My Site

So last week I finally found out where I'm going to be living for the next two years. It's a small town outside of Altamira, about 40 minutes away from the big tourist area of Puerto Plata (just in case you wanted to look at a map of the DR.) I don't have time to go into detail and I didn't take any pictures of it yet (I figure I have 2 years to take pics)

Anyways, there are about 70 houses and about 270 people living there, nicely nestled in some large hills/small mountains. Everyone there seems surprisingly well-off and I'm not exactly sure where they acquire their money, but they definitely have it. I'm only a 10 minute walk off one of the major highways, therefore it is a relatively well-developed community. We have electricity, and a significant number of people even have running water in their houses, complete with flushing toilets and showers. These people buy their water from a truck that occasionally comes around to fill the tanks on their roofs.

Unfortunately the host family that I'm living with does not let me use their bathroom inside; I need to use the latrine and take bucket baths, but alas, I'm in the Peace Corps so I shouldn't have expected differently. I'm currently living in what I guess would be called a basement, although it's not really so much a basement as it is just one room on a lower level which you need to go outside to access. As a result of this "basement," when I stand up in my room my head is about an inch away from the ceiling. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I banged my head against the light fixture in my room. Also, there is only one small window which provides for no ventilation whatsoever, and my room smells faintly of mold. Luckily, the longest I'll have to live there is 3 months, although I'm hoping to move out in 1.5 or 2.

When I went around on my community tour they pointed out a house to me which is currently vacant, and which we would be discussing renting options in the future. The house looked really beatiful, even by some U.S. standards. It's a concrete structure which appeared to be completely furnished, which I'm hoping stays furnished when I rent it. It's about 100 yards away from a river which is really nice because I could then just bathe in the river instead of taking bucket baths. Also, I didn't go inside, but it looked big enough to have 2 bedrooms, so I could have visitors stay with me, so start looking for flights now.

Last Wednesday I had my first community meeting with the water committee and about 50 members of the community. The water committe pretty much ran the whole thing, but I should have arrived knowing that they would probably want me to speak a little, but I really didn't feel like preparing anything, so I went with just a blank notepad, and some Peace Corps handouts that were given to me earlier in the week. Right before the meeting started, the committee president (also my project partner, who is really cool by the way...more to come about him in a future post) came up to me and told me that after he introduced me that he wanted me to talk a little about the philosophy and goals of the Peace Corps...Yikes! Everyone who knows me, knows that I'm not really good at winging things, add to that a foreign language, and yeah...enough said. So I nicely stumbled through a couple minutes of senseless blabber, but everyone applauded me at the end, probably out of pity.

A little about my host family for the next 3 months: they are surprisingly similar to my family back in the states, except with darker skin. The mom and dad are 51 and 53, respectively, very close to my parents' ages. I have an older brother who is 29 who is on a baseball team, and is apparently pretty good because he has traveled to the states a couple times with the team. They have another daughter around 26 who has moved away from home to a nearby pueblo. I have a brother who is my age at 23, and then the youngest is my sister, who is 21. So, two boys and two girls, just like my family, and in similar age ranges too. It's really weird that it turned out that way, but it's comforting.

Also, we went to visit the water source that will feed my gravity-fed aqueduct. I found out that there is already a spring box there which was built back in 1986 with a small aqueduct in place which reaches about 7 or 8 houses. Apparently my community is in agreement with this other community to share this source, although I definitely anticipate some problems with this in the future. It is nice, however, to know that my community is really well-organized and well-educated, and has technical skill with respect to both design and construction. Hopefully this will make my job a little less stressfull, but we'll see. I'm a little intimidated at the moment with the prospect of designing this water system, but plenty of people have constructed theirs before me, in probably much worse off situations, so I know that I can do it too.

There are 5 other volunteers from my group that are within an hour or so of me. One of them is about a 10 minute ride down the highway, so that is pretty nice. There are also probably about 10 or so others from previous volunteer groups that are stationed around there.

Hopefully next time I'll have some pictures for you all, but for now you will just have to anxiously await them.

I officially swear-in and become a volunteer on Wednesday. Today I had the last of all my Spanish testing and a bunch of other random tests and I passed them all. Woohoo!

Also, on random note, there seems to be a bought of scabies in our group. Three people apparently have it, and although I haven't been in close contact with any of them, I'm feeling awfully itchy.

Finally, several people before I left inquired as to how I would get my hair cut here in the DR. Apparently these people (I'm not mentioning any names) were not aware that Dominicans do in fact cut their hair. Tonight I went to the barber for the first time and got myselft a nice Dominican hairdo. It's a little different than how it would have been cut in the states, but my Spanish still isn't that great and I wasn't able to communicate to them exactly how I wanted it cut. They have the same hair clippers as they do in the states, complete with different numbered attachments, so I told the barber that I would like a 2 on the sides and a 3 on the top, just like my brother at home had done numerous times in the past. The barber nodded in agreement and proceeded to cut my hair. I did not have my glasses on and as a result, when I put them on at the end it definitely was not cut with a 2 on the sides and 3 on top. Also, my widow's peak was razored off (sorry Denise, I know you really loved that). I'll try to take some pictures tonight so you all can see my lovely new do.

I hope everyone has a glorious Thanksgiving...I will be living it up for 2 nights at the Barcelo Lina in downtown Santo Domingo, complete with a pool and hot showers...what luxury (all for a grand total of $37 US). Thanksgiving dinner is at some ritzy place in a really nice neighborhood and it's all put together and cooked by volunteers. I'm sure it will not even come close to Thanksgiving dinner at home, but gosh darnit I'm going to enjoy it. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I would like to say one thing that I'm thankful for: that it's the end of November here and the temperature is a nice hot and sweaty 85-90 degrees...how lovely. Meanwhile, all you guys back in Chicago will be enjoying a nice high of 35 on Thanksgiving...haha!

