Feliz Navidad!

From L to R: Luz Maria (host mom), me, Donald (host dad), Angelica (host sister), Gerobal (host brother)


The food.



Otoniel (another host brother) is on the right this time.




The family (minus Gabriel, another host brother)

Now some of you may be confused. I live with Luz Maria, Donald, and Gerobal permanently. Otoniel, Angelica, and Gabriel don't live with us permanently, but visit frequently.


Merry Christmas to everyone! The last week here has been a little slower than normal (which is rreeeaaallly slow) because it's Christmas. But, slow does not mean no weird experiences or cool new cultural understanding:

First, I went to a church service with my host mom. Here, "Christians" are Pentacostal Evangelicals, 7th Day Adventists...it's not an all encompassing word for someone who believes in Jesus Christ. So, I went to the "Christian" church here. First, I remembered to wear a skirt (their women don't wear pants unless they are riding a donkey or motorcycle) and was proud of myself for remembering that. But, then I get to the church (I walked over there with my host mom) and saw my host dad, so I went to sit by him. I was quickly told that that was the men's side of the church, I needed to sit on the women/children's side. No problem. After some opening songs, which I knew none of, they opened the floor for "Free Time." That is, anyone can come up to say something or lead a song. Most of this is no problem as people lead songs that everyone knows and so it goes smoothly. Well, one guy was a visitor and got up to lead a song that no one knew, so he was singing by himself....and he was not good. Then my host dad gets up there (and he is a good singer, so it was fine) and after his song starts talking about his daughter that is with him tonight (ie-me) and all this stuff about me. After I politely said I'll just stay where I'm at, things moved on until my host mom went up and did the same thing. Fine, now that the spotlight has been on me twice in one night, I got to sit back for the hour long sermon, which really didn't talk about much. All in all it wasn't a bad time, but 2 1/2 hours in a church is just a little too long for me.

Then, on Monday I was to go to a church's meal for children. This is the church that asked me to help them with the homework room and the birth certificate project. This guy told me he worked for the Catholic Church. This guy told me that this meal was going to be in the church up the street. This guy MEANT to say he is an adventist pastor and "up the street" as in a completely different town. Still, I did not realize this until two motorcycles showed up to take me and Claire (who I conned into going with me) up to this meal and I began to realize it was the church in town. Then we get there and we're at an Evangelical church. Ok, still, no big deal. Then he starts talking about how I'm going to go give English classes to those children. This wouldn't be a big deal if he wanted it once a week and was willing to pay for transportation, but teaching English isn't my main project and this isn't the town I'm supposed to be working in, so we'll see what we can work out. The food was good, though. Then, Claire and I saw the poorest people either of us had seen since coming into this country. The clothes were tattered, they obviously did not bathe much, and they ate EVERYTHING we gave them. We felt bad for them (they live in a pretty inaccessible part of the mountain, so these two children don't get any help and their mom doesn't want them to go to school). Then, the most well off people there were laughing at how poor they were, that kind of broke my Christmas spirit. Later, someone asked the pastor, quietly, why we were there. He said, I invited them, they can help with some of our projects. The woman replied: and they're rich. He said: yes. That again, broke a little of my spirit and made me wonder...they know we speak Spanish, why say those sort of blatant things right in front of us as if we don't understand?

The last two days have been fun. My host sister came into town. She's about 20 and lives in Santo Domingo and works at a bank. She is extremely nice and helpful. She speaks so clearly and I understand 100% of what she says. Plus, she sticks up for me. When people ask why I don't dance, she tells them they know nothing about American culture. I told her I don't like walking by the Discotech alone because of all the hissing and so she went with me and told off all the men. When people scoff that I'm not looking for a boyfriend, she tells them that they wouldn't be good enough anyway. And, if I don't understand someone, she translates it into clear Spanish, and when someone is being obnoxious with the hand gestures because they think my Spanish is so horrible, she yells at them and tells them my Spanish is probably better than theirs because I don't have a "campesino" (hick) accent. I'm glad she's here, obviously. Last night we had a huge meal of salads, rice/beans, chicken (which we cooked on an open flame outside because the "flavor" is better), empanadas (like a fried hot pocket), and APPLES (which are expensive here). It was great. Today we are just kind of lounging around and later my host sister might "fix my hair." If that happens, I'll take a picture.

Well, that's long enough. On the 27th I am heading to the South to see a friend's parents who are coming for the holiday and then for the New Years I will be on the north coast (Cabarete). Merry Christmas Everyone!

English Speaking Tourists!

Today we had our first English speaking tourists. One was from England and the other from Florida. No one bothered to tell me this until my host mom saw the dancers preparing this morning and said to my project partner, did anyone tell Brittany about this? Of course not, even though they found out last night (which is actually a lot of notice for here), so he came this morning and told me. I saw about to say, since they speak English, didn't you even think about the opportunity this would provide me? Apparently not, but it's ok, but I did get to take them around.

The guy from Florida, Carl, was quite a character. He was your typical old white man in thought, yet he's travelled the world and is now debating moving here. It was nice to talk to someone about world issues for a bit, and explain to him what I'm doing there. It was nice to have some tourists that were happy with the tour and seemed to enjoy it. It will be nice when the tour directors (which are not a part of my organization) start telling them the truth about coffee harvests so the tourists stop thinking they're going to see plantation-like farms and horses and slaves...

I am starting to put together my diagnostic that I will present to Peace Corps in the begining of February. I have most of the information, it's just hard to compile it in useful pieces, and in Spanish.

