never know.

3/19 Thursday: A recap of my 1st Escojo class, Idonnah visits, and exercise
Yes, we have power finally so I thought I would take advantage of that and finally write in my blog. Although that’s not to say that I haven’t had power in 4 days, I have, it’s just that I used my power time to watch two movies this week or listen to the radio while coloring something, sorry guys.

Since I last wrote on Sunday, I have finished my charla for this week. I actually finished it on Monday thanks to Ernie. I drew everything and, never being much of a fan of coloring, wasn’t looking forward to coloring the 7 pages. While trying to color, Wandi said something stupid to me and I thought I may kill him. I don’t know where Ernie was during this but she must have known a throw down was about to take place because she left, taking my bag of coloring stuff and all the posters to her house to work on them. She finished them all that night! And they look really good too! Not that I’m really picky about my charlas but I would prefer them legible at least and she went above and beyond. I’m really happy about this. I think that she’ll help me color all of my charlas because she seems to really enjoy coloring. I say “help” because I did after all color one page and Wandi did another (but Ernie did 5). Awesome.

If only my class could be as awesome. I realized I never wrote about how bad my class bombed last week. Maybe it’s premature to say this, but let me put it out there- I’m glad I didn’t major in education. It was a disaster- something I wasn’t prepared for AT ALL. I understand that it was the first class and each one will be a learning experience for me and all that jazz but even the game at the beginning failed for crying out loud! Here’s a recap of my class: I show up at the school a little after 4 to look for Ernie and set up. Ernie had helped me pick out about 25 kids to participate earlier that day and she was going to go to the classes to tell them which kids had been selected to participate. When I showed up, she came out and asked me for the list of kids. Well, she had taken a list with her in the morning but apparently it was only half of the list and I was supposed to take the other half. So I tell her I don’t have it and start trying to remember the names of the people I don’t even know while she’s telling me for the next three minutes that it’s my fault the list isn’t there, not hers. Finally I ask her just to pick another 25 and meet me in the classroom.

Ahh, the classroom; another issue. Despite the fact I reminded the director the day before that we were having class today he “forgot” and so we didn’t have anywhere to go for class. He walked to I guess the seemingly least productive room, booted the teacher out for the day and told me to take over. Are you kidding me? I’m not sure where the rest of the kids went from the class but my Escojo class piled in and we got started. I tried to get them to play a game where everyone stands in a circle and then each person says their name while making a gesture about their personality. For example, “Hi, I’m Betsy, I like to shop…” and then I would make a credit card swiping motion with my hand or something. I must not have explained it at all because after each person mumbled their name they said a word that described them. That may not have been so bad if I had had the foresight to implement a rule saying you can’t repeat other’s word since by the time the “game” was done, about ¾ of the class’s word was “heart”.

The rest of the class was boring with the highlight being when I gave out candies for participation. Looking back, I remember thinking that the class was going to be boring since the whole first class was going over rules. I guess I didn’t think that it too much so I wasn’t prepared for it and the class ended up being a let down. One thing I have been told I’m going to learn very well in PC is failure and how to fail. I guess it’s true that a lot of people (myself included) don’t try things too extreme (aside from PC itself) or things that we think we can’t do. Sure it makes sense not to, why try something you’re going to fail at? But then on the other hand, how will you ever push yourself and who knows, maybe you won’t fail after all? I guess a lesson can be learned in confidence with this as well. With that said, I suppose failure can be a good thing, I just need to look at it as such.

I was supposed to give my second class yesterday at the school and I was really excited for it actually since Idonnah (my PCV- Leader, a PCV who has been here for at least a year and a half and is hand selected by the APCD) was going to be here. Tuesday I baked cookies for the class and everything. When Vangie went to school Tuesday I asked her to please remind the director for me that we were having class the next day but of course, there was a problem. The director said there was too much work to be done yesterday so we couldn’t have the class. We could have it Thursday (when there’s no school) or we could have it Friday. I was initially really put off by this but I got over it. It’s a bummer that Idonnah won’t be there to help me since I knew it would be a great class with her there but I guess I’ll just have to learn it on my own. I plan on moving classes to Saturdays in the Club de Madres building so I don’t have to deal with the director and his erratic schedule. I don’t want to move it this week since it’s not much notice and next week I’m planning on going to the south of the country on Saturday, so I guess it’ll have to be at the school for two more weeks.

When Idonnah was here I walked to the school to talk to the director about having the class on Friday. He already let one class out early that day (so much for a lot of work to do…) since it was drizzling and when we walked up he said that I could have had the class that day if I wanted but that the weather wasn’t great so how great that I was going to have it on Friday instead. How annoying is that?!

Having Idonnah here was a great mood lifter. She really is a breath of fresh air. She’s very encouraging and one of the most positive people I have ever met. She and I talked for a long time about how one’s attitude/outlook affects their life and their successes/failures. I believe in fate and understand different people are given different gifts/opportunities but I completely agree that life is what you make of it. If you think you’re getting screwed over all the time, then it will seem like you are for sure. I know I was getting pretty down here lately, it’s easy to do. That’s one reason I enjoyed the visit from Idonnah so much, I feel like I have a renewed outlook again. She’s really great. I’m bummed that her service will be over in May and I hope she can come out for another visit once more before then.