Cell Phone

I just received my cell phone today. I'm not going to post it on here because I don't want telemarketers to get a hold of it, so if you want it, send me an email.

It's free for me to receive calls and text messages, so call and text whenever you want. Apparently you can go to www.callingcards.com and get pretty cheap rates on calling the DR. Also, I think there are some places online where you can make international calls for really cheap, such as Skype. Figure it out and give me a call. I'm supposed to have pretty good service at my site and I have electricity so I'll it should be on all the time.

I found out what my site will be for the next two years. If anyone wants to visit just let me know. You could fly into Santiago or Puerto Plata as they are about the same distance from me. If you want to stay with me lodging and food will practically be free, so the most expensive thing will be the flight.

USAID

Today turned out to be quite the interesting day. The other 5 trainees and I arrived at the training facility prepared for a long day of Spanish class, but before class began we received a call from our program and training officer (PTO) asking us if we would like to help USAID load helicopters with supplies to assist in the relief effort of the recent storms. We gladly obliged since that would be a lot more exciting than a whole day of Spanish.

We took a taxi to the Peace Corps office in Santo Domingo where we met Richard Goughnour, the mission director of USAID in the Dominican Republic and Jeff Cohen, the program officer. We then went to the Las Americas airport where we had to pass through security in order to get onto the tarmac.

We arrived at the destination and probably waited an hour before we actually began to load stuff. We were loading blankets (why I don't know because it's really hot) and toiletries for the refugees. We loaded up 3 U.S. Coast Guard helicopters and one cargo plane. Most of the time was actually spent making an obstacle course and shelters for shade out of the bags of blankets, because there were hours inbetween each loading. Unfortunately we did not get to take a ride on this helicpoter.

I did not have my camera with me since I wasn't expecting to do anything exciting today, but another volunteer had his, so when he posts his I'll link to it.

Photo Update

I uploaded all my photos from the last month or so...all 229 of them, so have fun. I'm going to continue to use Google's Picassa as that seems to be the easiest for me to use. I captioned all the photos so you can get an idea of what you're looking at. I also went back and captioned the rest of my photos so take another look at the older ones also. For your viewing pleasure I rotated all the taller photos so you no longer have to strain your neck to view them.

Please comment on them so I have something to read when I'm bored, and comment on this blog too....I like to know what everyone thinks and please give me suggestions on what you want to read about in the future. I'm going to open up the comments so you know longer have to register in order to comment. If things get out of control with spammers leaving comments though I'll close it back up.

Tropical Storm Noel

Well it has been quite an adventure this past week with Tropical Storm Noel swinging by. The rain started a little bit during the day on Saturday, picking up intensity at night and then basically pouring until about Wednesday, some more drizzling on Thursday, and by Friday it was nice and sunny. I would have never imagined it could rain that much. It was probably a 5000 Year storm event...haha.

The worst part of the storm was during the night on Sunday. The wind was really blowing and the rain was coming down at an insane rate. When I woke up it was horrible outside. Trees were down and further up the road from us half the road had washed away. As gossip spread further throughout the different villages, we would eventually find out that four bridges had washed away and both of the roads out were covered in mudslides.

We had enough food to last until about Sunday, and obviously plenty of water with all the rain that had come down, but it was still really nervewracking at times not knowing exactly how we were going to get out of there. Luckily, one of the tech trainers had a working cell phone so we were always in contact with the peace corps office. Since they knew that we would be low on food on Sunday they wanted us out on Saturday, and they decided we would be evacuated by helicopter.

Friday night we had a small get together with the people from the village to celebrate the month we had spent together. My host mom was very sad that I was leaving because her husband had gone to the hospital right before the storm began and now she would have to spend the nights alone in her house. It was really sad leaving but I reassured her that I would definitely come back and visit since I'm in the country for two years. She even gave me her phone number so that I could call her sometime.

Come Saturday morning we had quite a few spectators come to watch our departure. It would be everyone's first time riding in a helicopter so none of us really knew what to expect. I went in the first group with four people, including myself. We had a lot baggage so we weren't able to take off solely vertically, so we lifted off the ground a little and over a row of trees and descended into the valley below in order to gain velocity. (Sorry for this as most people will not understand, but it felt like we were on a spaceship on our way to planet Endor to visit Wicky.) Apparently, to everyone on the ground it looked like we had crashed, and some people even started crying. They ended up seeing us further in the distance though, so everything was fine. Some of the villagers cut down trees so that it would be easier for the pilot to leave with the next group of people.

So, I´m fine and all the other volunteers and trainees are safe. We are back in the hot, sweaty, polluted Capital a week earlier than expected, which is not that great but I'll deal with it. I'm here til next Tuesday afternoon, when I go to visit what will be my permanent site for two years. I'll be back in Santo Domingo the Sunday after that, for a week, then I will leave for my site for good.

My site is about 45 minutes away from the second largest city of Santiago and about 45 minutes away from the tourist area of Puerto Plata. Anyone who wants to visit can fly into either of those airports, or we could work something else out depending on where you want to go.

I'm in the process of uploading my photos to Snapfish now instead of Google since there is no limit on the amount of photos you can upload using Snapfish. I'm having some trouble with my memory card though so it might be awhile before I get all the pics up. I'll update my pic links in a bit.