me and my host parents



english class



my guitar with a homemade capo






My latrine, also where i bath

Peanuts!!!



My table at its normal messy state



My bookcase and my friend playing guitar



My storage room, eventually i'll put in a couch.



My sweet fridge

more pictures

photos of my house

well, i got 4 pictures up before my camara battery died, the rest of the pictures of my new house will be coming soon, next weekend when i am in the capital.



where i´m gonna plant my garden


working on my garden in the sun

Happy Brithday to me!

So I have finally got some more pictures to post on my blog. I am not in any of them but I got lots of photos of the donas and also of some of my friends I hang out with everyday. This past Wednesday was the 7 year “cumpleanos” of my host mom’s mom. Basically it was the 7 year anniversary of when she died and when people die there are various fiesta type things (called a reza which means prayer as some of the people spend most of the day saying prayers, the rest sit outside talking and playing dominoes. Everyone eats). The 7 year one is the last one, so it is a bigger deal then all the rest. Needless to say there were a bunch of people over at my house for the majority of the day Wednesday. The pictures of cooking I have are from in the morning. You can see how most people cook here, they make a fire with three rocks around it and just set the pots on top. These pots were bigger then what they usually use (as this was food for way more people) but this is the same way my host mom, and the majority of the people here cook their meals everyday. The yellow stuff that the one dona is preparing, and that is in one of the big pots is called chenchen. It is a regional “speciality” here in the south of the DR. It is crushed corn that they boil for a while over the fire, then put banana leaves on top, put the lid on, then put coals on top of the lid so it cooks kinda like an oven. It basically looks like, and has the consistency of rice when it is done cooking, except that it is corn. The other pot is full of pork, and there is a third that has beans, but it has a top on. You can also see one of the donas plucking the chicken (they killed it litteraly 5 minutes before I took those pictures, so you know it was fresh).

For me most of the day I passed playing and watching dominoes, as well as my English class in the afternoon which has been going really well. The rest of the pictures are when I got back in the afternoon and went to my neighbors house to hang out with some of my friends there (and play guitar as I am sure you can guess). The kid who is holding the guitar by himself against the tree is the one who can actually play. He’s been teaching me how to play some bachata and meringue, and I teach him some stuff I know. He usually stops by my house a few nights a week to come and hang out and play guitar, which is nice to have some people to just chill with.

Thrusday in the morning i went for a relaxing run (i am up to running 7 1/2 miles now, mas o menos) and in the afternoon went to another cumpleanos afterwords where i spent the rest of the afternoon playing dominioes. Another relaxing day.

Friday, birthday time! I went for another run in the morning,only 5 miles since i wanted to take it a little easier for my birthday, and aftwerwards i went with some of my friends to eat some mangos in a field by my house. After this i went back home and played some dominoes with my host dad and some of the neighboors (in case you haven´t noticed i really like playing dominoes). In the afternoon i went to the river with my two friends to go swimming, or more like wading since the deepest part of the river was only about 2 feet deep (its pretty dry in my site right now). In the Afternoon i played some guitar and at night went to the colmado to drink some rum (they had already ran out of beer) and hang out with my friends. This was the first time i´ve drank in my campo, i just don´t think it would be good for my work if everybody thought i liked to go out drinking everyweekend, but since it was my birthday i felt like i had a good excuse. I had a lot of fun and actually got a little drunk (my stomach was not happy with me this morning, cheap rum is not the best thing for the body the day after). But overall i had a really good day yesterday, and today i am meeting up with some of my volunteer friends at another volunteer´s house to celebrate some more.

But everything at my site has been going pretty well. I am still teaching english classes, doing more interviews for my community diagnostic, and trying to get together some people in my community so we can start a fruit tree nursery. Right now i am trying to find where to get the little black bags where you plant the seeds so once i find them i hope i can move forward with the project. but we´ll see. THat is all for now but hope everyone is doing well at home. adios

Getting ready to start english classes

So i have had a pretty busy last couple of weeks here. A few weeks ago I had creole language training, so i had a chance to go back to the capital for a few days (we started training there) and then to a batey (a hatian community) where we were at for the last few days of training. It was really nice to be in the capital for a bit. We went out to get pizza a couple of nights, i was able to go to the peace corp office to use internet and get another couple of books to bring back with me to site (which i have finished all but one at this point), and we even went to the mall to go see a movie! Walking through the mall i felt like i was back in the united states. there were all of the usuall stores, a food court, and even the people there were whiter (in my campo everyone is pretty dark skinned, as this was an upperclass mall many of the patrons were more well of dominicans, which at times means they have lighter colored skin). The rest of creole training in the batey was also pretty nice. I was expecting to be ruffing it as people keep telling us bateys are the poorest, worst off communities in the dominican republic, but when we got there it contraty to what i had though. there were two seperate dorm room type buildings, on for the guys one for the girls. we had screens on the windows (first place i have been with screens to keep bugs out), running water, a real toilet, and even showers that the water actually came down from above, i didn´t have to shower from a bucket. I guess there are lots of church groups that go to this batey to do work so i believe that is why that had such nice facilities for us. But it was pretty nice, i felt like i was back in school. we would have class in the morning, have lunch and a little time for a siesta, class in the afternoon, dinner, and then time to hang out talk and play dominoes or cards.