I got invited to a Secret Santa. I didn't realize really what he was asking me and by the time I did I couldn't think of a good enough excuse. Hopefully he forgets I said yes and doesn't come get me. That seems to happen a lot. Then, I also got invited to the Catholic Church's first "youth supper." This new pastor (the Catholic Church uses the word pastor here) is very on top of things and I hope I get to work with him a lot. He invited me to come early and meet the team and start building some relationships and meet some people to work with. I'm very glad he keeps thinking of me as someone to help him, I think we'll be able to accomplish some good things for the community.

I talked to my Dona, Luz, who has a small store here, about starting business classes for the people who own businesses. She said that they had a person here for 4 weeks that did this (from Infotep, which is a training organization ran by the government) and everyone loved it and learned a lot. So, I'm glad to hear that and will hopefully start these in February after I present my diagnostic. Also, as soon as the mayor brings in the computers for the computer center, I'm going to start teaching computer classes. It's weird, I still don't think I'm a very good teacher, but this is what I am going to end up doing with most of my time. At first, I thought that was bad, but since I'm only here for two years, it's better to teach people who to do things, so they can continue doing them when I'm gone...right?

More Pics

You can see there used to be a house there by the cliff, most of it fell into the river during last year's storm. The edge of the house that's still standing is hanging off the cliff.


There used to be a basketball court here, now it's just sand.

This used to be the high school, those were the windows. Over 9 feet of sand from a landslide nearly covered the entire high school.

By popular demand, a picture of me, taking by me, while taking pictures.

This is the view from the window in Claire's house. Claire is the PC Volunteer closest to me, in a town about 20 minutes away.

Christmas Party

I forgot my camera-Sorry!-so these are just two pictures I stole from someone else of the view from our party location.

Pictures!

The view I wake up to every morning. It's not as grand in picture as it is in real life. Guess you'll have to come visit to see it! Some mornings the fog is so dence you can only see the green house.


This is the view from my porch. There used to be a building there, but they tore it down to start building the new high school.



This is my porch. People come and sit in those chairs to watch the building be torn down from the picture above or the new high school being built. I sit on those chair for at least an hour every day usually.

Interviews and Computers

I finally did my interviews these last two days. The interviews are part of the diagnostic I am conducting about the community. Basically, I asked people what they thought the strengths and weaknesses of the community were and statistical things like their age, number of people that live in their house, and the education levels. It went wonderfully. My project partner set me up with a guide to help me because I am white (and therefore people think I am there to give them money and will not give me honest answers) and because I don't have the best Spanish (so he translated people's ramblings into something comprehensible for me). Thank God for him, he made it so easy. He's probably the best person I've worked with here. He had a plan for us before I even explained everything, where we were going to get the most houses done, and I didn't even have to explain what I wanted, he just kind went with it and did wonderfully. The best part, he's one of the people in the "youth" group (he's 26, but youth here include people up to 30), so I get to use him whenever I want and he's willing to help.

What did I find from the interviews, nothing too unusual. People want a new highway and streets. I'll admit, they're HORRIBLE, it takes and hour to go less than 30 Km. (that's about 18 miles). But, even if the road was good, that wouldn't really "fix" anything in the town, it's not like people can't leave or even choose not to, it would just make things more comfortable, and it's not like I can finance the construction of 30Km of road on a mountain. Second, people want better electricity. That would be nice, but, again, not something I can really accomplish without being President of the country. Next, a hospital. Correction, they have the hospital building, which some foreign NGO built for them. Then the NGO turned it over to the government to staff and equip, which they have never done. This is actually something I could possibly help. There are a lot of NGOs I could ask for help and I could get a meeting with the Secretary of Health and plead my case. My hesitation is, do they really need an entire hospital? I agree that they need medical staff here permanently. Right now they have a Dr. that travels to the town 4 days a week. So, if there is an emergency, that person has to wait over an hour (if they can find someone to take them, there is no ambulance) to get to the city for help. If that person is from one of the surrounding campos, it's more than an hour, if at all. But, I'm not sure an entire hospital STAFFED 24/7 is necessary or cost effective. Lastly, they want jobs. Well, I am an economic development worker, so hopefully I can help here at least.


My next project for the week was thanks to the Secretary of Education. As a political ploy he decided to give computers to the top performers in the graduating high school class. He failed to realize that he gave them ENGLISH versions Microsoft Vista. They are pretty nice computers, 64-bit, 320GB hard drive (not that these kids would ever need 320 GB, they don't have internet to download anything). Well, because they're in English, these kids couldn't use them, so they came to me to figure out how to change them. Apparently, unless you have Vista Ultimate or Enterprise, you cannot change the language (you were supposed to by the correct language in the first place) without upgrading. Obviously these kids can't pay the US$200 to change their computers, so I found some pirate software to change it for them. Well, because the internet here is super slow, it took ELEVEN hours to download, geesh. Now, they have working computers in Spanish. Next problem, none of the kids have ever owned a computer, many have hardly used one. So, my project now is being "on-call" when they want to do things like copy music or change their desktop screen (which is basically all they can do, they didn't even come with Microsoft Works, let alone Office). At least I'm on the good side of the high school's top performers now, I can tap them for help when I need it.

Banana Bread and Strangers

So my Dona and I finally made our banana bread in her dutch oven. It's not a dutch oven like the charcoal using cast iron ones that people think of, it's an aluminum one made for use indoors over a propane stove, for people who don't have ovens (like us). Most people here don't have ovens, or if they do, they don't use them. Baking is practically non-existant. The banana bread was something my boss told the women's group here that we could do and they could sell to the tourists (why she put this idea in there head, I have no idea), but I thought I better make sure I could successfully make it in a dutch oven before showing the entire women's group what I failure I am (that is, if they could ever get a meeting together). The bread was successful, a little burnt on the outside, but nothing too bad, definately edible. Now comes the next problem, every one tried it but no one will eat it! They all liked it and I was like, have some more, and they just keep saying that it's my food. I find this so strange because this is such a sharing culture, if you have a hard candy you bite off half and give the rest to the stranger sitting next to you, yet my own "family" refuses to eat a lot of the bread because it's "mine"...go figure. I will now eat an entire loaf of banana bread by myself.

