10. March

It is now March and time seems to be flying by. Again, it has been a busy month between starting a few projects,vacationing with my family, attending another conference and now I am in the capital getting over pneumonia.

At the beginning of the month I had a wonderful, week-long vacation. The best part about it was that I got to see some of my family - my mom, my dad and one of my brothers, Matt (I did miss the rest of you boys and you too Lauren!). We traveled up to the Samana peninsula where we had rented a house and spent the week playing in the water, exploring and visiting. It was a wonderful time. Some of MY highlights of the vacation were: going whale watching, washing my clothes in a washing machine, seeing my family and hearing their thoughts about the DR, hot showers, an always available/flushing toilet, playing in the ocean and of course, watching them struggle with spanish (now they know how I  feel). It was really great though because they were able to see some of the culture. Between driving on the dirt roads with moto's zipping by in every direction, going to markets, working with unreliable internet/electricity/water, waiting while our realtor lady was 4 hours late and interacting with Dominican people I feel like they had a good vacation but also got to see a little glimpse into my life. They also brought me some fun stuff, my dad gave me a much needed haircut (hate to say it dad but as good as it looks, it is kind of uneven, I would stick to Insurance) and updated me on everything back home. It was hard to see them go and even harder to go back to my site but it was definitely worth it and my fingers are crossed they will come back soon.

Mi padre cutting my hair.

The beach.

Matt with a drunken Dominican.

Whale watching.

At dinner.

Matt with a machete.

At lunch on the beach.

Mi madre & I in the ocean. 

Lobster lunch on the beach.

When I got back to my site, my little shadow, Frailin, was sitting in the front of my house waiting for me. He kept asking "what did you bring me, what is in those bags?" I had brought back two more bags than I had left with, one full of clothes (and jeans, thanks Brig!) and the other had four swimming noodles, some goggles and a ball. My family and I had bought some noodles for the ocean and I wanted to bring them back to my site because on the weekends I try to go to the river with the kids and teach them how to swim. It was pretty hilarious because before I knew it, there were a handful of kids in my house looking at the noodles having no idea what they were. They of course start hitting each other with them, knocking everything over in my house and when I explain to them what they are they didn't seem to get it. Next thing I know, I step out of the front of my house and Frailin is sitting there eating one of them, little red pieces everywhere and he just giggles. I handed over the goggles to one of the older kids, I had promised him I would bring some back because he had been making a spear gun to catch fish in the river. Watching him make it was unbelievable and by the end of the day he had come back with four tiny fish, fried them and ate them for dinner.

Sometime between visiting with people in my community, playing with the kids, organizing/having meetings and preparing for an upcoming conference, I had gotten sick. I had a horrible fever and a pretty bad cough but I had a lot to do before Thursday so I just let it go. I would send Frailin to get me Ibuprofen and then try to rest but it was really hard without someone coming to my door with tea, warm buckets of water for me to bath or shots of strange oil that would "cure me by tomorrow". Wednesday evening we had a girls group meeting and I packed my things up for the conference and left Thursday morning with two 18 year old boys for the capital. I stopped in the medical office, got some medicine (and a lovely package, thanks mobit!) and off we went to the Deportes para la Vida conference (sports for life). The conference was great! It is a relatively new initiative that Peace Corps is working with that uses activities/sports for HIV/AIDS awareness along with making good decisions, alcohol and drugs. The conference was a training conference which meant the boys and I would get trained so we can then go back to our community and do the activities. We are planning on talking with the teachers in our community and hoping to come into the school and give one activity/week in place of gym class. Vamos a ver. Taking youth from my community to conferences is such an awesome experience. It is so neat to see them participate, make new friends, learn and get excited about doing things in our community. I am really looking forward to starting this in Los Vasquez and I think the kids will love it. Anyways, after the conference, I sent my boys home and went back to the medical office and was told I need to go get blood tests and a chest x-ray. So now, I am here in the capital with pneumonia. I was told to rest so that is what I am doing. It was pretty funny going to get the chest x-rays, these poor nurses thought I was oblivious (I sometimes am), telling me to raise arms, take deep breaths etc. etc. I didn't understand half of what they were saying so I was just kind of moving around and they would just shake their heads and say "dios mia".

