6. Los Vasquez

I have finally sat down to write this so here it goes....

A lot has gone on since I last wrote.  I finished training in Constanza, swore in as a Peace Corps Volunteer, said goodbye to two familes, gained a new family, visited my site, moved into a new home, moved into my site, spent my first two holidays here (Halloween and Thanksgiving), visited two different beaches, went to a baseball game and much more.  I do not even know where to begin.  Constanza feels as if it were ages ago and although I have only been in my site for about a month, I feel as I have been here forever.  Below are some pictures of some of those things and then I will tell you all about the "here & now".

Spaghetti Dinner w/ youth group. Mayo, ketchup & noodles!!!

Mural w/ our Youth Group in Constanza

Balloons for going away party in Constanza!

My brothers & dad - Santo Domingo family

Brothers and Dona - Santo Domingo family in San Crisbol

Swearing in - Sara, Tina and I

My Santo Domingo family.  My Dona couldn't make it so they brought some of the neighborhood boys.

The youth sector @ Swear-In

It was sad leaving Constanza and now that I am away I miss it even more.  Being in the mountains was unbelievable and also having so many of my friends in such close proximity made it that much better.

The ceremony for our Swear-In was very nice.  The country director, Romeo Massey, Christopher Lambert from the US Embassy, one of our lovely Dona's and a fellow volunteer all spoke.  We sang the national anthem of both the US and the DR and then said our oath.  Many of our host families attended and cheered us on and best of all, we made it through training!

So....

My House

I am officially in my site, Los Vasquez where I will be living for the next two years of my life.  I have been here a month so I am still learning but it feels like I have been here longer.  I guess that is an advantage to living in such a small community...I met everyone on my first day.  I am living with another host family for three months and then I am free to move into my own house if I choose.  To the right is my house.  I live on the top!  I am quite comfortable here, they give me privacy, we have the only toilet in the community and the house is centrally located.  I have a Dona and a Don, Fela and Valentin, and a five year old brother, Aumendi.  Fela and Valentin are older....Aumendi is not their son but their grandchild.  I have yet to figure out where the mother is but supposedly she will be here for Navidad.  I like my family here, my Dona runs the house.  I can't understand anything she says but she seems nice.  She spends her days cooking and cleaning.  It took Aumendi a week or so to warm up to me but now he is good to go.  He can climb trees so fast.  He goes to school from 8:30 to 12:30, comes home, my dona takes off all his clothes and goes and runs around in the street in his underwear for the rest of the day.  Sometimes I will be sitting outside and see him fly by on the back of a motorcycle and a few minutes later he will fly by in the other direction on the back of a horse, he is hard to keep track of.  He gets picked on a lot and I think it is because he doesn't have any siblings so I try to help him out when I can, I am his new sibling after all AND I'm American so he has the coolest sibling in town!  My family has a lot of cows, chickens, roosters and other flying animals that I am not sure exactly what they are.  All the birds walk around in the house.  It is kind of strange to be eating a chicken when the other chickens are bopping around my feet waiting for me to drop them some rice or a piece of their friend.

Water Source

Aumendi

     Los Vasquez is small, but there are more houses than I thought.  It is spread out and the houses are somewhat clumped together.  The main source of income is agriculture.  Everyone has orange trees, grapefruit trees, yuka, plantains, beans and passion fruit.  Rice, tobacco and sugarcane are all pretty prevalent as well.  From my understanding, when they need money, they will go and pick some fruit and go to the bigger towns to sell it.  It is definitely not a steady source of income.  My family has a toilet.  Everyone else has latrines or the great outdoors.  The main problem here is water.  Not a single house in my community has running water.  So I have a toilet but no running water, so I have to bucket flush.  I am getting better at it everyday.  Once I master it I am going to move out and master the latrine.  The water source is probably a 10 minute walk from my house and much much

My road (the men on horses were moving cattle)

further for others.  Not only is it far, it is dirty as you would probably assume from the picture and keep in mind the people who don't have a latrine just go to the bathroom wherever they please.  Anyways, my electricity is pretty dependable, it is only out for about a total of an hour per day.

The first three months in my community is supposed to be easy living (in my terms, not peace corps terms) - not much work, just trying to build relationships and for me, working on my spanish!  I spend a lot of my day at my neighbors house because there are a lot of kids around that area.  We play dominoes, we play their version of cricket, we throw rocks, I try to teach them some english and just chat.  I am hoping to help with english classes in the elementary school next week and soon enough the kids will have Christmas vacation and it will be a good time for me to get to know all of them better and basically just play outside all day.  I am hoping to set up a volleyball and/or cricket tournament over their Christmas vacation and then the rest of my time will be spent doing interviews and focus groups with members of the community for my community diagnostic at the beginning of February.  Oh, and I have been trying to get them interested in building a tree house but they think I am crazy.  I tried to explain to them that kids in America build houses in trees...I am sure you can imagine how that went over.
Los Vasquez is about a 30 minute motorcycle ride from the city of Hato Mayor.  The campo is named after a family, the Vasquez...that being said, I think about 80% of my community is related.  I gave up on trying to figure it out.  The lady that showed me around literally told me that every single person was her cousin...."mi primo, mi prima".  Who knows.  It is a tight nit community though which will make it a great place to work.  The kids have NOTHING to do and I think that is where I will step in (eventually).  Form some sports teams, some youth groups and hopefully build them a basketball/volleyball court someday down the road, for now, I'll stick to grapefruit hunting!

Brandy & Isabelita catching breadfruit

Digging the seeds out of the breadfruit

Breadfruit seeds (pana)

Roasting the seeds.

As always, there are other things I would like to contribute to this blog post but I am not creative enough to incorporate them into my writing without making it 80 pages long so I am going to go ahead and list some other things...

- Every morning my Dona gives me 2 pieces of bread with cafe, hot chocolate milk, water and juice.  I have never had anything different.  Lunch consists of rice, beans, chicken and sometimes pasta and on really bad days I'll get sardines mixed in pasta where I am completely unable to eat around them.  Dinner is eggs, either hard boiled or drenched in oil, with mashed platanos.

The River

- We have a really nice river near by.

-There are TONS of tarantulas where I live and they can jump six feet.

- Everyone thinks my freckles on my arms and legs are bug bites.
- For Thanksgiving, we went to a country club in the capital and had a day full of activities.  Basketball, dominoes tournament, swim relays, a big Thanksgiving dinner, happy hour, a hilarious talent show and then a dance competition.  It was sad not to be home and I missed everyone a ton...and I of course gave thanks to each and everyone of you at dinner, it took forever.  And I got robbed.
- I am really hoping to buy myself a horse or a donkey or possibly a bicycle.  My mind keeps changing but the bike is almost completely out of the running.  I just can't decide.  Horse, donkey.  Donkey, horse.  I have even made myself a pro's and con's list.  We will see.
- It is hot here.  It does get cold in the middle of the night but the days are about 85.  Caribe sol.

That is all for now.  Again, sorry for the delay.  Shoot me any questions and thanks for reading.  Love and miss you all.  And as always, thanks for sending me things, it is always a special treat!

The Caribbean Island I live on.

Thanksgiving

Booo Cubs!!!!

Donkey

Part of the women's group.  I attended their meeting I am pretty sure they spent the whole time gambling.

Some of my favorites.  Brandy, Franlin & Kikito.

Cuti in a tree.

Me with coconuts

Average day, sitting in a plastic chair, Hanging out with the kids.

Isabelita