Aside from Idonnah, another mood lifter is exercising. Although I already knew this, I’m not normally a fan. But I do have to say it’s helpful. I have been walking everyday after school with Wandi, which is nice but it hasn’t been de-stressing me much. Wednesday we decided to walk “up” instead of “down” the mountain. We walked to the intersection and Wandi wanted to stop because he said we had gone far enough but I wanted to keep going for an even 3 kms (2 miles). I walked the other .75km without him and when I got to the top, I turned around and decided I would run back. Yes, I know… I have this weird fear of hills and falling down them but the good thing about going “up” from my house is that the incline is much more constant and therefore less steep. I ran back, passed Wani, and ran the whole way back to my house but still felt like running so I ended up running down to the bridge- the point we normally walk to when we walk “down”. I was going to try to run back up but that lasted about 3 minutes. I power-walked back to my house and when I looked to see how far I had gone, it was about 12kms. The next day I went out again but didn’t have as much time so I just did 2 miles up walking and 2 miles down, running. My feet are a hot mess now though. I have four blisters and I feel like the bones in my feet hurt! Guess I’m not used to running anymore and not that much either- but it feels so good! When I get tired I just think about how frustrated I’ve been and then I get a little burst of energy. I would like to go today but I’m not sure if I’m going to- not only do my feet hurt but now I feel like an old lady since I’m so sore. Maybe I’ll just walk today…

3/15 Sunday: A day at the beach and more
I was going to walk to Ann and Tim’s house but ended up not having to since Ernesto let Wandi take the motorcycle and bring me to their house. It was my first time on the motorcycle with him and I told him that I was afraid since he is a psycho. Just to prove me wrong, he didn’t drive like a nutty 17 year old boy, thank goodness.

When I arrived at Ann and Tim’s I was tired. The colmado next to my house didn’t turn the music off until 12:30 and I had to get up at 7. One would think that after so long in the DR that I would be able to sleep through such things but I doubt if that day will ever come. Instead it seems more like the ear plugs aren’t quiet as effective but who really knows? Anyways, Ann, Tim and I sat at their house waiting for our ride from 8:30 until 11:15. It wasn’t too bad though, they have hammocks which I utilized happily. When our rides did show up, they weren’t what we were expecting. We thought that we were all going together in a car but I guess the story goes something like the driver of the car was in the hospital because his appendix burst… so we took 2 motors. That was the longest I have ever been on a motor! We went to Altamira, looking for an ATM but it was out of money. So we went to Imbert next and wouldn’t you know it- there’s a problem with all three of our ATM cards. Not to mention there is an annoying new policy prohibiting PCVs from taking out more than 2500 pesos at a time in a 24 hour period! I can see how this seems like a great preventative measure against theft but 2500 is nothing! And when it costs money to go to the ATM each time, that rule is a pain. Not to worry though since none of our ATM cards would work at all anyways. Luckily I had enough to get us through the day.

We drove to Luperón, where the beach is. It is a really pretty beach but pretty rocky in places. There are a few resorts along the beach which must be all inclusive since when Ann and I tried to enter to use the bathroom we were told we couldn’t since we didn’t have a bracelet. Dang- that meant I had to use the beach bathroom which was so hideous that I took a picture for all you visual folks.

We were at the beach for a few hours before heading to a river to wash off all the sand. We stopped at a colmado to get some shampoo packets and officially “bathed” in the river. This is such a common occurrence in this country that they don’t call swimming “swimming”’ but instead they call it “bathing”. The river was a lot more fun than the beach. Not only was it a surprisingly big river, with a spot deep enough to swim in, but it was salt free, hardly windy at all and kind of warm! An added bonus: the cows were even crossing downstream. We had found a winner!

On the way back we stopped at a stand, per my request, to get some yucca balls (sounds nasty but they’re fried, cheese-filled delights!) and had some issues with communication. One thing I noticed about a lot of Dominicans, with each other and us, is that they think they know what you’re going to ask before you ask it so they either answer a question you didn’t ask or they don’t listen, assuming they knew what you were going to say. Well, Tim doesn’t eat meat so we asked what was in the pizza empanadas and we told it was just cheese and sauce. We ordered three but ended up getting ham, ham and cheese and a cheese one. When we asked about it, the dude got all pissy with us and told us that’s what we ordered, something that seems weird to me since we had a conversation about pizza flavored ones! I ate the ham and cheese, Ann ate the other two and Tim was protesting since he was annoyed by the whole thing.

We ended up driving up the mountain really late, it was already dark! On the way up, the guy driving the motorcycle told me he wasn’t going to be able to take me home since it was so late. Thankfully he changed his mind and ended up taking me home.

The day ended well. No one was home (or awake) when I got home so I showered off the rest of the sand, and hopped in bed. I feel so much better after going out with Ann and Tim, it was a lot of fun. Not to mention that now I have a number of a guy who works down at the Altamira side of the mountain so I can call him up when I need a ride from Altamira instead of going with Franklin. Thank goodness!

3/14 Saturday: Things to look forward to…
Yesterday I asked Franklin if he could take me to Ann and Tim’s house on Sunday morning (the PCVs who live on the other side of the mountain) and he said, “We’ll see”. I figure he must not want to so I think I’ll plan on walking it. It’s probably only about 2 ½- 3 miles and I won’t be exercising much the rest of the day I think anyways. They invited me to go to the beach with them:) I’m looking forward to it. I’m not sure who they’re going with, some guys in their site who have motorcycles I guess. I have only been out of my site 2 days this month so far and Wandi is getting on my nerves. Today he came over after lunch (early- at 12:10!) and I told him I was writing and pretty much to go away. I just don’t want someone here at the house all day long. At least with him I can tell him to get lost but with Ernie I can’t. I’m still thinking of a method to have some alone time during the day when she’s here. Although, she’s not here every freaking day like Wandi.

