May 12, 2008
Rolling Blackouts?
I guess that’s the term. I still haven’t gotten use to these blackouts. Its sucks. I have to plan my life around them. You really never know when the government is going to turn off the lights.

May 11, 2008
Campo Life
Lately I have been taking 2 showers a day, one in the morning and one right before dinner. I have to because it is so hot and there is so much dirt flying around. Many Dominicans who live in the campo where there are no paved roads take 2 to 3 showers a day because of the dirt. So... maybe I am turning Dominican.
I am gradually creating a schedule for myself starting with my showers. Monday through Thursday I teach English in the evening. My adult class is on Mondays and Wednesdays and my youth class is Tuesdays and Thursdays. I teach in the elementary school, sometimes the light goes out so I have to end class. There are rolling blackouts everyday here. I enjoy both classes, it has been a really great way to get to know the youth and get them involved in other things that I want to do. On Saturdays I teach a sexual education/HIV prevention class for the same youth kids that are in my English class. I have just started teaching a 2 month Business Plan class that teaches the students how to create a business plan. After the class is done the Peace Corps selects the best business plans and the students who are chosen get to present their plan in front of the judges in Santo Domingo at a National Conference. The winner/s get/s money to help start up the business. I am really excited because I have a really smart group of kids. Yeah, I don’t really know much about business but the Peace corps gives out manuals for classes like these and they train us. You just have to be up for it. Monday through Friday I go to the primary school and sometimes give presentations to the parents when they meet, I also help out during PE and other classes. Really, I’m just trying to see if I can start some kind of after school study program but that is going to take some time. So basically things start happening for me during the afternoon. During the mornings I have to clean up after my puppy, prep for my classes and sometimes go to the next site to check my email or buy stuff. So far my schedule rocks, my Fridays and Sundays are free (well , kinda, sometimes I have plans to visit other volunteers in their site or go into the capital). I also end up visiting people in my community when I don’t have much to do. It is a must that I visit my host family everyday at least once a day if not more. People get upset here if you don’t visit them on a regular basis. I really enjoy my Sundays because there is always a baseball game, so that’s fun. However, I only have energy to stay for one game, yeah they have like baseball marathons on Sundays.
So for now this is my life in the campo. It’s nice and chill. The times when my life isn’t chill is when I decide to leave for a few days and get together with other volunteers. It always seems like college again.


April 19, 2008
Living on my own
I finally moved into my house. My own house. After 5 months of pestering and stocking people in my community for available houses. It was tough because people don’t move a lot in the campo. Also, it is very rare for someone to live on their own, especially a woman. People kept saying ‘are you sure you want to live on your own, aren’t you scared?’ It is a decent house. The house is made out of these big ceramic blocks and the roof is made of tin. The walls do not reach the roof so I hear pretty much everything that is going on outside, for instance the cows mooing, snoring, farting, peeing ( oh that is because there are cows that live right behind my house) and the chickens/roosters. I also get interesting bugs crawling into my room. It is a good house, the landlord left the house with Dominican couches, a table with chairs, a set of rocking chairs for the porch in the front, and another set of rocking chairs for the house inside. I rock a lot. Also, the house has electricity always, even when there is a black out because this Dominican who lives across from me did some kind of wiring and connected my house to the house next door. They have this big battery called an inversol that allows them to always have electricity. Most people in my community do not have an inversol because it is expensive. So it sounds nice but there’s a few things that bite. First, the shower is outside. Well that’s not so bad because it is connected to the back of the house. But, there is something wrong with the pipes so sometimes I don’t have water. So I have to fill up a big bucket with water just in case I don’t have any for the next day. Okay so that isn’t too bad, what really sucks is that I have to use a latrine. Ok, so not only do I have to use a latrine, but I have to share it with another house. The owner of my house built a beautiful gazebo but forgot to build a latrine or just didn’t feel like it. Of course latrines are never nice to use but this one is really bad. I don’t think they ever clean it and there isn’t a lid so there are mosquitos flying out of the hole. I used it once and decided I would never use it again. Lately I have been using my host families latrine. It’s tough, supposedly the owner is going to build one with the money I give him for rent but that sounds unlikely. I knew this before moving in, I just felt that I could tough it out. I can tough it out but it just sucks. I also have a 3 month old puppy that likes to pee all over the floor during the night so that means I have to mop every morning. That takes up lots of water.
Ok but all in all, it is really nice to live on my own again and not to have to tell my host mother where I am going and when I will be back. It’s also nice to know that I will be able to cook and clean for myself. It’s great, especially now that I have a cute female puppy named lluvia which means rain in Spanish. My host sister named her, it was raining today when I brought her in. She also has blue eyes. I’m not sure if I am a fan though.

April 11, 2008
How are the platanos?
Yes, yesterday I found myself asking this exact question to my host father, well it was more like “Como estan los platanos”? Like nothing, we just started having a conversation about his platano farm. I wasn’t even trying to figure out what to say to break the awkward silence that sometimes occurs. I was actually serious when I asked this question. My host father has a platano farm close by and apparently his platanos are doing better than others. Also, he made more money off of his rice field than anyone in Los Limones during this growing season. So, of course the rice and platanos are doing well because there’s not a day that goes by without rice and boiled green platanos as the main dish. I do have to admit that the rice is good. People who own rice fields are now cutting the fields, drying the rice and putting the rice into sacs to sell. It seems like most people in my campo made a good profit. Whenever I sit down and start talking to someone they always bring up the rice as well as the bananas. Bananas are always in season so there is always room for talking about that.
The rice fields look beautiful...but the mosquitos suck. Up in the north, rice is what people live off of. It is their main income for many and they eat it like Mexicans eat tortillas. Everyday for lunch we have rice. For a while (a month maybe) I couldn’t even look at rice, I started getting grossed out whenever I saw someone else eating it. Then I started imagining that this would be my life for the next 2 years, eating rice everyday....for lunch. I couldn’t stomach it. I’ve also gained a lot of pounds eating rice everyday since August (like 10lbs, that’s a lot). Everyone in my house thought maybe I was sick because I kept refusing to eat it. I kept telling them I needed to give it some time. Eventually I started it up again. Now I’ve come to appreciate it. I look forward to eating rice for lunch. I just don’t eat as much as Dominicans eat.