My girls group is going strong. They are so fun to work with and they have such a blast every week. This past week, we made collages, they loved it and my floors are still covered in glue and tiny shreds of magazines! I am hoping to form another group for younger girls, it has been hard because every week, new girls come to my house wanting to participate but it also throws things off a little. Right now have about 16 girls, ages 14-19 that have attended all the meetings and then a handful that want to be part of it so we will see if they come the following week and so forth, I am holding it in my house but I am going to have to move it because there is not enough room. Either way, I am very lucky and happy they want to be a part of it so it has been a great project to start with and learn from.

Making collages in my house. 

I thought I would include a little list of things I have found funny over the past month or so....
-Taking a 30 minute moto ride back to my site with 3 bags and holding four noodles.
-My dona giving me water to wash my hands with and seeing tadpoles swimming in it.
-Being the worlds worst mopper and having ten year old girls shake their heads at me because of it. They always scream at me "con animo Libby".
-Having dance parties in my house with the little kids with my new speakers my fam brought me.

Our car.

-Watching my dad try to drive this mini car we rented over mountains, through the awful roads and smelling our brakes burning.

Cleaning dishes with Marielis (my bff). 

-My best friend in my community is ten.
-The kids have learned they can lock me inside my house. Aren't they precious?

Frailin in a bucket in my front yard.

That is all for now! As always, I love hearing from everyone. Take Care & ROCK CHALK!

9. Projects

I'm back! It has been an eventful few weeks and I have a busy schedule ahead of me as well.

I have moved into my house, completed 3 month IS, attended two conferences with juventud (youth) from my community and accomplished 6 months in the Dominican Republic. 

The completion of 3 month IST has started a new phase of my Peace Corps service, basically the part I have been patiently waiting for. As stated before, the first 3 months in country were spent training and living with host families and the next 3 months were spent in my community, gaining trust, completing interviews and figuring out the strengths/weaknesses of my community and what projects I want to take on. I then went and presented my results to my group and can now get to work! 

Here is a quick rundown of what I presented. My community is 360 people with 72 houses. About 90% of my community has electricity and zero have running water. The majority of the houses are made of wood and the rest are made of zinc or concrete blocks. The main source of income is agriculture, oranges, grapefruit, mango, guandule (pigeon pea;s) and tobacco. The men spend time working on their land and the women spend time in the house cooking and cleaning. When enough agriculture has been gathered they will go to a bigger city to sell it. There is a river at the end of the community and the community is surrounded by sugar cane fields. About 43% of the people are between the ages of 10-23. Many of the children live with their grandparents because there are not any opportunities for work so there parents go to bigger cities but leave their children with grandparents or aunts and uncles.
My community has an elementary school that stops at seventh grade and has two sessions, one in the morning for the younger students and one in the afternoon for the older students. There are 5 teachers and the students are only in class for 4 hours/day but much of that time is spent on breaks. After elementary school they have 3 options - stop attending, go to the public highschool or go to the Catholic school. The public school is in a neighboring town that is over an hour walk away. This school also has two sessions so the students are in class for less than 4 hours per day but this requires over a 2 hour commute. The Catholic school goes from 8 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon and it is about 10 miles away so transportation is necessary. It is difficult for the youth in my community to continue on with their education and many times they are asked to help around the house rather than continue on through school. There is no clinic in my community and the closest is in a neighboring community. The closest hospital is in Hato Mayor which is about 35 minutes away on a motorcycle. There are two churches in my community, one Catholic and one Evangelical - 63% of the people are Catholic and 30% are Evangelical.
The youth in my community spend their free time playing cricket, dominoes or hanging out "bajo el arbol" (under the tree). There are no organized activities and they have no space to play sports or a positive space to gather. After talking and spending time with the youth in my community these are the things we are planning/hoping to focus on in the next few months...