The second new thing is how weird it is for me with the community porches. This random guy keeps coming up to our porch and sitting, talks for a bit, and leaves. He sits there even if no one is out there with him or even if the door is closed and no one is home. I figured he was a friend of my family....apparently not. My Dona told me today that when I leave make sure I put my computer away because she doesn't know the man sitting on the porch! I was thinking, if you don't know him, tell him to go away! That is not the culture here, if he wants to sit on the porch, that's fine, but you need to make sure all your valuables are put out of site, just incase the guy is a theif. I just want to be like, your porch is part of your property, it's not a community park, you can kick people out...but that would be rude. So, I am off to meet with my project partner, with my computer safely tucked away in my locked room.

Deconstruction & projects

They have started destructing a building across the street from my house in order to build a new high school. This is a big deal because our municipality has the worst school system in the country (so you can imagine how bad it is). The problem is, a new high school isn't really going to make the school system better, at least not in the amount of kids that stay in school or how much they learn, but that is for another discussion. My recent discovery is how you tear down a building in rural DR. First, you call the entire town to come watch. Fine, except in this culture, everyone's porch is for whatever passerby, so my porch is suddenly so crowded with people (as it has the best viewing spot) that there would be no way to leave my house if I wanted to. Then, they procede to knock down the walls (made of tin) and doors. Fairly normal, but all done by hand, there is no power equipment to do this sort of stuff. This was day one. Then, little by little, the concrete foundation is starting to be beaten down into polvo (dust). Again, this is done by men with hammers, not a mechanical jack-hammer. There doesn't seem to be any method to it either, it seems pretty random, people will just come up and start hammering at the concrete until they get tired and quit.

Next, the trees. They need to get rid of the trees on this property because the high school will be too big. I just kept thinking about how much protest there would be in the states if people cut down these trees (about 5 of them), but here no one cares. Then, they start a small fire around the roots of the tree to get them to turn to ashes on one side (could you imagine this in Custer?) Then, they hack the other side of the roots with an ax (without eye protection, OSHA would have a field day) and tie a rope around the tree to pull it down. I asked why they didn't tie the rope to a truck and just drive to pull it down and they said finding and relying on a truck driver to show up would be too much work. So, they do it all manually. Then, they burn the tree. Needless to say my house has been full of smoke lately and my cough has not subsided.

Good News: a pastor of one of the churches came up to me today and asked if I'd be willing to help him with some projects. One is a "sala de tarea", which is basically a room for kids to come get help with their homework. Many youth volunteers do this, and even though I'm not a huge fan of kids, organizing something like this would be fairly easy and helpful for the kids. The other project is for "actos de nacimientos"...AKA birth certificates. This is a huge problem in this country. If you don't have a birth certificate you can't go to school, get a bank account, or join many organizations. Getting a birth certificate can be fairly easy...if both your parents have one (meaning they were born here and aren't Haitian) and take the hospital slip within two years to the "courthouse."

The problem comes in a couple forms, first, you either need both your parents or your father to sign for you, you cannot be just a single mom and get a birth certificate. I was told this was not a put-down to mothers but to try and get father's to take responsibility. Well, that doesn't really work, there's no incentive to take responsibility for your child, and really, only the child is hurt in this process. Additionally, many people live very far from a "courthouse" to take care of this and getting to one is difficult, so they just never do it. It is not an automatic process like in the US. So, if you wait to do this until the child is older than 2, it costs money (apparently "a lot", but I don't know how much). When you kid wants to go to school you realize you should have gotten him a birth certificate a while ago. So, we are going to try and do a "drive" to get some kids their birth certificates so they can go to school and have a more normal life. Why kids should be punished for their parents lack of responsibility, I don't know, but that seems to happen a lot everywhere.

Thanksgiving and Gripe

Happy Thanksgiving! I know it's a little late but I thought I would share what I did for Thanksgiving. Nearly all the volunteers in the country, approximately 200, come to the capital for a huge party. We rent out a country club and have a Thanksgiving style feast. Then there is dancing and a bunch of other activities. This is a big deal because it's such a change from eating rice and beans and speaking Spanish. It was nice to be able to share with a bunch of people and eat good food and just be American for a couple days. I hope you all had as much fun as I did.

Gripe is the word for a typical American cold. This is what all the people in my campo have thought that I have had for the last 3 weeks. I have been taking home remedies for a few weeks which range from a mixture of honey, lime, and onion to things like not washing my hair or doing anything with bleach. Needless to say, these didn't work. So I came to the doctors here and they put me on some real medicine to hopefully get rid of this wretched cough. All the coughing has tired out a muscle on my side and now every time I cough it feels like someone is stabbing me with a knife...lucky me.

On to some good stuff: My Computer Came! Thanks to my Grandma I got a computer to replace my old one that died. Additionally I got a bunch of packages from all my great family and friends from home, chocolate, poptarts, movies, baked goods, a bunch of great stuff. I really appreciate it all and I will be eating a ton of good chocolate and watching American movies in my down time in these upcoming weeks.

Today I am going to talk to an English class at a University in Santo Domingo before I head back to Los Cacaos. This will be interesting and fun, and hopefully I can pick their brains on the best and worst practices in English teaching for them and that should help me with my English classes in my site. Back to work...

