Okay, I just realized that this blog publishes the photos backwards...so work from the bottom up!
First picture is of the sign right outside of the mayor's office, just as you get into my community. Second is of my project partner's house. Third and fourth, police station and school. Fifth, some of the candles my women make. Sixth, my room! Seventh-Nineth, pictures of the beach about 20 minutes from me. Tenth, a couple of the kids who I play baseball with every Sunday afternoon. Eleventh-Fourteen, pictures from the little fair we had in our community!

A month has passed since I moved to my site…a whole month! Can you believe it? I surely cannot. And I have been busy every second of it, literally. The first week of my arrival was dedicated to meeting the entire community—the mayor’s office, the police department, the Red Cross, all the kids in the schools, the health clinic, the church, all the women in the Directive and their family… you name it, I met it. I hadn’t even been in the community for 24 hours and I had the mayor asking me in a televised interview what I was going to do for Cumayasa. Luckily the cunning politician in me surfaced and I filled my responses with flowery, meaningless vagaries. Thanks Poli Sci degree!

The mayor’s enthusiasm of my presence is by no means exclusive and definitely shared by all. I have been welcomed with open arms by almost everyone. It is truly a great feeling. My site kicks ass! Right now we are working on the infrastructure of the women’s group to strengthen internally and get ourselves organized. There are seven women in my Directive who are all artisans and make mostly jewelry and candles. Their market is primarily the tourists. Dominicans are extremely grateful for the tourism that passes through here; it is not resented or begrudged one bit.

I am so soo sooo proud and excited to say that we started a fund!!! Haha, all of my women are serious Evangelicals, so the other night we celebrated by popping some soda and toasting our accomplishments with that. I guess the popping champagne song hasn’t reached here yet…boo. The money in the fund is coming from a percentage charged from merchandise sold and a quota system we set up. It is for any member of the Directive who needs to borrow money to buy materials to make more products for upcoming fairs and shows that we have. Access to capital is not nearly as fluid as it is in the States, and even if you can approval for a loan, interest rates are crazy high here. So I am extremely excited to have started this!!! The vision is for it to become stable and eventually grow enough to transition into a community bank. Pretttty cooool, eh??

My heart and soul are committed to working with this Directive. I hope to improve it as much as possible while I am here. Other projects on the horizon include teaching English courses (I am asked almost every day when I am going to start giving these courses. That’s how excited the community is about English.), and working with two local humanitarian institutions that help children and the elderly.

Thanksgiving just passed and Peace Corps every year hosts a nice event for all of the volunteers. They rent out a club house and cook a traditional Thanksgiving meal (yay no rice and beans!), consisting of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, that cranberry dressing stuff, a vegetable medley of sorts, AND, the best part, pecan and pumpkin pies! So I passed the entire day poolside, getting tan and eating as much pie as possible. It was definitely relaxing. But I had a sadness hanging over my head the entire day. I never think I am going to get homesick, and I receive no warnings, it just happens and I get into this little funk. So I was homesick that day, missing you guys!

I LOVE YOU GUYS!!! Hope all is well. Keep me updated on everything going on with you!

Here’s a fun little Get to Know a Dominican Series. Four things that I bet you didn’t know about the Dominican Republic or Dominican culture:
1.) They eat Halls cough drops as candy. It’s pretty gross. Though, they are only a peso…so they’re growing on me!
2.) They are a very giving/sharing culture. I once had a three year old offer me a drink from his bottle on the bus. Not once, but about four different times during the trip.
3.) They point with their lips instead of their fingers.
4.) Men will lift up the front of their shirts if it’s hot, or after a meal if they’re full, or if they just feel like it dammit.

Serenity Now, Insanity Later

What to say about these last four weeks?! Just read the blog title, it sums it up pretty nicely. Haha juuuust kidding (kind of). Training up in the mountains was fun and a great experience. At first, I didn’t quite understand the logic behind coming to Santo Domingo, leaving only after 3 weeks to train at a different location, and then coming back to Santo Domingo for a week and a half to finish training. But now, I totally get it. This go-around was like a test run, or practice before the real deal. I have learned a lot about the culture of rural communities; information that I plan to take with me to my site. Now I know that… people in the rural areas are marvelous; privacy is literally nonexistent; sending neighborhood boys on your errands is the best tool out in the campo; donkeys are the most annoying animal in the whole wide world; and chicken are the most disgusting; Dominicans are afraid of the sun, and some of water; no matter how hot and humid it is here, I will never get used to cold bucket bath showers; electricity is harder to come by than a Dominican who doesn’t love the Yankees; if baseball is the national pastime, merengue, bachata, rice and beans are the national sport; and… that I am so lucky to be here serving! It’s been a hoot.

