Another week in la Cumbre

April 12, 2009

So I had another full, busy week full of activities. We had to do a mini-diagnostic in groups based on the communities we live in (there are 4 communities with a total distance of 9 kilometers between the first and last) that we have to present on Tuesday. I am pretty much finished with my part but we are meeting tomorrow as a group to go over all of our stuff one more time. We made a map of our community, which was fun because we went exploring down some of the roads that I might not otherwise have ventured down. I also did a family tree of my household, which was quite extensive considering the large size of family here. My mom has 9 other siblings, and my dad has I think around 17. So I fit in as many people as I could but there was not enough room on my poster to go back to far. I also had to do interviews with 3 people in the community which went alright, I sometimes got answers that were a little odd or lacked some depth but I think that’s how it is with people everyone. It reminded me of working at the survey lab and asking questions and getting responses that did not quite fit the question I had asked, but I still think I learned some things I can present for Tuesday. We also have to do the presentation in Spanish as we are also being evaluated on our Spanish at this point, but I am not to worried about this. I feel like my Spanish is doing pretty good. I can’t always think of the word I want to use or always use the right tense but I can usually get my point across at this point.



me with the neighborhood kids











I also started another project we have to do with my friend Sarah in making a compost pile at the conuco of one of the kids who lives next to me. We finished making the enclosed area we are gonna put the compost (it took a while with having to collect and chop the wood to length) and are going to collect everything to fill it up later this week hopefully on Wednesday.

compost pile with me and sarah, my host sister (on left) and another neigbor

On Thursday night our Spanish class met up our teachers house here to make an auyama pie. Auyama is like a type of squash so we basically were making pumpkin pie. It was a lot of fun and it turned out good, but it was kind of funny because all of Dominican women at the house at first were trying to tell us how to make it, even though they didn’t really even know what we were making. I think they had a hard time understanding the concept of a pie because they don’t really have pies here. We had to keep explaining that the crust was not supposed to rise, and that it wasn’t like a cake which is what I think they thought we were trying to make. But it all turned out well and I think everyone who tried it enjoyed it.
My spanish class, my spanish teacher (one on the far right bending down, with white shirt and green sweater), and other locals at Dona Nena's house (one in pink) with our finished auyama pie




On Friday we had a day of from class so I worked some on my part of the diagnostic project and in the afternoon some of us walked to one of the other communities about 3 kilometers away to hang out at one of our friends house there and drink tea. Overall it was a pretty low key day.


Yesterday me and two of my friends, Woodley and Andrea, went on a little hike down to look for a lagoon and a river that is somewhat close to my house. When we took a wrong turn in our search for the lagoon we stopped to ask some people who were outside eating lunch for directions. We ended up sitting down and talking with him for like a half hour, which has become a very common thing here. It is almost impossible to enter into someone’s house without them asking you to sit down and have some coffee, a soda or some juice even though they have never met us before. The people here are just super nice and friendly. After this we continued down to the river (we went to the lagoon after the river) and followed it down for a little bit. The river wasn’t that big, its more like a little stream. I don’t think there was much more than a foot of water in depth. Later that night all of us met up at the plaza where we had a few drinks and just sat around to chat. It is always nice when we can all get together as a group since we are all more spread out here. I think tonight we are going to go to the plaza because people want to go dance (last night the part upstairs where there is room to dance was closed). The people here will dance meringue and bachata for hours one end. I haven’t been able to escape it either, everytime I go out I have to dance with at least one or two people. The Dominicans think I’m crazy when I say that I don’t dance very much, so I guess I’m just gonna have to learn in order to fit in a little better here. But at least meringue is easy to dance, you don’t really have to move around all the much. But that’s all for now. Feliz Dia del Resurecion!