Playing drums & singing. 

 
Escojo mi Vida (I Choose my Life) is an initiative that has been very successful in the Dominican Republic. It focuses on sexual health topics, HIV/AIDS, drugs, alcohol etc. The youth participate in a series of charlas (short lessons/classes) and then move on to graduate which then makes them "multipliers". There was a volunteer in a neighboring community whom gave a session to my community so I am lucky enough to already have a group of multipliers. This month I took two of these boys to a regional conference where we learned how to form a new group, how to strengthen a group and participated in other Escojo activities. My boys had a great time at the conference and it was a great motivator to get started.

Chicas Brillantes is a group for girls from ages 12-18. It focuses on subjects such as self esteem, conflict resolution and women's health. It is a great opportunity for the girls to get out of the house and it provides a safe place to talk and ask questions. There was a regional conference this past weekend where we participated in charlas, played sports, made masks for Carnaval and even had a camp fire where we made s'mores! The girls came back to my community ready to get started and full of energy!

Me w/ my chicas @ the Chicas Brillantes Conference

I am also planning on holding English classes once or twice a week. This has been a struggle because everyone wants English classes and I am hesitant to do them because they aren't going to learn much more than "good morning" "how are you" "my name is..". I am going to make an attempt at it though and then hopefully form an advanced class that I can actually help.

Over the next few months I am also hoping to get information on building a "cancha" (basketball court) in my community and forming sports teams. In March, two youth from my community and I are going to a conference called "Deportes Para la Vida" (sports for life) which is an initiative that uses sports to teach youth about HIV/AIDS and other issues they may be faced with. I am really excited about this and I am looking forward to doing activities outside of a classroom setting.

So those are some of the first projects I am going to work on. I know some of these may fail or may not go as planned but it is great to actually get started and see where my youth thrive and spend more time getting to know them.

In other news....

I am in my own house. I am still eating lunch with my Dona and I am basically still on her property but it has been going very well so far. I feel as if people from my community are more comfortable coming to visit me and they have all had a good laugh at me living solo. It is extremely unusual for women to live and sleep alone in this country so I am still explaining that they do not need to send a 10 year old girl over to sleep in my bed with me. It has been nice for them to see me carrying my own water, sweeping and cleaning, they all think it is hilarious, especially when I mop. It has made them realize that I am actual part of their community, that I will be here awhile and that I am not an oblivious American that needs my Dona to do everything for me. I have a bed, a stove and a gas tank but there are still some things I am hoping to get over time, like some chairs. I bought pots, pans, plates and utensils but I didn't realize I needed to fill my gas tank with gas - maybe I am an oblivious American. That being said, I haven't done any cooking yet. I do have to say that carrying the water is much more work than I had thought. My Dona has this gutter system rigged up so all the rain water goes into this HUGE tank (this past week it rained quite a bit so I threw on my raincoat and stood in the rain with a bucket - goofy American) and then she makes a few trips to the creek every week. When I was living with her she would always have a bucket of water for me to bathe with and then she did all the cooking and cleaning so I never really had to fetch much water unless I did it for fun with the kids. Anyways, it is not that fun.

Frailin putting water in the tank

Getting water

The kids love coming over. If I go into my house and shut my door, they throw rocks at my tin roof so I will come out. The other afternoon, I decided to take a little break and shut/lock my door, I was lying in bed reading and I looked up and there was a little boy (Frailin) standing there. He climbed through my window and as much as I wanted to be angry at him, I couldn't stop laughing. It is tough having them all in my house because they want to touch everything and they are hard to control. Sometimes I make them do sit-ups, push-ups or wall sits.

Pushups in my house.

Resting after wall sits. 

My parents and my brother, Matt are coming to visit at the beginning of March, I am soo excited to see them. Next post I will put up some pictures of our little vacation!

Feel free to leave any questions in the comment area below and I will answer them next time!

Cheers!

My shower.

Friends.

8. Happy 2011

Hello All!!