About a week and a half ago i went to San Juan de la Maguana, the major city here in my region, for an emergency cordinator meeting with other volunteers in the region. We basically just talked about a couple things, we got to meet some of the older volunteers in our region, and then we had to rest of the day off. THe volunteers from the new group all stayed the night there, actually we stayed in a pueblo called Juan de Herrera where one of our friends live, but we went to San Juan for the night as they were celebrating patrinales, the festival of the patron saint John the Babtist. We also went to eat at a mexican restuarant, suppsovily the best one in the country, which was really amazing. I ate guacamole and chips (they don´t eat guacamole here usually, even though there are tons of avocado), a taco, a flauta, all of which i smothered in delicious hot sauce (something else they don´t eat here). This was for me probably the highlight of my night, probably the highlight of my past two weeks since this was one of the best meals i have eaten since being here. But later in the night we went to the park where tons of people were hanging out and taking and drinking, and then later went to a club where all of the girls went dancing merengue and bachata. i danced a bit but mostly just sat drinking my rum. we went back to our hotel at about 3 in the morning then i woke up the next morning to head back to my house.

THe only downside of this whole trip was that on the car going to San Juan i somehow mangaged to loose my cellphone, so i was having to plan a trip to go to the capital to get another, which i was not to happy about considereing it would be expensive trip and only for one night, and also that wanted to stay in my campo as i had just left that weekend. So this past wednesday i came to the peublo to attend a meeting and then was plaining on taking the bus to santo domingo. First though, i went to go buy an empanada for my breakfast. At the empanada stand a man looked at me for a minute then said I know you, i have your cell phone. IT was the driver of the car that brought me to San Juan and he had my cell phone, which he gave back to me, and which also still had all of my minutes i had put on there. I was quite suprised, and also quite happy, because i had already considered it lost and it was such a coincidence to run into him at the empanada stand at exactly that moment, and that he was honest enough to return it. SO needless to say i never went back to the capital.

So besides my traveling, i have began to do interviews with people in my community for my diagonostic. its a little slow as sometimes it takes an hour to complete just one, not because it is long but because the people don´t understand what i am asking (when i ask what is the biggest envronmental problem in the community people tell me the road needs to be paved) or else we diverge into other things. Sometimes i talk to someone who is knowledgable and gives me some usefull information but the majority of them i haven´t really learned anything new, just that everyone just wants me to fix up there houses, which i am not here to do. I have also been attending more community meetings, going to little parties they have in my community at times (they call them cumpleanos, which means birthdays, but they are really to commemorate the 1 year, 5 year, or 7 year aniversary of when someone died), and still trying to figure out what i will be doing for projects in the next month. I have also been making my own peanut butter, which is delicious, have just planted and hoping will grow some mango, avocado, and passion fruit seeds, and hanging out with my friends in the community. Tomorrow i am starting with english classes, which shoud be interesting as i think my youngest students are going to be 6 and my oldest in their 50s, with all the ages in between. It might be kinda of chaotic, i am probably gonna have to split it up into 2 or 3 classes, but i´ll see tomorrow how many people will actually show up. people have a habit of saying they will come to meetings then not showing up, or being half an our late (which i am not going to tolerate in my class).

THis weekend for the 4th of july i am going to the Samana peninsula where abunch of volunteers are meeting up in a small resort town right on the beach to celebrate. so i am exicted to see some of my friends that i havent seen in a month and a half, as well as to hangout on the beach with a beer in my hand.

But thats all for now, i need to go do some things in the peublo then i am going to another volunteers house for the night (we work with the same group in the pueblo) to write up a charla (lecture) we are going to be giving about fuel effiencient stoves. hope everyone is doing well, and ill try to post something new in the coming weeks.




some of my friends playing music at a little fiesta by my house

some pictures

my dad moving the cows to water them



view of some houses from the "cell phone" hill



another picture from the loma



the enramada at my house



the garden at my house, they just planted yucca here