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...
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Sunday, November 23, 2008
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...
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...
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
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!
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!
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
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.
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.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
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.
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.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Saturday, November 1, 2008
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.
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.
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