I hope everyone has had a great start to the new year. Again, sorry for the delay in posts, I was going to wait until after my 3 month IST (in service training) but I spoke to my parents and they made me feel guilty for not writing in a while so I thought I would write a quick little update.

I have been in the Dominican Republic for 5 months now and in my community for 3 months. Somedays it feels longer and some days it feels shorter. Either way, I am happy, healthy (I think) and I am feeling at home more and more each day. I think these blog posts are getting harder because my everyday happenings don't seem as significant to me anymore. Sleeping in a mosquito net, fetching water, showering with a bucket and waking up to roosters all seem like the norm to me so I am having a harder time thinking of things to write about.

Two of my friends from college, Emily & Jason, recently got married. I was supposed to be part of their October wedding but I received my invitation to serve in the Dominican Republic, leaving in August, so unfortunately I was unable to attend. Well, the two newlyweds decided to come to the Dominican Republic for their honeymoon and, well, I crashed it. Just kidding, they invited me. So I took a quick little trip to visit them in Punta Cana which is in the East, a couple of hours from me. It was so great seeing them! The whole thing was surreal, it was their honeymoon, I hadn't seen them in months, we were in the Caribbean and also on my new stomping grounds! The point of this story is that my life here seems normal, so normal that when I was visiting them at an amazing resort, I forgot that you can flush toilet paper down toilets, or even that toilets flush (I threw my TP in the trash-can). It was a perfect little getaway though and my fingers are crossed that they both don't think I am a savage. So, an amazing meal, two hot showers and a hangover later, I went back to my campo life filled with creek water, dirt roads and spanish!

Thanks Emily & Jason!

I have been spending the past month finishing interviews in my community and working on my project for 3 month IST. On February 1st my whole group will be meeting to present our communities and learn lots of other important stuff, so they say. I am looking forward to seeing everyone in my group again and getting this presentation over with. I am bringing someone from my community to present with me, her name is Mami and she has been helping me with the diagnostic. I feel weird calling her Mami, I don't even call my own mom that (obviously) but I don't know her real name and have never heard anyone call her anything but Mami. I need to figure out what to call her during my presentation, I don't know if Mami is going to fly. Mami and I have to give a 15 minute presentation on my community. It should be pretty entertaining and I will let everyone know how it goes!

More importantly, I found myself a house. I actually didn't look very hard, my Dona kind of just started painting it and told me I was living there and I said ok. It is next door to her and I had never noticed it before. I am going to move in after I get back from IST, that means moving my belongings 10 yards away and going to the city to buy myself a bed and a stove - if I'm lucky. It makes me laugh, every time I walk by it, I kind of chuckle. I think I am laughing AT it, not WITH it. It is divided into two parts, one for sleeping and one for everything else. Off the back of the house (my bedroom) I have an area to shower. I don't have a toilet/latrine so that is going to be interesting, I guess I am just delaying the inevitable. In case any of you were wondering, I have an open door policy (for Americans) and am now taking reservations, so purchase those plane tickets, I only charge $1 USD/night and you get to share a bed with me free of charge.

All of the kids are counting down the days for me to move out. As of now, my Dona does a good job at keeping the kids from charging into my room, they still throw rocks at my windows and scream my name until I come outside but I am lucky to have her. That being said, I am a little nervous about how excited everyone is and how I am going to manage it. Between my IPod, my computer and my Dr. Dre Beats headphones, I have some pretty cool gadgets they would all love to get their little hands on. I need to set up some rules. I am picturing a mad house for the first week or so and I was told I need to buy a set of 15 dishes so I can feed everyone that is over, whatever that means. Below are some pictures, they aren't that great, but they are all I have for now. I will put some more up once I am moved in.

The Front yard.

The other side.

The back (bedroom) and shower.

My modest, blue house.

I know you all want to get away from the snowy states so remember you have free lodging in the Dominican Republic for the next two years, great accommodations and clean/hot bucket showers!!