I’m looking forward to a lot of things I have going this month, which is lucky for me since I feel myself getting more and more negative- something I wasn’t expecting! The 18th, this Wednesday, my PVCL will be here and I’m hoping she’ll be able to help me with my 2nd Escojo class so it goes better than the 1st one, an unexpected failure. Then, the 22nd I may be going with some other PCVs and a newbie, a trainee on their PCV visit, to the 27 Waterfalls. Next, on the 27th I’m going to a Mini Vac meeting (when PCVs from that region get together to talk about concerns, happens 4 times a year and you can go to any region you want to) in the south where I’ll visit my friend Randi and then my host family from CBT. That should be fun, I’m thinking since it’s so far I’ll stay from that Friday until Sunday or Monday. Before I know it, this month will be over and next month is APRIL!!!!!! That’s when my Mom and sister are going to visit me for my birthday!!!!!!!!!!! Yaaaaaay!!!!!!!!!!!!! 41 more days…:)

3/13 Friday: Hable mejor? Escuche mejor! (Speak better? Listen better!)
Last night around 8:30 my friend Sarah called me and asked if I would be able to go to her house the next day to help her lay a floor in her house. She lives with her host family still because her housing options were bleak in her community and the crappy house she can live in has some issues that need to be corrected before PC will let her move in- like putting in a cement floor and a latrine. So, being the dedicated friend that I am, I told her I would check to see if I could find a ride through the mountain to Altamira the next morning, today so I could help.

When I woke up today I was just wiped out for some reason. I couldn’t get out of bed until almost 9:30. I felt bad because with public transportation it takes a while to get from one place to another and so I wouldn’t be at Sarah’s until around noon. Plus, I wasn’t planning on spending the night. I want to make things into day trips if possible because I don’t want to seem like I’m never here. After not being here a lot in February I think it’s important to have more of a presence. Anyways, I caught Franklin around 10 am who told me he would give me a ride to Altamira and pick me up later, around 6.

It was an awkward ride because I think he is definitely still pissy with me for the whole not being his girlfriend thing. I’m not sure if I explained this but it’s partly my fault. I didn’t tell him no right away, I told him we would have to get to know each other. Well, long story short: he was pushy and insistent that we date so after about 4 weekends of this I told him there was no way. Then he was obviously upset with me for a while. I thought he had gotten over it since he came up to me a few weeks later and shook my hand, saying hello at the discoteca. What I wasn’t prepared for was, after a dance with him the same night of him being completely normal, he randomly told me in so many words that he was still interested. Arrrg.

Today there weren’t many options for people to take me to Altamira- I DON’T want to ask Borein to take me all the way to Altamira which is about a 35 minute, twisty, very bumpy ride on the crappy road. Noel was working and I would prefer to go with someone I knew. Franklin has the most comfortable bike anyways. I was glad Franklin told me he would take me but I knew it was going to be weird. I was right.

After he dropped me off in Altamira I caught a guagua in record time and headed to Sarah’s site. I told the Cobrador to let me off at her site, La Colorada. He had me repeat it 4 times and then said, “Ohhh, ok”. I figured that maybe he didn’t understand me at first or couldn’t hear me since I couldn’t talk very loud thanks to a cold I have or la gripe. Then I thought that he must have heard me since he said “Ok”. A lot of the time people don’t know where her site is because it’s small. I paid less than the other people on the bus (who were going all the way to Puerta Plata) and since he didn’t question that either I figured he must know where it is as well. Then we passed her site.

As we passed my stop I yelled, “Here! Let me off here! Aquíííííííí!!!!! (Heeeeeeere!!!)” In hindsight, it sounded pretty funny to me but I was soooo mad when I got off the bus. Not because we passed it and I had to walk a little, that’s no big deal. It was because the rude freaking cobrador told me to Hable mejor. (speak better) Are you kidding me?!?!?! AHHHH!!! I am getting soooooo sick of people being crappy like that! “Speak better”. You know what? Here’s an idea: how about you don’t act like you understand/know where I said I needed to get off if you DON’T?! It’s a good thing the bus drove away really quickly because, as I experienced in Santiago, my patience is pretty much GONE when it comes to people not understanding me. I may not habla bien but I have acquired the awesome skill of telling people off like a skilled Doña. Yes, it is I who has the accent but I gladly repeat myself if asked. I wish I could say I felt bad about being hostel with the cab driver in Santiago who told me to talk to him in Spanish but not even a little part of me feels bad. I still fail to see how a cab driver in a tourist city doesn’t understand someone with an accent when they list a major street in the city. It would be like a foreigner responding to the question: “Where to?” with “Lake Shore Drive” in Chicago- I would expect that the drivers would understand that. Not to mention, I know my Spanish is far from perfect but the fact that the majority of people, the majority of the time understand me tells me it’s not so bad that one would need to ask me in the same language I am speaking what language I am talking. Errrr, it’s exasperating!

