10.27.2007

Lots of new posts, and photos!

Hi all,

Four posts up today and some new photos, so check it out. I hope all is well with everyone. I love you and miss you all!!!!

Write and tell me how everything is going!
Kira

10.26.07 The Next Best Thing to Breast Milk

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to get to the internet, so I’m getting a bit of a backlog of entries here… sorry about that. We finally made it to the WiFi zone (WiFi in the DR?!?!) on Tuesday but it was totally a bust. Such is life in the Peace Corps, right? I need to stop complaining.

I have been suspecting for a while now that I was getting infant formula in my diet here, and now I have confirmed that this is the case and figured out where it goes. The brand is Infamil (which I’m pretty sure is what we used to feed Cal!) and it’s extra special because it’s the kind loaded up with extra iron. No worrying that Kira will be anemic here.

So anyway, it comes to me in some sort of hot beverage at breakfast, and tastes a lot like a chai tea. Why are they feeding (and drinking themselves!) me baby formula? And anyway, isn’t that stuff really expensive?

Actually, I don’t mind the drink itself, it’s pretty tasty… full of cinnamon and nutmeg and such, but formula???

10.22.07 Book Lists

Hi all,
Thanks so much for being willing to send me some reading materials. Lots of people heard my plea for books and wanted to know some specific requests, and although it took me a couple weeks to do it, I’ve compiled a list of suggestions from fellow volunteers. It was hard because the authors I know I’ve already read a bunch of books and don’t remember which ones, and authors I don’t know, I don’t know, so I can’t really request them J. Anyway, here’s the list of suggestions:

Tom Robbins:
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
Skinny Legs and All
Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates
Still Life of a Woodpecker

David James Duncan:
The Brothers K
The River Y

Other authors who we didn’t know the names:
The Time Traveler’s Life
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter

Thanks again for the great e-mails of encouragement and news from home. I know I’ve been sending out a lot of requests… None of them are urgent so please don’t feel obligated or otherwise stressed J.

On another note… One of the girls in my family (she doesn’t live here but is always over) who most certainly knows my name has decided today that she is going to call me “Americana.” … As Charley (one of the volunteers in my barrio) pointed out, selective hearing is a wonderful thing.

Okay, I think I get to get on the internet tomorrow and hopefully it will work out the way we are planning (free WiFi, three computers to share between five people instead of the normal one computer to share among all five of us) and I’ll be able to respond to a few emails without the week and a half lag.

I miss you all!!!
Stay tuned!

10.21.07 Choices

At various times in my life I have struggled with answering the question, “What makes an American an American?” because our culture is so unlike many in the rest of the world which have a single (or a few) identifiable roots that go back many generations, into the beginning of time, in some cases.

What is “American Food”? I don’t know. My host family asked me once what my favorite dish was in the US and all I could tell them was that I could maybe pick a favorite Italian, Chinese, Pizza and so on, but that I couldn’t narrow it down to one food or one meal.

What is “American Music”? Um, Pop? Country? Rock? Blue Grass? Hip Hop? Folk?

What do “Americans” look like? They look like everyone in the world, how can you summarize it?

You get the idea.

Well, I was thinking tonight as my training group was working on our assignment for the week, a mini version of the community diagnostic we will do when we arrive in our sites to help us familiarize ourselves with the community and identify potential projects to do in addition to our primary project. Anyhow, in preparing this presentation (which we are giving tomorrow, in Spanish – wish me luck!) we did a lot of looking at what their (our community) resources and needs are and how well they match up, and I got to thinking that maybe one of the things that we can say defines “America” is choice, variety and opportunity. I’m sure this isn’t an original thought, but it explains a lot.

It explains why my Dona gets frustrated at me for hardly eating anything, and why I get frustrated because my dinner, day after day, is all or a rotation of fried eggs, fried salami, fried cheese, mangu, avocado, and… well, that’s about it. All I want is some variety, but variety is just not the way of life here.

