I'll meet you at the carwash

Things are still going well here in the DR. We've now been introduced to the public transportation system which consists of guaguas and carros publicos. Guaguas can range anywhere from small vans, to larger buses. They are usually falling apart and I have no idea how they are still running, but they do. You have to sit 5 in one row of the bus, which is really only meant for 3 or 4 people. The carros publicos are also falling apart and you sit 2 passengers in the front, and 4 in the back, making for quite an uncomfortable ride with seven total people in the car. Add to this the 90 degree heat and it gets even better. (DD brown, I don't want to hear anymore complaining about the CTA!) There are a couple good things about the public transportation system, though. It's really cheap and you rarely have to wait more than 5 minutes to catch a bus or car. It is chaotic, but it's organized and I'm starting to get the hang of it. There are no published routes or schedules, so everytime you get on you have to ask if it's going to where you need to go. They also have certain hand signals for each route, but I'm still trying to figure out what they mean, and apparently they change quite frequently.

The other night there was a fire in our barrio. No houses were affected, just some telephone lines. The crazy thing is that no fire department ever showed up and people just kind of watched. One person intervened by pulling the wire down in order for it to be extinguished. Mind you, this could have been a live electrical line but the person didn't seem to care. The cable is still on the ground in the street and has yet to be cleaned up by anyone.

Now, about the title of this post. There are a lot of carwashes along the highway. The cool thing about these carwashes is that they turn into bars at night. Everyone in our barrio went there on Saturday night and it was so much fun. Definitely the most fun I've ever had at a carwash. They mostly played merengue and bachata, but us gringos requested some reggaeton. When it came on, we all went to the dance floor and danced gringo style while being watched by all the Dominican people there. I'm sure we were quite the sight to be seen. On the way home from the bar we were craving some food, so me and my roommate went to the little corner food stand and got some amazing fried chicken and spaghetti, very Dominican...haha, but it only cost about $5 US and was fantastic.

This week should be pretty fun. On Thursday everyone goes to visit another current volunteer to see what everyday volunteer life is like. I'm going to the campo, outside of Altamira, which is in the northwest. It's just south/southwest of the tourist area of Puerto Plata.

Finally, my family makes the best juice ever. My personal favorite is the jugo de chinola, which is passionfruit juice. Everyone knows just how much I love passionfruit. I've had it on constant IV drip ever since I got here. Also, they make some awesome juice out of pineapples which the Dona tried to explain to us how she makes it, but my Spanish isn't good enough yet to understand. The other juice she made was out of these little cherry-like fruits (I have no idea what they are called), and they are very sour. I want to learn how to make all of these so when I get out on my own I can still enjoy them.

That's it for now...I'll try and update after I visit the volunteer this week. Hasta luego!

Saludos!

Greetings from La Republica Dominica. My first few days in the country have been awesome. I'm now living with my host family. Dona Ramona is the Grandma (my mother) and her daughter Wendy is is another volunteer's mother. There are always kids running in and out and they are a blast. I kind of feel like a kid again as I'm pretty much at the same level Spanish-wise as them, so it's a great learning opportunity. The house I'm living in is pretty sweet. The other volunteer I'm living with has Cable TV in her bedroom! There is always electricity too.

I'm living in the barrio (neighborhood) called Los Angeles. The only similarities between the one in California and the one here is the name. There are chickens and roosters running around in the street that like to wake people up around 5 am. I can see the sunrise out of my bedroom window. I took a few pictures so hopefully I will be able to post them soon. Also, there is always reggaeton, bachata or merengue music blasting. It's like a party all the time, without the drinking.

I know a little bit more about the work I will be doing, but not everythying yet. There are six of us in the water/sanitation program, and from what I've heard so far we will be in extremely rural communities. During out technical training, the first thing we have to do is learn how to construct a bed. Yes, I said "construct" a bed. What this entails I do not know yet, but I'll try to keep you updated. After that we learn how to build latrines and and construct pipelines to bring water to communities. Apparently wat/san volunteers have the most physically demanding work, and everyone know just how much I love manual labor, so that will be an adjustment, but I'm also happy about it as I will get exercise whether I like it or not. My roommate and I are going to start running in the mornings for exercise during training.

Starting October 4th I go to community based training, so I probably will not have access to email or cell phone or anything. I will be there for 5 weeks and then I will be back in Santo Domingo for 2 more weeks. After that I'm officially a volunteer and get to start workin on my own project.

To those of you at CBBEL, the Peace Corps told us that life will be like living in a fishbowl for the next two years. I thought you guys would get a kick out of that. I just got a little bit of a taste of the fishbowl too. A little girl came in here to make copies and while she was waiting, all she did was stare at me. I tried to talk to her in Spanish, but all she did was stare. Interesting.

Tomorrow afternoon we learn how to use the local public transportation systems. I already took it once with a member of the host family and it was quite an interesting experience. Four of us packed into the back seat of a late 80's, early 90's small Nissan car. This is the type of transportation I will be taking to the training center for the next 3 weeks.

The food here has been excellent thus far. My first truly Dominican meal from my host family was a heaping pile of mashed potatoes with onions and two large chunks of cheese on the top. Then for breakfast the next day we had one hard-boiled egg and some bread. For dinner another day we had rice with lentils and some spaghetti with chicken. Today breakfast has been the best so far. We had fried plantains...these are seriously the best things ever. I could definitely live off these. Also there was some fried salami and bread. We had the best juice ever too. I don't know exactly what type of fruit it was, but it tasted like either passionfruit or guava. Or some combination of the two.

If anyone has any specific questions or anything, let me know and I'll post it on here.

It's amazing how cheap the internet is here...I've been on it for about 45 minutes so far and it's only like 20 pesos. That's less than a dollar in the US. And it's pretty fast too.

Until Next time....Peace

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go....almost

I just finished packing my bags this morning. I'm over the limit by quite a bit, but really don't feel like going through everything to get it down to what it needs to be. My biggest rolling suitcase is 76 lbs....yep, that's 26 lbs over the 50 lb limit. My other duffel bag is only 26 lbs, so that one is fine. The biggest suitcase has most of my supplies and other random stuff, not too many clothes...so that is why it is so heavy. I don't mind paying the fees for the overweight baggage, but I'm not so keen on lugging all these bags around the DR, so I might have to get rid of some things.

We're into the single digits

Time is going by so quickly. One would think that without a job and nothing else to do, that time would move so slowly, but in fact, it is quite the opposite. At times it feels like time is crawling at a snail’s pace, but then I look back and I think how it has already been two weeks since I have been out of work, and that time has flown by.

It’s only 8 days ‘til I leave now, and that can’t come soon enough. While I’m going to miss everything that I’m leaving behind (well not exactly everything) this can’t come soon enough. There will be no more worrying about what I should or shouldn’t pack or thinking about what will or will not happen.