Luckily, the rest of the day went much better. I walked the 20-25 minute walk to Sarah’s house, ate lunch, and set off learning how one goes about laying a floor. It was interesting and although I didn’t personally mess with the wet cement except for carrying bucket after bucket to the house, and dumping it on the floor I did my share of shoveling the sand to mix with it. I left with Mark around 4:30 so I could go to Altamira and meet Franklin on time. I called Franklin to see if he could meet me later (since I wanted to get pizza with Mark) but he said no so I ate an Empañada and ignored the dude hitting on me while I ate it. Franklin was late so I ended up sitting there waiting for about 30 minutes. It wasn’t all bad; I found out that my phone has some games on it at least. I was glad he was there because I didn’t want to have to explain to another driver how to get back. Franklin is good too because he doesn’t try to overcharge me like Borein. It cost me 300 pesos that day to go and see Sarah and come back.

When I got home, Ernie was in my house with the music blaring. Normally I don’t care and normally she isn’t in the house when I’m not here. Since I was just gone for a day trip and I didn’t kick her out when I left in the morning she was still there when I got back. It didn’t bother me that she was here but I was in a bad mood and I didn’t feel like listening to music at a deafening volume. I did something I never thought I would do: I went to Minga’s for some quiet. Minga made me some juice and fried cheese. We sat and talked until I felt a little more sane and then I went back home.

Wandi saw me walking back and so he followed me back to my house. I don’t mind him here as long as he leaves me alone but he just doesn’t get it. When I’m writing or reading I’m not going to be talking to him. He’s such high maintenance! I tell him he wants attention all the time and how annoying it is but he doesn’t seem to think that’s a bad thing. Ernie left around 8:30 and I kicked Wandi out around 9. My Mom called me and we talked for a while, after which I felt a lot better. I don’t know what I would do without my Mom. She really helps keep me sane.

3/12 Thursday: Harder to Blog…
With the power being as it has been (1-5 hours per day, the majority of time those hours occurring at night) it’s been hard to write but here are the highlights:

Monday 3/9: I’ve been working on my charla for my first class feverishly this week. Today is supposed to be the first day of my class. Monday I wasn’t able to prepare much since I went to the Club de Madres meeting to be the official photographer. Mercedes called to me from the street at 2:30 and asked if I was going to the meeting which was starting an hour earlier at 3 today. And also if I could bring my camera and take pictures. Oh ok then. I showered, got ready, and was walking out of my house at 3 when Santa magically appeared on my porch. She wanted to know if I would make a sign for the group. Sure. 25 minutes later we were on our way, with Santa hurrying along. I knew better. The meeting started 45 minutes late- at 3:45. It went longer than normal since there was a special guest speaker for National Women’s Day. It’s uplifting that the women were all so encouraged by the presentation and that they were all willing to sit there for an hour and just listen pretty much. I was mentally taking notes for my nutrition class… whenever I start that.

Tuesday 3/10: Here is where I would talk about Tuesday but I don’t really remember what I did. Wandi seemed to think that we were dating (so much for me thinking we were in the “friends- zone” so I had to give him The Talk again. Errrr. Aside from that, I have nothing. Minga went to the hospital Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and they ended up finally giving her medicine yesterday. Well, yesterday she seemed a lot better and looked like she didn’t even need medicine!

Wednesday 3/11: This is the day I went to the assembly. I was alert, trying to listen the whole time (2 1/2 hours!), waiting for when the director would call me out and make me introduce myself but he never did. I was relived for this but at the same time I wish he had told me he wasn’t going to include me. The assembly was a weird thing, that’s for sure. Each of the teachers got up and gave a lesson with the focus supposedly being on student rights. Somehow this equated to manners and we got to sit through 150 minutes of lessons on manners. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t think this was undeserved but I do think that giving a lesson like this to a bunch of 14- 20 year olds in an assembly is an odd idea. Shouldn’t they be taught to say please and thank you as children? Wouldn’t it be easier to tell the 4 year old not to disrespectfully call to the elderly neighbor as “Hey old woman!” than to tell an 18 year old not to? I mean really, did they need to have an assembly on it? The parents were invited but what did they have to do with it? The whole thing seemed like they were having an assembly just to have one, not because they had anything really useful to say to a large group.

The only useful thing that they really did was to announce new hours for the school. Normally grades 1-8 go to school from 8am- 12pm and then kindergarten and grades 9-12 go from 1:45- 5:15pm. So, yes this wasn’t a mistype: they go to school about 3 ½- 4 hours a day and they get recess, milk and bread or cake everyday. School is pretty much optional. Marvey hardly ever goes and it’s uncommon that a student DOESN’T fail at least one grade. The school just changed the hours so the mornings go from 8-12:30 and the afternoons go from 1:45- 6. They don’t have that many students (all the students from the afternoon, the teachers and the parents all fit into one classroom with room to spare) so I don’t understand why they have it broken up the way they do. There are only 6 teachers so obviously they don’t each have their own grade. The state of the schools here in the DR is a perpetuation of the under-development of this country. Maybe instead of giving out shoes, book bags, shirts, (given to every student, each year up until grade 6 or so) and cake, the government should look into hiring more teachers and having school longer each day.