It’s not so much a matter of I don’t like the food here, but that the cultural values we have about food, eating and meals is so different of a priority.

In the States, in any place most of us live, not only do we have the choice of several different major grocery stores within close distance, but also have several specialty markets, farmers markets and specific vendors where you will find the most obscure ingredients in the world. Here, not only is there a grocery store in this town (it’s ALL colmados, essentially a 7-11) but you are only going to find one type of each thing that is available (which is not to say that everything is available but with a limited selection).

It explains why the locals don’t understand how cooped up we feel when we don’t get out of our barrio for a week, yet the Donas often don’t even get out of their houses, and literally rarely get out of the neighborhood. People here pass the time watching tv or sitting outside on plastic chairs talking about nothing. It doesn’t bother them that we want to go do stuff, but when we ask what there is to do around here, they just chuckle at our Americanness and invite us to sit down in one of the countless plastic chair.

10.18.07

Hi Everyone,

Not much new to report since last time. Tonight was a nice change from the usual here; we had a health class with the nurse from the training center who came up to our site for more information to scare us out of having sex the whole time we’re here. Man, the stuff you can get in developing countries, man oh man. It was a good night though because they gathered all of us together at our trainers’ house and bought us empanadas and made this fantastic pasta and veggie (not something we get often enough here) salad, with RAW vegetables, which is slightly unheard of, so far. We had some great girl talk and ate cake because it was my Spanish teacher’s birthday. A fun day in all, and it was really nice to have some change of pace food-wise.

(the next day)
The weekend is finally upon us, and although I am fairly bummed that it will be too full with work in preparation for our second technical Spanish presentation on Monday to be able to go find internet, there are a few social activities planned, which makes me at once happy and stressed out (because of reasons previously mentioned) but I’m excited to do something fun and have more opportunities to hang out informally with the group. Tonight after dinner my neighborhood is getting together to drink some of the wine we bought on our way out of Santo Domingo last Sunday, and then tomorrow we are celebrating two birthdays in our group and going to the Kiosco Bar in one of the barrios. This is the bar that a couple of weeks from now will be having “Noche de Espuma” (a foam party) that we are also planning to attend. So it will be a fun weekend with a nice mix of work and play (I hope!).
As expected, there are many adjustments and general inconveniences, the majority of which I am not at all surprised by – the food, the bugs, the heat, the unreliable water and electricity, for example. These have been annoying, but so far they haven’t caused too much anxiety or stress. The sneaker pain in the ass is how long it takes to get to internet and how hard it is to fit it in my days. Even in Santo Domingo, where there was an internet place in the barrio, an hour’s worth of internet was easily a two hour affair, and here in Juan Lopez de Moca, it’s easily 3 hours start to finish. Luckily, I have my computer here so I can write off line (thanks, Mom!), save emails to respond to at home. But still, it’s really stressful to try do everything in a reasonable amount of time. Usually when we go there are several volunteers taking turns on computers, so everyone is waiting (as patiently as possible) and nobody can take their time. And then, because we are there together we have to wait until everyone is finished. My level of irritation at this situation has caught me off guard. I know I’m an internet junkie, but I am surprised at how cranky it makes me. I’m looking forward to my site, when I’ll be able to move around more freely and set my own schedule. Right now, we do everything as a barrio – which I generally like – but I’d really like to figure out a more peaceful approach to communicating with folks back home.

In other news, or non-news, more precisely, I have yet to receive my first correspondence from home, and so I ask, “Who’s will be the FIRST I receive???” I don’t know if anything has gotten put in the mail yet, but everyone else has been getting mail for a couple of weeks now so I’m getting impatient! J I really haven’t been gone that long, Only just short of six weeks now, but it seems like longer because we have been so busy and adjusting to so much new stuff. It would be great to get some reinforcements, if anyone is feeling up to the challenge. I know my mom is working on a few things, but other than that… J
Alright, it’s about dinner time. More later.

10.16.2007

Update, Two of Two

October 11, 2007

Saludos.