Birthdays and Crabs

I went to my first birthday party here on Thursday. It was for my project partners twins, they turned 18. The girl, Lina, is my "best" friend here, she helps me out a lot and she's taking English courses, so I help her a lot as well. The party was a surprise, and it was really fun. Then, they decided to play a game. The game was this: a person read strips of paper that had things people had to perform on them, mostly dancing. For example, one of them was for the twins to dance with eachother, one was for my project partner to dance with his daughter. Then there were things like, the people wearing glasses or red shirts, or things like this. There was one that said, the person with the lightest hair, by default, me. Then there was one about the person with the straightest hair, again, me. I wiggled my way out of that one, but it was a little humiliating.

Then, my host brother got crabs from the river for us to eat. They are small, but good. We cooked the whole thing and then, ate it. First, trying to crack those suckers open with no tools was hard. Then, once you did get them open, the shells aren't like ocean crabs and you'd get little pieces of shell everywhere, like sand. Then, after you eat the legs, you tear into the body. It was at this point that my host brother realized my crab was carrying baby crabs in her tail. At first he was like, "that sucks that we killed all those babies", then, he was like, "but you're lucky because you get to eat them". HA! I was not about to eat a bunch of baby crabs that looked like head-lice. So, he did. It was nasty. Then, I busted the body apart and ate the meat on the inside. He asked me why I wasn't eating the rest, meaning the guts and fatty stuff, I said, I refused to eat that but he could help himself....and he did. My stomache had turned by then and I was done eating crab for the night, but we still have a lot of crabs left to cook. Plus, he is going to get some people together to go crab hunting one night, so that should be fun.

Until next time...

Rats, English, and Luz

Rats: I think there may be one living in my box spring. My bed has a box spring, a mattress, and then a mattress pad on top. A few nights ago I started feeling like something was running through my mattress. I turned on the light and it stopped. Then I felt something tugging on my mosquito net. I realize, it's probably a rat. So I open my mattress and realize, thank God, it can't be living in there, but there is a hole in my box spring and it's probably living there. Since my mosquito net was tucked between the mattress and the box spring, it was probably trying to chew some of it off for bedding. We were going to kill it with poision but the thought of a rotting rat in my box spring isn't that appealing. So, we are continuing to try and trap it, but he's a tricky little bugger.

English: The other volunteer near here and I started our community English classes on Sunday. We still teach in the high school, but this is for whoever wants it, including high school students who want more. We have a huge turnout (like always for the first meetings of things like this), including the principal and the high school English teachers (who, in reality, don't speak a lot of English) The teachers insisted that we start a class just for them, because they want to learn the methodology of teaching English. We relented on the condition that all the adults take one class and the younger students take another. Here comes our two problems: 1-Neither Claire or I know the "methodology" of teaching English, and in reality there are only two teachers that need to know this. Plus, as they already teach English, the methodology should already be known, right? 2-Since we had so many students, we wanted to split it into two classes, but to us, the logical way to split them was to put the students who already had some English knowledge in one and those who don't in another. They thought it was smarter to put adults in one and students in the other, never mind some adults know nothing and some teach English and some students know a lot and some have never been exposed. Heaven forbid a teacher sits in the same class as a child. So now, some of them will be pushed to go faster than they should and others will drop out because they are being taught stuff they already know. Will be interesting.

Luz: Translation, light. When the lights go out here the saying is "La luz se fue", meaning "the light went out." The last few days have been one storm after another and the "luz" has "se fue" a ridiculous amount of time, as has the internet. It is still shocking to me, even though the lights go out all the time here, people are still almost shocked when it happens a lot. I sit on the porch and watch the high school kids cheer (They go to school at night and if there isn't any light or it goes out, school is cancelled).

Thanksgiving is in a week and I am super excited. The volunteers put on this huge feast in the capital, so I actually get Thanksgiving type food!

Being Prepared for Anything

At this point in my service, you'd think I'd be better at being prepared for anything. Usually, I am, these past two days, I have not been.

Sunday morning I was working on the PPS grant when one of my project partners came in to see if I wanted to go take pictures of the walking path that they wanted money from PPS to repair. It was 9:30 and Claire was going to be there sometime in the afternoon, so I thought, yes, perfect, I have plenty of time and I need these pictures. So I hop up and go with him. We get in a truck and drive for an HOUR through this windy road. Still, optimistic, I think I will hop out, take a picture or two, and come back. No, now we have to walk the ENTIRE path because he wants me to see the end (granted, it's beautiful and the end is also in need of a picture). Keep in mind we are walking a path that they need a grant to fix because it is so trashed from the storm and I am wearing flip flops because I thought I would just take some pictures and go. It takes another 2 hours to get up and back down the path and then another hour to get back into town. It is now 1:30. I arrive home to find Claire who came down to eat lunch with us at 11 sitting there. I felt awful, she was at least used to this.

Then, the whole reason Claire came down was to go the river as mentioned in the previous post. So I get everyone together and then the search for the way to get there starts. Finally we get together 4 motorcycles and jam 2 to 4 people on each. As we're driving up I am riding with a 3 year old who gets car sick and starts puking all over the moto. Then, since the storm, no one knows where the best places to swim are. We drive around for an hour before finally heading back to almost where we started to swim there. By this time it is 4:30 and kind of chilly. We all froze to death as we sat in the waterfall (you need to swim by the waterfalls because they carve out a deep enough pool, the rest is too shallow). Then, wet, we drove home in the dusk, freezing our butts off.

On Monday I found out I should be going to Azua with my project partner and some youth to a youth conference. My project partner assures me that as we are leaving at 7AM, we will be back early and I will be able to finish the grant that was due Tuesday (today). I did not realize Azua is a 2.5 hour drive, at least, from here and that when he said "temprano" he meant before dark. As it turns out we didn't even arrive home before dark, more like 8:30. What was incredibly funny though was the guy who was presenting on the environment was an imported white guy wearing a STURGIS BIKE RALLY t'shirt! I was laughing so hard and asked him where he got it, apparently his friend went and brought it back for him. I wish I had my camera, it was so funny.