Today, Thursday 3/12: Anyways, aside from Monday, I’ve been working a lot on my charla. I finished it pretty much yesterday, just have a few things left to do to prepare. It required more work than I anticipate for future classes since I had to make some extra things that I won’t have to make each week like the contract, the page explaining what Escojo is and a few other random things. I still wanted to laminate them to ensure I don’t have to make them again. I went to Navarrete today with Borein (the guy who crashed into a cow) to try and get the papers laminated. I was initially a little nervous about going with Borein thanks to Noel telling me last night to make sure to tell him to drive slow. When I was first on the bike with Borein today I had a flashback of a time when we went really fast and afterwards he was like, “Yeah! We were going really fast!” Really? I didn’t notice.

Now, I know you’re probably wondering why I went with someone who drives fast and had an accident with a cow, breaking his leg in three places like two months ago but I tried to go with Noel. Noel has been working on that American dude’s house (remember the huge house with a pool and hot, running water that I visited with Minga sometime in December or November) in Los Cabreras (another part of my community) so he hasn’t been driving. I would have gone with Franklin but I didn’t want to ask him since he was a snot on Sunday and the only other person I know somewhat ok is Neno… and there was no way I was going to ask him. So, Borein it was.

We went to the grocery store (I had to get more peanut butter since I used a lot in those No Bake Cookies) and then we went to the shop that Kevin supposedly went to when he had to laminate something. Well, not only was there no power at the time but they couldn’t do big pages. You would think that they would have a generator or something seeing as Navarrete hardly ever has power and their business depends on it… Ok, plan B: packing tape. Yep, always have to have a plan B and although the idea of incasing each of the 5 sheets I have, strip by strip in tape doesn’t excite me, the idea of making them over again thrills me even less. Thanks to my experience as an RA last year I know how I feel when people deface things that I spent a long time making. I’m supposed to be promoting a positive image of the States, not killing teenagers in a fit of rage.

So, here I am now in my house, my only company the power… a rarity. I still have to figure out a way to pick who is going to be able to be in my class today and who is not. I have a list of 42 kids who want to participate but I only want a class of about 25. I feel bad turning some away but I will have more classes in the future. I just don’t want to make some people feel rejected, like they didn’t make the cut or something and then deter them from announcing their interest in the fall. I’m not sure how I’ll do it but we’ll see. Well, se fue la luz and Wandi is here annoying me again so I guess it’s time to go. Until there’s more power…. :)

3/9 Monday: Still raining! Are you freaking kidding me?!
Yep that’s right, it’s still raining and there still hasn’t been power for more than 2 hours. Let me just say that I discovered that when it’s not already on, my computer battery lasts for about 20 minutes now sin luz (without power)…

3/8 Sunday: Do things ever go the way they were planned? Ah well…
I woke up today around 7 so that Noel and I could go to town to get my Escojo contract laminated and run some other errands and still be back in time for the plant class which was supposed to start at 10. Noel told me that all the stores are open at least in the mornings on Sunday so we would be ok. He’s been working on building the new Club de Madres building so he hasn’t been working as a motorcycle driver lately. Sundays are the only days they don’t work on the Club de Madres so I figured we’d go to Navarrete and see. We left around 8:15 and turns out, all the office stores are closed on Sundays. Great. You know what else? I don’t know what the Spanish word for “sticker” is but it’s nearly impossible to describe it to people. I’m not sure if they don’t know what they are here or what but no one understands what I’m talking about or the word in my dictionary. I can’t find them anywhere in Navarrete. So, if anyone at home is so inclined, I would like to use stickers for an attendance sheet I’m going to make and also maybe for prizes so feel free to send me some :) Until then, I guess I’ll be cutting out shapes and gluing them on each week.

After the office stores were a flop, we went to the grocery store and I got us each a chocolate milk and some ingredients for a new recipe I got from a friend for no bake cookies. I’m pretty excited about this. Maybe its because people think I can cook or maybe it’s because I love to each the stuff but I love to try out things. Randi, Kenz, Darryl and I are working on a Campo- friendly cookbook for PCVs here in the DR so if anyone from home has any really easy recipes that don’t require things that need to be refrigerated (keep in mind that I can use things like milk powder instead of milk…) or expensive things like chocolate chips, please send me them.

On the way back home Noel and I stopped at Minga’s house. Minga told me that the plant class was cancelled on account of it being National Women’s Violence Awareness Day. Did I mention that the professor is a man? So, here I am again, contemplating the validity of this class. I talked to Ernesto about it and he seems to think that the professor is more concerned about getting the money from the women than teaching them, which seems quite possible. I guess last week they cancelled class because a Catholic church was having service in one of the rooms at the school. Despite the fact that there are 6 rooms at the school and church service was in a different room than we were using before, the professor decided that we weren’t able to have class. Seriously, I could use a little outside input- what do you guys think? Do you think that it would look irresponsible if I didn’t go? I’ve only gone to one class (out of 2 that have happened but there were supposed to have been 4 by now).

After I went to Minga’s I went home. 5 minutes later, there were like 5 little kids on my porch. As you know, I do not enjoy the company of children much but for some reason I decided to be nice about it and hang out with them. To document this rare occasion, I took out my camera to take a picture- a mistake. They LOOOOOOVE pictures here and somehow, I’m not sure if there are just a lot of kids who walk by my house all the time or what, but there were 12 kids on my porch within minutes. Again, I thought I would be a good sport and so we had a dance party with Ernie. I think there was a 9 year old prodigy on my porch by the way… the kid was like a little man dancing!