We seized every moment that we were there, whether it was going to the river on a regular basis, hiking, exploring, or just laughing. My absolute favorite activity we did was go to an adventure tourist site called 27 waterfalls. It was actually developed by a Peace Corps volunteer in the ‘60s and has had multiple environmental and business volunteers since. It was incredible! We swam and floated through rivers and hiked through mountains discovering waterfall after waterfall. We did not do the entire tour, all 27 falls, but we did see 15. Even more impetus to go back! Pictures and videos are posted! Because we were cliff jumping from some serious heights, we were required to wear helmets and life jackets. Second best activity was the beach! Check out the pictures. Yes, that’s right, I am actually tan! Woo hoo

Training ended with us attending the annual Business Plan Competition that is hosted by Peace Corps and Plan International. I loved it! People aged 15-25 complete a 4 month course in business and submit a business that they want to start in their communities, it could be a pizza restaurant, beauty salon, clothing store, whatever they are truly passionate about. There are two categories, production and commercial, and a third, second and first prize in each category. The third prize winner receives 50% of their projected start-up costs to open their business, the second 75% and the first receives full funding. The opportunity that this brings to these kids is tremendous. I am so proud of all of them for putting forth the effort to pursue their dreams. The best part about it, though, was when our director came and surprised us with a little gift. She told us our site placements EARLY!!! I hope everyone's excited because you have serious reason to be. I AM ON THE BEACH!!!!!!! In the most beautiful part of the country, the east. I will be working with a group of artesan women and will find out more about the project on Monday. I CANNOT WAIT! Tuesday I will go out to my site to meet my project partner and come back on Sunday. I officially move out there either Saturday, October 31 or Sunday the 1st. Stay tuned, I love you!!!!

Bateys and Beaches

Thursday through Sunday we were given the opportunity to visit current volunteers to get a better understanding of what service is really going to be like. I was luckily paired up with Marissa who is serving in a Batey in the South. Not many people get the chance to see Bateys, so I was excited. Bateys are sugar cane fields and are known for both their social and economic complexities and hardships. Historically Haitians, mainly those who are not recognized by the DR, the invisibles, have worked the fields. Most still remain and continue to be the most marginalized population in this country. Needless to say, these communities suffer from little infrastructure and opportunities, and have the most need. She, and the others serving in Bateys, definitely have a dyanmic service with a set of unique challenges. The fact that they are only 2 hours from an amazing beach completely makes up for it though! We went to the beach on Saturday and Sunday and met up with a handful of other volunteers who were also being visited by people in my group! This beach is one of the remaining beaches left untouched by tourism here. There are only local rentals, restaurants and little stores. Check out the pictures, they’re gorgeous! Peace Corps or paradise…I’m not sure. And actually this area is the site of three volunteers. Could you imagine getting this as your site and living here for 2 years??? Unbelievable. The waterfall type thing is a fresh water river that flows right into the ocean and has been dammed in a couple of areas for swimming and recreational use. It was the greatest time. Coming back to the hot city was a bummer.

Vida Dominicana

I haven’t been too terribly good at describing what life is like here. Partly because I am not so sure I can adequately describe everything that goes on, and partly because I wasn’t sure it was interesting enough to record. But the little idiosyncrasies of life here are in fact really comical, and definitely worth a shot at attempting to depict. Here’s a taste of an average day of Dominicana MegMo:

Being woken up by the crowing of roosters outside of my window. No I do not live on a farm, nor is there one near by (that was my first question too), but rather they kind of just roam around every where. Rise from bed feeling like I had spent the entire night in a sauna, which is essentially what I do. No where, I mean nooo where, has air conditioning. And the mosquito net we have to sleep in does a fabulous job keeping out bugs, but it also does a fabulous job at blocking the air flow. So I basically sleep in a pool of my our sweat.

Get ready for training and greet the house pets, Snoopy the dog and Cuca the parrot. Pictures of both are up! Haha I still laugh at Snoopy’s name…so cute. And every time I pass by Cuca, he tries to bite me!!! Mom, I should send him to you and I know you’ll take care of that ;) Hahahahaha!

Drink the best coffee of my life and head to meet the girls in my neighborhood to go to training. Pass by some goats eating trash off of the street and then grab either a public bus or car. I just had to include a video of the public buses here because I have a feeling you guys wouldn’t believe me if I told you!!! To get your imagination flowing, these buses or cars would not have passed an emissions test 60 years ago. Bashed in window shields, no doors, head or brake lights are commonplace. And forget about maximum occupancies or fire hazards…they just don’t exist. The video I put up was of us coming back from a trip to the Historical Colonial Zone in the capital…which is so rich with history by the way. Anyways, there’s about 50 people on this bus, the majority are stuffed, standing in an area about 5 feet by 5 feet, and some sitting outside of the windows. Yaaaah know, just a day in the life!

Go to training for forever. Nope the facility doesn’t have AC either. I wasn’t kidding. So basically spend 9 hours pretending like I’m in Antarctica. Eat rice and beans again.

Hitch a car to go home. Pray that the person with whom I have to share the front seat isn’t too much of a sweaty mess and was generous at putting deodorant on this morning. Pass by the same goats. But this time it’s their carcasses, hanging from the tree and being sold from the street.

Play a round of dominoes. Dinner time. MORE rice and beans.

el rio!

so there is very little that i understand going on around me, but i do understand the river!!!!!!! i went with mi familia on sunday. it was so beautiful! it was within the mountains, so i was able to see a different side of the country because where i am now is fairly urban. and for some reason that i didn't understand, the police came and we had to run out of the water and up the hill. ahhhh i felt just at home!

....ohhh yah, those are my cool transition lenses you see! haha definitely not the prettiest thing i've worn, but here they are great

the three younger girls you see in the photos are friends of mi mama..kind of like extended or adopted family of hers. two of them work in the beauty salon/clothing store she owns. everything a girl could want all in one store! genius, we should definitely start one!

Creepin'

I have truly been enjoying everyone's blogs! I cannot wait to meet all of you come August (wow, sooo soon!).

when i found out i was going to the dom rep