12.19.07

Given the choice of only one utensil to eat with, I choose a fork, hands down. Dominicans choose spoons. I have no idea why because you then have to eat the meat with your fingers. I mean, who can eat meat on a bone with a spoon? It’s just not quite that tender here, the meat.

I went to a pot luck dinner tonight to celebrate the holidays with one of the youth groups here, and oh man did I want to whip up an artichoke dip to share. Or a pasta salad. Or brownies. The other day we made a big soup on what is essentially a campfire, and oh man I wanted to roast marshmallows and make smores. I could really go for a 20 oz. Americano with 2 sugars, a Splenda and half an inch of half-and-half, please, by the way. And a Chonga bagel with cream cheese.

I have begun thinking about both my housing situation (as in, looking for one on my own) and my diagnostic (as in, starting it).

As for housing, it started out with a slightly awkward conversation with my dona asking if my room-and-board payment to them would be reduced by the days I was in Santiago for the storm. (The answer is no.) Then it led into that, even though it’s not my fault and she doesn’t want to change anything, she thinks the amount I am paying (RD $110/day) is too little. Then we moved on to the subject of them helping me find a place to move into in February. They are rooting hard for me to rent this little house that is owned by a family member, but to do so would require a LOT of repairs, which would probably be paid for by me having to pay almost or more than my whole two years of rent up front to pay for the repairs, and then live there without further rent payments. This is problematic for me because one, I don’t want to have all my money on the street in the event that I would need to move and have to try and get it back, and two, because it would be shit-ton of work that I’d have to wait around for who knows who to get the work done and on a Dominican schedule it could be ages before the house would be ready. It crossed my mind that because the family has a vested interest in me renting this particular house, they might be less motivated to help me search out more suitable options, so I’ve been trying to make other contacts who can help me. Also, the other volunteer here is leaving in May and his landlord said that they would rent to the next volunteer, so I can always decide to stay with my host family and extra two months (ugh) and then move into Dan’s house. The upside is he says the place is quiet, volunteer-friendly, and I might score some of his stuff, so these are all great things! I’ll keep current on developments as they come along.

As for my diagnostic, I have been thinking that I needed to get started on it to give myself something to do, but then today I was thinking that I need to get started on it in order to be able to finish it in time. I’m not going to be able to do any interviews until after the New Year (because the survey isn’t ready yet and because nobody does anything in December), and once I get started it will take probably close to 7 weeks to do all hundred interviews because I’d like to do them all myself. I also have to make a map of the community before I start interviewing, and I also want to do something called a community business inventory to find out all the businesses in the community, where they are located, what they do, who owns them and so on. I have this idea that maybe I could start some sort of community level Chamber of Commerce or something. I don’t even know if our municipality has a city-level CC. I need to do some research.

So my plan is to do my map this week and weekend (at least a rough draft so I can figure out what houses to interview); make a date with my counterpart to get a couple hour-long sessions to talk with her about the community in general and my organization in particular, and to go over my survey before I bring it to the families; then, after the New Year I’ll hopefully start doing the interviews, about 16 per week for 6 weeks (in each of the 6 neighborhoods of my community), hopefully finishing around Valentine’s Day. Based on the vague information that our retreat where we present our diagnostic results is at the end of February or the first week of March, this would give me two weeks to compile my results, write the report and build the presentation.

So, Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat. I’m feeling pretty good about the holidays here, although I certainly know it will be different than at home. I’ll be spending Christmas Eve (Noche Buena) in my community, but Christmas Day I’m headed to Santiago to have a Friends-style Christmas with some other volunteers. There’s this house in Santiago that is run like a hostel for Americans living in the DR. It’s a cross between a hostel and a bed-and-breakfast. I’m going to stay the night there and come back on the 26^th. They’re going to do a big dinner and it should be a good time. I’ll be sure to update on how it goes. Plans for New Year’s aren’t as figured out yet, but I’ve decided not to go to Cabarette, which is the unofficial official Peace Corps Volunteer activity. It was confusing to get in on and expensive and I just don’t want to mess with it. One of the volunteers nearby invited me up to Puerto Plata to go for a hike with her and some of her friends, but I’m not sure if that’s exactly on or just around New Years. We’ll see. My host family keeps asking me if I’ll be here for the ball dropping so I get the impression I’m supposed to stick around. All this darn indirect communication is hard for me. However, I’ve heard that Cabarette is a great beach town, so for those of you thinking of coming and visiting resort-style, be sure to check this town out. Here’s a URL for one of the places that sounded pretty cool (although it’s not an all-inclusive setup): http://wilsonsbeachhouse.com/en/index.html. There’s also a general Cabarette tourism website portal that has links to all sorts of places. I don’t remember what it’s called but I’m sure you savvy folks can figure it out.

Well isn’t that just two much too long blog entries for ya?!?!??!! J Take care, happy holidays, and keep in touch!!! Hugs and kisses to all!!!!