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.