A little while later I went to lunch at Minga’s to find Minga in bed. I think that she thinks when she’s cold she has a fever because she was telling me that over and over. Tomorrow she plans on going to the hospital to get checked out. I seriously question the dependability of the medical care here since they seem to want to fix everything with a pill- even more so than in the States.

I went home after lunch and I must have been followed or something. There were two little boys on my porch pretty much right after I arrived. I told them I wanted some alone time and that just confused them. I felt a little bad but I just shut the door, trying to ignore them and went about my business of making cookies. Soon there were at least 7-8 kids on my porch all saying my name, Elisssssssabet, while squashing their faces against the front windows. Yes it was annoying but I tried to make the most of it by sending one of them down to the colmado to get me ingredients three separate times. Maybe it was mean of me not to share my cookies with them but I don’t want them thinking that every time I make something I’m going to share it with whomever is on my porch.

After I showered they were still there. THANK GOODNESS for Ernesto who saw them and told them to go away. They all scattered and very soon after I was peacefully sitting on my porch reading. Three girls came back but they weren’t being annoying. They were just sitting there, starting at me while I wrote in my journal, occasionally playing with my hair.

The night ended like most Sundays. We went to a woman named Celia’s house and then to the Discoteca for a bit. Franklin saw me and pretty much called me a stuck up snot since apparently I didn’t greet him. This confused me since I shook hands with him about 10 minutes earlier. Later that night, I offended a person from Navarrete when I told him I didn’t want to dance and then not one other person asked me to dance! (Although I was only there for about 45 minutes) I have been told not to dance with people I don’t know but for some reason now even the people I know haven’t been asking me to dance! I figure it’s either because (1) I don’t dance well still (2) They think I’ll say no (3) Wandi is always sitting next to me and he gets obnoxiously jealous. Who knows but if I’m there for more than 45 minutes next time (tonight I had to leave early since I was waiting for a phone call) then I guess I’ll have to be proactive and be the one to ask to dance. What is the world coming to, equality?

3/7 Saturday: We’ve had power for about 4 hours now! (and it’s only 3pm!)
Today the men were finally able to continue the work on my wall. The last day they worked on it was Feb 18th- two and a half weeks ago. They were waiting for more supplies and then they were waiting for the rain to die down a little. Although it’s still raining in spurts today, there’s more dry time than rain so I guess that constitutes a work day.

Thanks to the guys working bright and early I got up around 7 am today. I was thinking how I didn’t feel like making them coffee but then when I looked outside and saw them working, I felt bad for them so I made some. I couldn’t help but laugh though as I put the coffee in my brand new cafécito cups- very small, dainty cups with polka dots. I put them on their little saucers and then on some kind of a lid I found in my house to use as a serving tray and did my best to keep a very serious dutiful Doña face as I handed the coffees out. I hid behind a pillar and took a picture though. It’s the little things in life isn’t it?

Tomorrow is the plant class and I’m still undecided if I’m going to go. Not only does it make me mad that the professor shows up whenever he wants but also it’s 1000 pesos. With my wall already putting me in debt, I think that I’ll save the money and read a book on gardening or something. On the other hand, I asked Wandi what he thought about it and he told me that if I already signed up (I did fill out a form the first class…) that it was a responsibility and I should finish it. Ugh, that sounds like the responsible thing to do doesn’t it?

So here’s a piece of good news: earlier Wandi was at my house and then said he was going for a walk and he would be back in two hours. Not only was it weird that he was just going for a walk but it was weird that he didn’t invite me. I asked him what he really was doing when he came back and he told me (in secret so shhhh…) that there is a girl he likes and today was her birthday (she’s 14). He went to her house to wish her a happy birthday. This makes me really happy because I hope that now he’s focused on her and I can stop being so snotty to him. Is there a “friend- zone” people get stuck in here in the DR? I hope so!

3/6 Friday: Keeping busy sin luz ni sol (without power nor sun)
Yesterday I went to the school to get the lists I asked the professors over a week ago to make. I wanted lists of all the students who were interested in the Escojo Mi Vida course. Maybe I should have expected that when I went to the school, not only had only one professor taped the contract up, but out of the six teachers that are there, only one (the same one who posted the contract) had a list prepared for me. All of the others magically misplaced theirs. When I was leaving the director of the school stopped me to talk to me. He asked me when the class was supposed to begin (despite the fact he already wrote it in his planner) and I told him on the 11th. He asked me where I was having it (again, something we had already discussed) and I told him at the school. Wednesdays won’t work for him now because he’s going to have assemblies on Wednesdays. He said we could move the class to every Thursday and then he invited me to the assembly. Sure, why not? I like assemblies at home, I’m sure this will be different but somewhat interesting to watch none the less. Well suddenly now I’m not just there to watch… I’ve got to give a speech! And, it’s not just the students who are going to be there- the parents go to these to I guess. And I also discovered within the last month that the school here in LR has about 10 communities that attend it. I’m not freaking out too much though. Mostly because it’s like a week away and also because how many parents actually go to these? Not many I hope.

After I went home I began to bake a cake. It’s amazing the things that I do while procrastinating. I also cleaned my house, sewed up the holes in my mosquito net and made a very attractive first page to my course. It’s not that I don’t want to prepare for my first Escojo class, it’s just that the first class is all about signing the contract, teaching the rules and the goals of the group. It seems boring and I’m not sure how to present it in a fun way. So, instead of applying myself, I baked and ate a cake. It was good too, everyone told me it was so good I should open a cake business and sell cake! Ha! I told them no thank you and that job was for my other sister. (Plus, technically PCVs aren’t allowed to do anything here for monetary gain although I would consider doing this for fund raising) Rach should move here and then she can open her bakery. There are no crazy health dept people here to tell her the kitchen isn’t up to code, that’s for sure! (Have you seen my “kitchen”? I wash my dishes outside for crying out loud and there isn’t even a sink in my house… I would make Marj, the BCHD Food Inspector, ashamed.)