That sums it up for now, thanks for reading and thanks for the comments, I thoroughly enjoy them and always look forward to reading them. Hope everyone is well and I miss and think about you all each and every day. xoxo

7. Navidad

Well, I survived my first Christmas in the Dominican Republic! It was a bit of an emotional ride but what the heck, this whole experience has been. I was fortunate enough to video chat with my family, aunt, uncle and cousins along with a few friends so I did get a little piece of home which was great.

As you would assume, Christmas here is different in many ways. The celebration consists of "Noche Buena" y "La Navidad" on what would be our Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. On Noche Buena families cook big meals and spend the evening drinking and dancing. La Navidad consisted of more drinking, dancing and in the evening everyone wears a new outfit. Looking at the BIG picture, it is easy to find similarities - family, music, food and cooking but it was NOTHING like home.

Family. Over the past few days, my little community of about 200 people has practically doubled. My house of four people has turned into a house full of eight people, three of them being grown adults (and all eight of them sleeping in just two beds). Two of my Dona's sons came in town for the holidays with one of their spouses. One of them is the father of Aumendi (my little brother) who also has another child, a three year old little girl named Yubelacy. Up until this point I was unsure of where Aumendi's parents were. It is quite common here for grandchildren to be living with their grandparents and it is all for different reasons. Aumendi's mother explained to me that when her family left my community for work, Aumendi hated his new community, there were no kids and the pace of life in a bigger neighborhood was too much for him. She then brought him back here to live with his grandmother and go to school here. He is five years old and has made a decision to live away from his mom, dad and little sister. It was really neat to see them interact. I have watched Aumendi get picked on and pushed around by a lot of kids in the neighborhood and this week he and his little sister have been inseparable. His dad also took him to the big city and bought him a new outfit for La Navidad and a water gun so he was the coolest kid on Christmas Day and he looked adorable in his new outfit and his little loafers which he hated! It was also great seeing my Dona surrounded by her sons. It reminded me a little bit of home. She really is a wonderful woman!

Yubelacy y Aumendi

Aumendi in his new Navidad outfit!

Music. The music here is completely different to say the least. One of my favorite things about Christmas back home is the music. Within the first hour of my Dona's son arriving he pulled out four enormous speakers into the front yard of my house. Yes, my Christmas was full of music - BLARING bachata, meringue and reggaetone having nothing to do with Christmas but singing about finding an American to give you a visa. Merry Christmas! So yes, this year I woke up on Christmas morning to bachata music and looking out into my front yard to people drinking rum!

Food. I haven't seen my Dona outside of the kitchen in the past three days. She works so hard and manages to keep a smile on her face throughout it all. We had a HUGE meal for Noche Buena which consisted of roasted chicken, apples, potato salad, empanadas, pasta, bread, hen and other birds that I am not sure what they were. Everything was really good. It was a little strange because she served me first and I ate dinner at a table by myself staring at a wall but it was really good otherwise. Definitely not like Christmas dinner at home but all in all it was a good meal. In terms of drinking, it is a major past time in the Dominican Republic. Not too many people drink in my community on a nightly basis but they have made up for it over the past few days. I can look out into my front yard now and it looks like my old college house, empty bottles everywhere. Everyone drinks, age doesn't matter. As I am writing this, there is still music blaring in my front yard with about 15 guys aged 22-30 drinking and my Dona keeps sending out platters of food for them to eat. She has been whispering a countdown to me over the days... "in two days they are leaving" "tomorrow, we will be alone and it will be quiet again".

My Dona w/ part of my x-mas dinner!

So yes, Christmas was definitely different, the 85 degree weather and constant sweating made it easy to forget what was going on back home and now it is practically over, just a few more hours of these same 10 songs I've been hearing over and over. Anyways, I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and I was thinking of all of you!