Today, when I tried to work on the grant, I had the unpleasant surprise that last nights rains knocked out the internet so I could not get the updates I needed. So, instead, I started washing my clothes (which, to say the least, is a process that cannot just be left if interrupted). Then, about half way through, my partner called me that the internet was one and he wanted this sent ASAP. I half-assed the washing of the rest of my clothes and left to use the internet while it was still working.

Either way, I strung together the grant today and while I am not that confident in it because it is not exactly on the lines of what PPS wants, we will see. They have been confident in my community before so maybe the familiarity of their success will push us over into the finalist round. That would be a nice early big win for me.

As for now I am listening to my host brothers list of American music which includes the likes of the Backstreet Boys, Hillary Duff, High School Musical, and a lot of Alicia Keys, the pop princess of the DR right behind Shakira. Can't wait to see what tomorrow brings.

One week down

Well, this is officially the end of my first week. Some comments:

The grant issue is hard. I do not speak the best spanish and everything is in spanish. Plus, the people working on the grant with me are not all on the same page and I am really thinking their proposal is not what the UNDP has in mind and we will not get this grant. I guess we will see. It is also hard because we only had a week to put this together.

My computer crashed. The harddrive is gone. I got nothing saved. I need to buy a new one. This majorly sucks.

I am going to start teaching English to my own class next Sunday. Should be interesting. Hopefully they pay attention.

Today I went with Claire (the PCV next to me) and her environmental youth group to a small waterfall in the river to swim and pick up trash. It was fun, but it continues to amaze me how different our towns are even though they are very close to eachother. For example, most of the men that came with us (to help carry the trash, but more to gawk at the girls) were fairly sleazy, by American standards anyway. None of the older men could read or write. The youngs girls (12 to 13 years old) all had boyfriends that were older than 18 and they were expected to marry at 14 or 15. In my town, nearly everyone can read, the men are polite, and many people my age are just getting married or waiting.

Tomorrow my host brother, Claire, and some other friends here and I are going to another part of the river. At least everything here is beautiful. Hopefully I will get a new computer fairly soon and be able to send more pictures.

My Dona Ramona

This is my Dona from Santo Domingo, Ramona, and me on our swearing in day.

And I'm Off

I am officially a volunteer. I know what you're thinking: "What the hell have you been doing down there for 2 months if you're not a volunteer?" Training. And now, it's done. I'm headed to Los Cacaos (see previous post) for two years in about two hours. By myself. With my luggage. Going to be pretty horrible. Wish me luck.

I actually have a pretty big week planned. On Monday I will go back to San Cristobal to meet with another coffee association and have a meeting about a UNDP grant that my association is going to apply for. The preliminary paper is due on Friday and this is the first meeting about it, so I'll be super busy (hopefully) helping prepare that. My spanish will definately be tested. My knowledge of development will be tested as well. The grant is super competitive so keep your fingers crossed for me.

On Tuesday our first real group of tourists comes to take the tour. The test tours have not gone so well, I'm hoping that this one will go better. If not, we can start making adjustments. It will be interesting to see. Also on Tuesday, my boss is coming out to see how things are going at my site and make sure it's all going OK.

Also on Tuesday is elections. I am going to try and find some place with cable (not likely) or hover by our radio and hope the electricity doesn't go out and the signal stays strong. Also, not likely. If anyone would like to text me the results, I can get them Wednesday when I go to a neighboring town with cell phone service (By the way, my new number is 1-829-990-2364).

Last night we went downtown to an American-ish bar for Halloween. It's not really a big holiday here, but it's starting to catch on. I did not dress up since most of my clothes are at my site, but some other people did. I also took some pictures (which aren't up here yet because my computer is being stupid) to show my sister that we celebrated her birthday without her since she chose to go to London instead of here. Look for those later.

I have a feeling it will be awhile before I'm on here again (unless, miraculously, the internet starts working at the office again). Keep your fingers crossed.

Los Cacaos

That is my official assignment. I will be working with a Coffee growers association. They are pretty on the game with their coffee, they export and are organicially certified, but they are starting a ¨Ruta de Cafe¨ tour for tourists in Santo Domingo that they need help on. On top of that their community was devestated by hurricanes last year and they still need helping getting things back to normal. I have a lot of ideas and am anxious to get started.

The downside: The town, as of now, has no cell phone service or internet. They promise me that in a couple weeks, at the most, there will be both. I have my doubts.

The upside: The area is gorgeous. It is a mountain covered in rain forest. Also, I am lucky to be place really close to another volunteer and we already have collaboration ideas. It will be nice to work with her.

So, besides not being able to communicate with the outside world, it should be a good next two years. The family I live with is nice and their son works as the assistant to the mayor, so I have some connections with him too. Aside from being super bored some times (I am going to put down a lot of books), the last few days went well and I am excited to finish up in Santo Domingo and go back and work there. Hopefully I can eventually put up pictures too.

Also, my cell phone number is going to change. It should work for this week, but I´m getting a different carrier, one that is actually supposed to start service in my area....eventually.

Weekend Update with Brittany

This is the waterfall I jumped off in the last blog....
We went to Higuerito to an artisan’s fair put on by the Secretary of Culture. It was really interesting because the entire thing was basically coordinated by a Peace Corps volunteer in my sector (CED). The town is known for its artisans and she works with a group of them there, so she put on this fair and the Secretary of Culture got involved. Then he declared Saturday as the National Day of Artisans. There were all the artists and their works and we also got to see some of their shops and see some of them create their pieces. Most of it is clay pottery or clay figurines. Then there was a community band and some baton twirlers and lots of music. It was cool to see such a huge celebration that was put together by a PCV. She is leaving this year and someone from our group is probably going to take her spot and continue working with the artisans.