So I am happy to report that this week was much better than last week. I feel like bonding is starting to happen in my subgroup here during CBT. By subgroup what I mean is: all of my Community Economic Development sector (17 people) is here in Juan Lopez, but we are broken up into “residential language classes,” and our living assignments are so that we live with the people we have Spanish with. So by subgroup, I mean my Spanish classmates/neighbors, Jessica, Alissa, Charley and Tara. POR FIN! (Finally!).

Tomorrow morning (Friday Oct. 12) all the CED volunteers head back into the capital until Sunday for the PCDR Business Plan Competition, which is one of the capstone projects for our sector. It’s a youth group to promote business skills education and youth entrepreneurship, and the finalists get to travel to the capital for a weekend retreat. We’ll be staying at the same retreat center as when we first arrived in the country, and one of our first technical assessments is tomorrow: We have to lead 90 minutes worth of ice breakers with the kids who are attending the competition.

PS. I am not sure why, but it smells like PEE in my house today. Also, a funny side note. I’m not sure about other Spanish-speaking countries, but here is some slangy terminology for bathroom duties here: If you say “Yo voy a Miami” it means “I have to pee” (based, apparently, on the verb “mear” (mee-are) which means “to wet oneself” (I think). And “Yo voy a Chicago” means #2… also based on a verb that means “to shit,” I think, but I forget what the verb is and my dictionary is on the outside of my mosquito net…

I finally convinced the Dona to procure some fruit for me to eat, so the last couple days have been a bit more balanced, although I have been eating Mangu (see previous entry on plantains) just about every damn day. Oh, and yesterday for dinner I had chicken that had been walking around on the patio making chicken noises earlier yesterday afternoon. I looked out one minute and Chicken One and Chicken Two were running around happy as clams, and I looked out a few minutes later and their feet were tied and they were ominously still. I had wondered if this experience would gross me out (eating something that I had shooed away just hours earlier), but it didn’t; however, I’m pretty sure they just hacked the poor birds to bits instead of butchering them into normal “chicken pieces” and there were bits of bone scattered throughout, so I got some extra protein from eating the bone chips I couldn’t find in my mouth until I felt them on the way down. EWWW!!! I know it’s not Grub Worms yet, but I figure eating the chicken bones is good warm up. Also, I’m fairly certain that at some point I’ll be eating fried pork skin here… I forget what they call it though.

Okay, I better get going because I have a few emails to write and I need to go take my Aralen and Vitamin B (damn mosquitoes), but in case anyone is working on care packages, here are a couple of ideas J WinkWink.

- linen pants (about size 4)

- sleeveless cotton woven work shirts (about size 2)

- artisan fair-style wrap pants (Suzanne, remember the ones we saw at Country Fair?, how would you describe those?)

- peasant-style blouses with long sleeves, loose, cotton

- Clif brand Mojo Bars

- (mom, can you send my umbrella?)

- Citronella candles

- Fruity, chewy candy

Okay, I miss you guys! Anyone have any questions???

I’ve been getting a few good emails of news from home here and there, but there’s no such thing as too many. Keep ‘em coming, I miss hearing from everyone, even though I realize life is just as busy as ever.

Adios! Stay tuned for my first all-Spanish entry, I think I’m coming along well enough to be able to do it around when I finish training!!! How exciting!!!

Love,

Kira

Update, One of Two -- both a little old.

October 7, 2007

The last few days have been pretty rough for me, emotionally. Nothing remarkable has happened; I think it’s more that the past three week’s stresses and strains are building up. I’m not sure if my head is messing with my stomach or the other way around, but I’ve been having a bit of trouble with both.

Getting comfortable with the group of volunteers is taking longer than I had hoped, and that has been making all the other stuff more challenging because the others in the group seem like they were all fast friends and I don’t know where I fit. I’m trying to keep a positive frame of mind about it because I know if I let it get to me too much it will be even more of an obstacle, and anyways, I know that I have a pretty darn good cheering section back at home and that all of you are rooting for and supporting me from afar. It goes along way, knowing that.