On to other things. Overall, the past month or so has been good. I am feeling more comfortable in my community and everyday a new kid warms up to me and screams my name when passing by. All of the children are on Christmas vacation so that has been fun. Usually the days are quiet because they are at school but I have been busy being pulled in every direction. Like I have said, the first three months in my community is supposed to be spent building trust. We are not supposed to start any big projects but only little things. I had planned on starting English classes but I have put that on hold and instead put on a cricket tournament and will hopefully do a volleyball tournament in a few weeks. The cricket tournament was fun. It was a bit disorganized as I had expected. I had two boys in the community round up teams over the course of a week and I would check in with them everyday. The day before the tournament I asked for the list of teams and both the boys had put themselves on about three different teams. Each of our cricket teams had only two people so I had to explain to them that they can't be on more than one team because it is impossible to play on two teams at once. They continued to tell me it was fine and I continued to tell them it wasn't, that it doesn't make sense. We worked through that and ended up having about 12 teams. It was a learning experience and definitely a case of trial and error but all in all we had a good time and even painted our faces. I gave the winning team each a little pack of silly bands and I can't explain what a hit they were. Now everyone is asking for all sorts of tournaments, dominoes, baseball, volleyball, basketball etc.

Cricket Tourny

I am still in the process of interviewing people in my community. It has been hard to get things done over the holidays and I think it will be hard over the next week or so as well. The pace of life here is slow on any given day, and then throw in the holidays and it is basically a lost cause to even attempt to accomplish anything right now. So for now, I am just going to have to put some of that to the side.

For those of you who know me well, you know that I am very impatient when it comes to time. Not much else phases me but if I am running late, I get anxious. If you tell me you will pick me up at 7:30, nine out of ten times I will be standing in my front yard waiting for you but if you are five minutes late, I will be on the phone asking where you are. I hate being late and there is no such thing as being late here. Actually, there basically is no such thing as time in the Dominican Republic so it has been trying. I experienced the same thing when I was in Tanzania and I promised myself I would try to not get so caught up with time upon my return but it did not work out. I understand it is a different culture and blah blah blah but 9:00 still means 9:00 wherever I may be. For example, I get a phone call asking me to attend a meeting in my community with the senator of the nearby city and a few Brazilians whom are investing in nearby land, "it is very important you attend because it would be great for my community because it will provide jobs" ok great, meeting starts at 10:30, I will be there and so will two other volunteers that live in neighboring communities. The two other volunteers arrive in my community at about 10:20 and we then wait for my project partner to finish getting ready. By the time she is finished it is close to 10:45 and we are all getting anxious because we are late and we have a 15 minute walk ahead of us, I mean this is important, it is the Senator right? We would look awful showing up late. We arrive at the location to find that nobody else is there other than two men setting up a tent. Ok, great, its 11:00, we are late but where is everybody, I thought this meeting started at 10:30? Time passes, nobody else has showed up. We are all kind of looking at each other as each minute ticks by. At about 12:15 people start coming and fifteen minutes later, the senator, the Brazilians and his entire entourage show up. I still don't understand. The meeting was supposed to start at 10:30, it was now half past noon. All of the Dominicans were told 10:30 but they didn't start arriving until 12:15. Was 10:30 just a joke? Why not just say 12:00 or 12:30? How did the Dominicans know that 10:30 really meant 12:30? Yes, it may sound petty but when this happens a few times a week and you are sitting in the Caribbean sun dripping sweat, it does get frustrating. Then I have to remind myself - who cares, I have nothing else going on, I have nowhere to be, this is why I am here. It is hard though and to me, 10:30 will always mean 10:30.

I have one last, quick story to share before I go hide my head under my pillow because my ears are bleeding from this music. A few days before Christmas, one of my favorite little boys, Franlin, was told to pack his bags because he was going to spend some time with his mother (he also lives with his Grandma here). This has happened a few times with other kids, some have returned, some haven't, I haven't quite figured it out. I think Franlin will return at some point, I will let you all know when that is. Anyways, I was going to help him pack and he pulled out his bookbag and this is what it was!

Rock Chalk!

That about sums it up for now and below are a few more pictures. I will be spending my New Years in Cabarete which is in the Northern part of the country with other volunteers so I will let everyone know how that goes! Have a wonderful New Year!!

Fanlin y perro @ the river

Playing Cricket

Me, Franlin y Marielis

Me and some of the girls @ the beach!

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