We had our final interviews with our director and now we are all super anxious to find out where we are going. All the other sectors (health, youth, and water) know where they are going to live the next two years, but we don’t! I’d rather her take her time and put us in the sites that are right for all of us, but I am so anxious to find out what I will be working in and where in the country I will be living.

On Saturday we leave to go back to Santo Domingo. It will be such a pain because we have to take our luggage on public transportation. Then, on Tuesday we meet our project partners from the communities we will be living in and leave for the rest of the week to our sites. It’s hard to believe training is almost over and we will all be leaving each other soon. It’s going to be hard to be by myself at first. I'll update you all on Monday (hopefully) when I get my site assignment!

El Scorpio

My name is Brittany. I kill scorpions. Those of you that know me from home know that I am terrified of scorpions. I hate scorpions and bees. That’s it. No other animals really bother me except scorpions and bees. As Amy and I were walking home the other night we passed Jesse’s house. We hear him yell, “Hey guys, there’s a scorpion in my bed!” We rush inside to find him alone, sans Dona, with a scorpion caught in his mosquitero. He had tried smashing it with his helmet against the mattress, but that didn’t work. His pocket knife was right there so I took it (some how my fear of scorpions wasn’t there) and I impaled the little guy. Still refusing to fully die, Amy slid a hard object under him so I could squish him even more. It was a great experience even though I probably won’t have the same valor if the scorpion is any bigger or not caught in a mosquitero.

We took an amazing trip to a near by campo called Los Buoeys (that’s probably not how you spell it, but it’s close). There is a Peace Corps Volunteer near there working with ecotourism. They are building cabanas on the valley near a hiking spot. We walked on the trail and it ended in this gorgeous waterfall. We got to swim in the pool under the waterfall and climb up the waterfall and jump in! I didn’t get a good picture of me actually jumping (I have before and after shots), but I think one of our professors did so I’ll share that when I get it. The whole ride out there and back was beautiful as well. Sitting in the back of a truck, driving through palm tree covered mountains and overlooking a valley is amazing, especially when it’s your JOB! It was a great day at the office.

Last weekend I got to visit an IT volunteer in a town near Santiago. I was glad to see that Santiago is much more pleasant than the capital. I had a great time and got to eat BURGER KING, along with awesome BBQ chicken and French toast. I can’t wait to get my own place and eat American food again!

Espuma and Fevers

Since the last time I wrote I have gone to Noche, Noche, Noche de Espuma, had a fever and vomiting, rode in the back of a pick-up around a mountain side on pretty sketchy roads, and gone to the Hermanas Maribel museum.

Noche de Espuma should have been called Noche sin Espuma. The foam machine barely worked. We got the 200 peso entry fee down to 100 pesos and Marissa and I scored some free drinks by looking American (I was told by a family I looked like Barbie), so all was not completely lost. At the end of the night Amy and Kelly got hot dogs from a street vendor and we got in a taxi to go home. They played American dance music the whole time, from “Jump Around” (think 1994ish) to “Get Low.” While Dominicans don’t know the words to “Get Low” they sure know how to. I have never seen so much “sex on a dance floor” in my life... even in American clubs.

The combination of staying out late at Noche de Espuma and walking to all the barrios that day (probably about 6 miles or so in the Caribbean sun) made me an exhausted and dehydrated person the next day. I threw up my breakfast and spent the rest of the day in bed with a fever. It wasn’t all the bad because it passed that night and I felt a lot better the next day, but you feel like an animal in the zoo when you get sick. Your Dona tells everyone (even people that call from far away) that the American is sick. Then they discuss why you are sick and how you can get better. One thing that was sweet (and a weird) was my Dona blessed my stomach by saying prayers to it and making a cross symbol over it.

We went to a couple other neighboring campos farther up the mountain and saw some agro-forestry projects. They were very interesting and I definitely wouldn’t mind working in that field. The most fun part, though, was riding around to these farms (not like you’re thinking, when I say farm, I mean a patch of land with a TON of different kinds of plants on it, not like corn fields you see in the US.) We rode in the back of pick-ups (normal enough if you’re from South Dakota), but through really rocky roads that were steep and windy. It was a lot of fun.

Then we went to the house/museum of the Hermanas Maribel (the Maribel sisters that were assasinated by the dictator Trujillo.) It was really cool to see that kind of history. The sisters were incredible and we got to meet the one surviving sister. The story is (if you don't know) that when Trujillo (a pretty evil dictator here from 1930s-1960s) was getting really bad, these sisters started getting into a resistance movement. They were jailed and an international protest got them out, but not their husbands. They went to see their husbands in prison and on the way home Trujillo's men stopped them, killed them, and then sent the car over a cliff to make it look like an accident. People realized it wasn't and that was the unifying factor that got the resistance to finally kill Trujillo. International Women's Day (March 8th) is set on that day in memory of the day these sisters were killed. One sister, Dede, did not go on the trip and survived and turned their house into a memorial museum, and we met her today.

Saturday I leave to spend the weekend in a pueblo near Santiago with another volunteer. Should be interesting because she didn't give me the greatest directions....wish me luck!

Update!

Well, I finally got to some internet!

We've had 4 people leave. One because of medical issues and the rest because they didn't like it. It kind of makes you feel better that you're making it.

I had a spider chilling above my bed for a while, so I named him Henry. He was pretty big, naming him made me feel more comfortable with him stalking me. He finally left, and I'm a little sad. I liked having a pet.

