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
No comments:
Post a Comment