Anyways, a bit of news on the DR front…
My new host family: Dona Ana and Don Yea are the head folks in my new house. Their youngest daughter and her husband also live here. They have a huge family and everyone lives, more or less, on the same street here in the barrio. They gather here daily. Everyone seems really nice, but we don’t have a lot to talk about yet because I’m still learning Spanish in the first place and they have a pretty thick campesino accent out here. I think I understand about 30% less here than I did with most of the folks in Santo Domingo, but like everywhere, some people are easier to understand than others. Overall, though, the people here are harder. The house I’m living in is more humble than the one in SD, but it’s a lot more what I expected from this experience. We still have electricity (most of the time), running water (most of the time), flush toilets, and the like, but the house has a zinc roof (which, actually, I love the sound when it rains)…

It’s about 10 degrees cooler here than it was in the capital. The low here is probably around 72 and it the capital the lowest I ever, ever saw the thermometer on my alarm go was 79… at 4 am or some ridiculous hour like that. The cooler weather has been great, but I wish I had brought another long sleeve shirt or two from the capital. The ones I have with me are going to get a lot of use here.

Our trainer, Tim, said that pig and chicken poop only smells when it rains. Well, it’s been monsooning here for the most part. And boy is it smelly. Good think my stomach problems have been achy, instead of queasy, or I’d be in big trouble right now.

The mosquitoes are doing better as far as leaving me alone. I’d say I’m down to an average of 1.5-2.5 new bites per day. Los mosquitoes me pican mucho. This is a result of much effort, between the vitamin b, repellent, long pants/shoes/socks, so it hasn’t been without a cost to my comfort. It’s definitely been worth it though, because the 8 bites a day thing was driving me absolutely bananas. There is some other biting critter here, some sort of mite or something, but we think they are harmless and except for the fact that they leave red blotches with little droplets of blood, they don’t itch or hurt or anything.

Yesterday was, shall we say, an adventure. Definitely a lesson for Kira in patience. It was absolutely infuriating. We went into Moca to find an internet café, and first of all I forgot to bring the phone number where I can be reached here, so that was annoying. Anyway, we went to two cafes that were closed before we found one that would be opening in 45 minutes. So we wandered around and came back at the indicated time, and what do we find? Well, we found that the center only had four functioning computers, two of which had been snapped up by a couple of pervy teenagers who had prepaid for three hours and spent the whole time watching Japanese anime porn (on public computers!!! They have NO SHAME!) and taking bathroom breaks with the animated sex just got too hot for them. It was frustrating because there ended up being a line of 8 or so volunteers and we only had two computers, and these stupid guys just didn’t have any sense of public courtesy (or 8 gringas STARING THEM DOWN WITH EVIL EYES) to realize a lot of people were waiting and just cash out their remaining time to be polite. Whatever. Anyway, we got back and it was dark as shit and we had to walk from the main road to our barrio in the bitch black and lots of lodo (mud). I was really irritated from the long wait (almost 3 hours) and because my feelings of being an outsider had been getting to me, but I’m feeling better today.

The first day we were here (Thursday) we saw the hugest pig I have ever seen in my life. I wasn’t close enough to say for sure, but I’m willing to bet he went as high as my shoulders (or higher) and his ball sack was probably as bit as two bowling balls sitting side by side. That was one potent pig. Hahaha.

(break for BINGO)

I just got back from the Sunday tradition of bingo with the dona and the family up the road, and what a riot. I didn’t play for long because they only told me to bring 15 pesos, and I would have needed 200 or something to play as many games as they played, but it was fun regardless. I had a hard time with the numbers because of the accent – for example, what would be 66 is “sesenta seis” or even “pareja de seis” (pair of sixes) would have made sense, but here they say “pai say,” which took me forever to figure out. And what’s worse, they have crazy thinks like “la bruja” means 13 and “mariaelena” is 69… I have no idea.