We went to the business plan competition in Santo Domingo. It was very inspirational. The kids who won were so excited. They all received money to start their business and make a life for themselves. One guy, who was my favorite, is buying instruments for his musical school on the Haitian border. That's very inspirational because the Haitians here are very marginalized and looked down upon, so it was great to see a Haitian win.

Tonight I am going to test my Spanish skills by trying to get us into a foam party for less than we're supposed to pay. I'm hoping it works out because we are all poor! It's nice to have weekends free to hang out with people even if it gets a little boring at times.

I am going to be giving a charla (kind of like an informal lecture) to the women's group here in Juan Lopez over marketing and other business skills. That should be fun, they are very receptive to us. Then I will be working with a greenhouse, helping them take out a loan to expand their business. It's nice to be able to apply my skills.

Next weekend I am going to visit a volunteer near Santiago for the weekend. That should be a blast but I am going by myself and she didn't give me the greatest directions, so hopefully I find it OK. We will also be doing a eco tourism expedition and going to a folk art/music fair in the next couple weeks. We'll be very busy. Hopefully I'll be able to get down on the internet at some time. Hope you all are doing well!

Juan Lopez

Well, I FINALLY got internet here, for a little bit. It´s SO slow, I won´t write too much or too often. I have pictures because it is BEAUTIFUL here, but you´ll have to wait until I get faster internet. We are up in the mountains, but the mountains are covered in palm trees and plantain trees, it´s gorgeous. I think we may get to walk up one of the mountains on the weekend.

We are actually doing a diagnostic now. We are working with communities (mine is Los Comacho) and I will be helping them do a budget and figure out how much they can take out in a loan and at what percent to help them expand. It´s cool because the entire community is very excited about this. It´s a definate change from the city, but a very good one. Things are cleaner, the people are much more nice, and we are actually able to do hands on things. I am having a great time here.

The Spanish is coming, slowly. My family can understand me, but they have a weird accent up here I´m having trouble picking up on. My Don is super nice and does everything to try and help me learn. He shuffles me around the house and outside to get in on good conversations or to watch the news or a movie in Spanish. He´s incredibly nice.

The down side to here, besides the internet and phone situation, is that the trainees are relatively far from eachother. I like the people I am close to, but I don´t get to see everyone and that´s a big change. I guess that´s how life will be in the campo.

That´s all for now, hopefully I´ll have more exciting things to write in a week. Next week we return to the capital for a bit to help with a business plan competition. Should be interesting!

Change of Plans

Thanks to Hurricane Ike, we are no longer going to our site visit today. Most bridges are washed out and it's still down pouring. Kind of stinks. Instead, we are hanging out here and will *hopefully* leave for Juan Lopez for 5 weeks on Thursday. Stay tuned...

Ike

Well, Ike hit us decently hard last night. Lots of downed trees and flooding. Everything is fine healthwise for us, no one is dead from my group (although there probably are Dominican deaths), but because there was so much flooding and downed trees, the major highways are obstructed and bridges are washed out. That sucks because tomorrow we were supposed to all go our separate ways for three days to basically have fun with another volunteer. Now, that's probably not going to happen. So we are stuck here, which is quite boring.

If we do end up going out tomorrow, I won't have internet until I get back (Thursday night), and then we move Friday to Juan Lopez (a town near Moca) for 5 weeks. I don't know what the internet situation will be like there, so don't expect much. There I will be with just economics volunteers and we will learn and work with local community groups, so I will have lots to talk about then...if I have internet. It will definately be more rural up there and I will have even less electricity and less water and probably no flushing toilet. Welcome to the campo.

On the positive side, today was the first day I walked all the way to work without getting hit on. I think most people were not hanging out outside because the storm. Good for me!

Old Hospital

This is an old hospital run by nuns. Obviously they don't use it anymore, but it used to be a big deal. Now, it's mainly used for wedding pictures and receptions. Cassie, want to move your wedding to the DR?

A few more pictures

An Old Fort
Christopher Columbus
One of two places Columbus could be buried.
The "first" historian
An old Monestary.

We didn't end up going to the carwash, I just stayed in and talked to my "uncle" all night. He's a priest from Puerta Plata and was visiting. He spoke English fairly well and was helping me with Spanish. It was nice to be able to have a conversation in both with someone who understood what it was like to be learning a language.

Gustav, Hannah, and Ike, Oh My!

Well, hurricanes have kind of put a damper on our plans. Instead of going to Enriquillo this weekend (to visit an economics volunteer ON THE BEACH), I will now wait out the rest of Hanna and Ike in Santo Domingo. Hopefully I can get out there the begining of next week. Because of the storms, we are also out of wireless at the training center, so I will have to wait till it comes back to post more pictures (too many bad virus stories from public computers).

Our training class had their first Dengue Fever victim. She´s in the hospital because her fever was getting too high, although she said the pain isn´t THAT bad. I guess they can´t give you pain meds either (not sure why), so you just have to ride it out.

I saw my first giant poisonious cien pies (centipede) yesterday. It was in our classroom! It was probably about 6 inches long and the width of a dry-erase marker. It was hissing at us, very scary. We got a stick and removed it.

This morning my Doña bought bananas from the banana guy for her little store. She unpacked the box and found TWO double bananas, they look like siamese bananas, fused together along the entire length...really cool. She said they are very rare and she´s lucky she got two in one package....weird.

Tonight we are going to a carwash. During the day, car washes are just that, car washes. At night they turn into kind of an outdoor bar area. Hopefully it´ll be so loud people don´t try to talk to me in Spanish.

Wireless! & some pics.

The first governor of the island.
A museam that was too expensive to go into...I'm poor.
Another old building.
This is the ceiling inside the building of important General tombs.

The Catholic Cathdral had a bunch of side praying areas.
A guard and the eternal flame at a tomb building for famous generals
The main Alter
The eternal flame and the guard, much like Arlington, but inside.
A famous sundial.