Sometime after the cake eating, while I was at my house Wani asked me if he annoys me. Really? Did he really just ask me that? Well, he actually told me that he was able to spend a ton of time with me and asked if I liked spending time with him. I answered with an honest, “It depends”. Sure, it was a golden moment, I may have been able to get him to bug off but it’s tricky. Even saying that made me feel a little bad since it seemed like I hurt the poor guy’s feelings a little. I mean like I said, he can be really helpful and this week at least he has been at my house a lot less so he’s not half as annoying. Plus I felt bad telling him right then that he frequently drives me nuts, since it was such an honest question. I decided that a lot of the time he really just doesn’t know he’s being annoying and when I point it out (in a nice way of course) he almost always stops. One time he even asked me to tell him the annoying things that he does because he said how is he supposed to know unless I tell him? (Who does that?!) He then proceeded to tell me all the annoying things I do of course so maybe it was just an opener to what I should stop doing? Who knows? He doesn’t do this stuff in a weird, desperate, creepy way… just states it in a matter of fact type of way. The main thing that’s annoying about him is his personality. That sounds bad but he’s got this always-trying-to-be-tough/showoff personality. I don’t think he tries to have it and I think he’s even like that when he’s alone. Why I think this I’m not sure but I’m just going to keep trying to be open about it. If anything I’ll just be more tolerant of annoying people, a skill I’m sure I’ll use a lot more in life.

This whole week combined I think we have had about 15 hours or less of power. Plus, it’s been raining a lot so it’s cold. Sure, it’s like 58 degrees still but even in my house its breezy all the freaking time. So, the cold was keeping us inside (since it’s obviously windier outside) but the lack of power was making us bored. What did Ernie, Wandi and I do to stay entertained you ask? Play with matches of course. I can now light a match two very special ways and have one other way to keep practicing. Not to say the night went without incident though, I did almost blow us up according to Wandi. One of the special tricks involves kind of throwing the match across the box with your thumb, lighting it in the process and launching it across the room. Well, I got the lighting it part down but the launching it across the room at the same time is still lost on me so it ended up sticking to my thumb while burning. No big deal, I just shook it off and have a small burnt spot on my thumb. The problem, according to Wandi, is that it happened to fly somewhere in the area of my gas tank after shaking it off of my thumb. Wandi then proceeded to lecture me about it. I had to point out of course that it was his idea to play with the matches in the first place (since I’m that mature) and then lectured him on how it’s never a good idea to play with matches. Ya tú sabes. (A favorite saying here which means “Now you know”)

PS: I keep having thoughts of the new group today. Poor guys are going to meet their host families today in Santo Domingo and go spend their first nights there! I’m glad I’ve been here 7 months and don’t have to go through all that again.

3/5 Thursday: Why I can stay
Today marks the day where I am finally no longer a “newbie” as the new group of trainees will arrive in country sometime today. I remember being at the airport in Miami right after staging, bored out of my mind with all these people that I didn’t know, waiting hours for the stupid plane that was delayed more than once thanks to the zillion hurricanes. I really had no idea what I was getting into at the time and to tell you the truth, I prefer it that way. I wasn’t worried at all. The biggest concern I had when I was leaving was how much I was going to miss everyone at home and the state of a relationship I was in at the time. Ignorance is bliss isn’t it? I cried the more due to homesickness/sadness due to leaving when I was flying to Miami from Chicago than the whole time I’ve been here! ( I feel bad for the person stuck sitting next to me on the plane)

In the 28 weeks (as of today!) I’ve been here, I have lived with three host families, only one of which semi understood me most of the time (CBT), slept in countless beds, been ripped off more than I’m sure I realize, been attacked, been stared at and hissed at enough to last me indefinitely, spent the night with a friend in the hospital, seriously contemplated changing the color of my hair from blonde to brown, somehow avoided dengue, almost been robbed by a “taxi” driver who wouldn’t let me out of the car then grabbed my purse, I’ve cried for friends and family at home, maintained the precarious balance between constipation and diarrhea like a pro, felt like a movie star who can’t get a single bit of freaking privacy, felt helpless more than helpful, been more frustrated and uncomfortable than I have ever been in my life, and am so used to not having toilet paper that sometimes when it’s available I forget to use it (don’t worry, I always remember for #2). Yet somehow I’ve learned to deal with it all in stride, one piece at a time, not even realizing it until now. Why is this?

I genuinely thought that what I have been doing really was no big deal and that anyone who wanted to be here could deal with the few annoying issues. After all, what have I really done so far but practiced tolerance in several forms? That’s one reason I was so confused when people started going home, dropping out my group like flies. “What is the big deal?” I wondered. Life is good here, I mean look here we are in the DR- a tropical island in the Caribbean- I’m on a mountain, with great neighbors and a great PC family while back home near Chicago there are ice storms with wind-chills well below zero (although not right now for some reason you stinkers!) That alone is quite the motivation to stay isn’t it? I just didn’t get it. That is, until my recent visit from my friend. I feel a little guilty since I realize now that the poor guy was not warned properly but I guess the truth is that I really didn’t realize there was much to warn about. He put some things in perspective for me.