Another side alter.
Another
Another
Another
The main Alter at the Cathedral

Hello everyone, I have wireless at the training center! So, during the week, I can get on most mornings (probably 2 or 3). So, Monday, I will put up the pictures from the weekend. We plan on sticking around the central part of the capital for a while, so hopefully I can get some good pictures. For now, here are some pictures of the Catholic Cathedral and the Colonial Park area. Some of them are kind of dark.

Transporte Publico

Well, we had our first public transportation experience yesterday. It is CHAOS down here and really scary. The system makes sense, but it´s very confusing if you don´t know what´s going on. There are no route numbers or stops or anything like that, you just have to know what you can take to get where. There are ¨guaguas¨, which are little busses that fit about 50 people and go about the entire city. Then, there are carro publicos, which are regular small sedans that fit SIX passengers and one driver...very croweded, and they go less distance. Either way, I think I can navigate to the city and to the other barrios around here. Thank god I don´t have to do that every day. Saturday we are going into the city (by ourselves) to go on a tour with a famous Dominican historical author. It should be really interesting and I should get some pictures. I will hopefully be able to post them on Sunday (If there is electricity, it´s been going out a lot lately).

Also, I´m debating the pros and cons of bucket baths (splashing yourself with water from a bucket when the running water quits.) Bucket baths don´t seem to get you as clean because there is lack of water pressure and you aren´t suppose to use more than 1.5 gallons, but the water is room temperature. The running water is cold, so that stinks, but the pressure is more so you get cleaner. Either way, I both aren´t as great as warm showers in the US, appreciate it!

Mi Familia

My family down here is pretty cool (besides that they don´t talk to me!) My Doña is a great cook and always feeds me and my host sister (who is about 30 or so) is a teacher of 1st grade, so she helps me a little. Her two kids are 5 and 8. The 5 year old girl is named BRITTANY! That makes for a very confusing time for me! The 8 year old, Robero, doesn´t talk to me much. Yesterday we went to see my doña´s father, who is very sick and 98. He is literally wasting away and it was very sad to see. We are experiencing Tropical Storm Gustav right now, that will probably turn into a hurrican soon. It´s pretty sweet. The streets are flooded. I am in the lowest Spanish class (level 2 on an competency scale) and have to get to a 5 by week 10...hopefully I do. I will be a 10 by the time I´m done, which is fluent. Yay! Wish me luck

Vivo en Santo Domingo, Pantoja

Well, I am living with a family in Pantoja, a suburb of Santo Domingo. Training is hard when it comes to the Spanish part, but the rest is fairly easy. Total immersion into the language may be the "best" way to learn, but it is very frustrating when you can´t even talk to the people living with you. I am by far the worst at Spanish, everyone else had to pass a language test before coming, but since they switched my program so late I did not...I probably would not have passed. I feel like I miss a lot of information because I cannot understand the language. The country is beautiful and the streets are dirty. My family is nice, the Doña, Ramona, runs a little store out of the house. Her daughter and her two grand children live there as well. Her daughter is a teacher and speaks a little English, she is very helpful. The man upstairs speaks pretty good English and says he gets an English newspaper!! Hopefully on Monday I can know a little more about the world. Anyway, off to try and navigate a very loud, confusing city, speaking a language I barely grasp (I am not alone, other volunteers that speak Spanish are with me, thank god.)

And we're off...

We leave for the DR tomorrow! We have to get up super early to do so and be at the airport and ungodly amount of time before our plane leaves, but we're going! We get in the DR about 2:30pm or so and then we are met by our country director to head to a little retreat for the rest of the day and to spend the night. Then the next day we do some more administrative type stuff and meet our host families that night so we can start living with them. I'm most nervous about that part, not because I think I won't like them, but because they are the people that I will have to speak only Spanish to first. That's my first real language challenge, they speak only Spanish, I speak enough to get myself into trouble. We also start our vaccines, and while I thought I was ahead on them, I realize that I'm really not. I will get a bunch of vaccines that we don't really get in the US because they aren't as relevant, and the Peace Corps gives them to be cautious, such as menengitis and influenza. We also get rabies, typhoid, Hep A&B, MMR, Polio, TD, and a bunch of others. My arm will be sore. Hopefully I will get some good pictures soon, but it doesn't sound like I will have access to internet for a while to post them. Wish me luck!

Leaving Home

I officially leave home tomorrow morning. First, I go to Miami for three days. I will meet up with the other Dominican Republic trainees there (I guess around 30 of them) and we will do orientation and get all our vaccinations in order, administrative stuff. Then we leave to the Santo Domingo, DR on the 21st. I will be there for 10 weeks, living with host families (I believe two, one for the first 5 weeks and one for the second). I will be doing language, culture, and job training there. Then I get assigned to a field site and head there for the next two years. Hopefully I'll be able to get on here and post of pictures and videos, so check back in a few days and see what I've been able to put up. As always, you can comment or send me e-mail at borg.brittany@gmail.com

My address for the first 10 weeks is:
Brittany Borg, PCT
Cuerpo de Paz
Av Bolivar 451, Gazcue
Apartado Postal 1412
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

It takes mail 3-4 weeks to get to me and don't mail anything that can't fit into a bubble mailer envelope.

Keep me in your thoughts as I travel to Miami tomorrow, they couldn't find a good flight, so I will be travelling for about 14 hours before I get there, if there are no delays!

First Post

Well, I'm starting this now, so I can learn how to write these the best way before I leave to find something to write about. Therefore these first few will probably be quite boring, so feel free to skip them. This will be mostly about the trips I'm taking and the things I experience in the Peace Corps. Hopefully, I'll be able to put up pictures and videos so you can see the things I'm seeing.