First, I realize now (finally, I know) that PC isn’t for everyone. My friend was only here for 11 days, and I’m not one to say he would or wouldn’t enjoy PC if he joined but he gave me an understanding of why some people go home early. I recently read that around 35% of all PCVs terminate their service early. I’m sure that the people who went home had the epiphany that PC isn’t for everyone earlier than I and knew what they were doing when they left. Its better to go home than stick it out and be miserable for two years of your life- I remember one person saying that to us all in staging. Although I always said no matter how miserable I was, there was no way I was going home. I mean, I had a freaking going away party! People gave me stuff! I couldn’t go home after that! One girl from my group left, saying “cultural adaptation isn’t for me” and my jaw dropped. (she must not have had a going away party…) Now I understand though. I am able to stay here thanks in part to the fact that I am blessed with a positive attitude. While I don’t see myself as super easy going I guess I am more so than not and also things that irritate “normal” people generally crack me up. I decided that this is an essential quality to have in PC.

Equally important, if not more so since it feeds my positive attitude, is my support. From my fellow PCVs who empathize, to my mom who is always there to listen to me and take my side, to my sister who lets me know all the time she’s thinking of me, to the postings on my wall in facebook which are always there to greet me when I can check it, to the blog comments showing interest in what I’m doing from friends and family at home, to the occasional letter in my inbox in myspace, to the packages and letters I get in the mail, to emails and donations, to the few brave souls who visit me…. All of it makes such a difference. I know for sure that I would have freaked out by now and been overwhelmed like my friend who visited if I was in this alone. Thank you so much to everyone who takes the time to read this and who takes the time to let me know you’re still there in some way or another thinking of me. With out it I may have just been another person saying that I didn’t think cultural adaption was for me.

3/4 Wednesday: Where has all the power gone…? HAPPY 8th BIRTHDAY BEAR!!!
Thanks to the fact that LR hasn’t had power for almost two days with the exception of 2 hours, and my battery is pathetic I will make this short. I just wanted to wish my nephew Isaiah a very happy 8th birthday!!! I will try to call but it’s been raining for two days now and I don’t have very good service when it’s raining. I hope you have a great day and I’ll be thinking of you all day:) Love you!!

PS: Ernesto brought me the receipts today for the work on the wall so far and it’s a sad story. Good thing he told me to ask for more than the 12,000 pesos he originally thought since I asked for nearly 21,000 and that’s already not enough. The materials alone cost 12,500 pesos! So, I gave him all the PC money (the 21,000 pesos) and guess I’ll be using money from home to pay the difference which is about $40 US so far. Basically the only thing left to pay for will be labor which is cheap in this country. The bad part: the wall is only about 2/3 done. I’m a little confused since I think he told me something about each of the guys going to work for a day for free? That seems weird to me. No matter what though, I hope it won’ cost too much more. We’ll see.

3/3 Tuesday: Tiguera in Santiago: am I getting better or just lucky?
After I dropped Jake off at the airport I apprehensively walked out to the public transportation. There are two routes that go to the airport: the PA and the MA. I thought that I wanted the MA, which I hoped would take me by the supermarket. I walked up to the cars and was surprised to see only PA cars. I asked where the MA cars were and two drivers told me that the MA cars don’t drive there anymore. Great. I told them I didn’t want a taxi but needed to get to the grocery store and asked if they knew where to let to out so I could get another car or walk. They told me they did and it would cost me 200 pesos. I laughed and repeated that I didn’t want a taxi, that I wasn’t a tourist and that I wanted to pay the 45 pesos like normal. They looked at each other and laughed saying, Ella sabe (she knows). Then they told me that we would have to wait for at least two more passengers and we would go. It was 9 am, there was no one else there so I told them I would pay 150 pesos if they would take me to the store. One agreed and that was that. If I had called a taxi I would have had to have paid 400 and waited about 30 minutes for them to get there. So, I was pretty happy.

Later that day, I hopped on a bus going to Navarrete and the cobrador asked if I was going to pay for two seats since I had my huge bag full of groceries on the seat next to me (I don’t know if I said this or not but my friend brought me an awesome hiking bag so now I can fit everything I could possibly want in it but the downside is that it was really freaking heavy after I over-did shopping). I told him I wasn’t going to pay for two seats and he told me to put it on my lap. I told him there was still space for more people and when the bus filled up I would put it on my lap. To my surprise, he laughed and said, “Ahhhh! Ella sabe”, and then told me to give him a high five. How weird is that?! Then I was suddenly this super cool chick. Then when we got close to my stop, trying to make small talk I think, he called me a horse. He said that I had long hair like a horse. What a weirdo.

As I rode up the mountain in the rain with Noel I couldn’t help but wonder if my luck is changing or if I am getting better at this whole rubia in the DR thing. Maybe it’s it a mix of luck and knowledge? I can tell you that for a while I was pissy that I was a female here in this country since I get soooooo much unwanted attention. I have since learned to deal with it better. After being with my guy friend for 11 days, I am more aware of the advantages of it. I get such better service and more help too. I think I’ll deal with being an Americana here and work on perfecting using it to my advantage. May as well accept the things I can’t change and learn to use them.