Let’s see… what else…
Moca, well, Juan Lopez de Mocha, where I’m living for my CBT these six weeks, is absolutely beautiful. It is surrounded by lush (almost) forest, with what appears to be deciduous trees mixed with palm trees and all sorts of fruit and other trees and foliage. There are avocados, oranges (but they’re green on the outside here), plantains and banana trees everywhere!

A side note on PLANTAINS aka. Platanos:
If you are not careful here, you could very easily end up being served plantanos, in one form or another, in every meal. Here are some examples, and I’m sure there are more than the types of preparations I have thus far encountered:
- Tostones: this dish uses “platanos verdes” or green/unripe plantains. They are sliced into chips and fried, and served with salt and ketchup like French fries. Pretty good.
- Platanos Herbidos: This dish is simply boiled platanos verdes. Totally bland, and so pretty hard for me to eat because they are dense and tasteless.
- Mangu: Platanos verdes cut into chunks, then boiled, then mashed into a really thick mashed potato kind of dish. Hopefully served with butter and slightly crispy sautéed onions and garlic, and pepper. With all this, mangu is decent, but without it its pretty much just as bland and boring as platanos herbidos, above, and they serve it as the main dish so it’s not like you can get away with a tablespoon size portion of this stuff.
- Platanos Maduros Fritos: Fried ripe plantain slices. The platanos maduros are a bit sweeter and do actually have some flavor. This is how plantains are usually served if your order them in the States, and the sweetness of the ripe fruit caramelizes when you fry it so it’s kindof a dessert.

Okay… moving on (sorry this is so long but this is kindof my first chance in a while to do a rundown on the latest information)….

Our group overall is holidng fast – we’ve only had two people ET (early terminate) so far, and from what I hear that’s a pretty good number for where we are at in the service process. I think I wrote about the guy a while back who pretty much left our second day in-country. The second one was a girl in Youth, I think, who left our first day back after our site visits last week. I guess she was just not feeling the PCDR thing, and I’m not sure she had really looked inside herself to be sure why she was here. You really have to know why you came in the first place in order to pull yourself through when the going gets tough. I think she was having a hard time with the language too, which makes all of it that much harder.

One of the things here that is challenging is that, as with everything, all host families are not created equal, and especially when it comes to feeding us a balanced diet. My host family in Santo Domingo was pretty top-notch when it came to my meals, but Dona here is not so much on top of the fruit and vegetable situation. So yesterday, I really wnted some fresh fruit, so I walked over to the colmado (more on that in a bit) to get some and there wasn’t ANY. NONE. No fruit available for purchase. How can it be that there is no fruit available in a country where they grow orange and banana trees on the side of the road like a maple grows in Oregon?... I have no idea.

Ok, what is a colmado? Did I already write about this??? I forget. Oh well. If you are still reading this insanely long entry you can probably stand two more minutes, right?

A colmado is like a really small mini mart, but they are on every corner and every block, and I don’t mean one at each intersection either. I mean it is not uncommon to have one colmado on each corner of the same intersection (or equivalent distance bc this country isn’t really laid out in an organized grid pattern), multiple blocks in a row. In addition to the fact that colmados are about as numerous here as mosquitoes, they sell everything (except, apparently, fruit on an odd Saturday in October). Really, they sell evertying. They take the place of a grocery store altogether for many people. The folks here do their grocery shopping 60 pesos at a time (US $2). You can buy 5 pesos of vegetable oil (they put it in a little plastic sack and tie a knot at the top). You can buy 20 pesos of cheese, 3 tsp of flour, two eggs, one cookie, one cigarette and a trial size of Pert Plus shampoo and conditioner. Again, it’s crazy.

Ok, enough for now. In case you wondered, this entry is almost 1900 words long. Thanks for your attention!!!!

Love, Kira

10.03.2007

Administrative things

hey everyone,

there are just a couple of things i wanted to mention, because i´m neurotic.

first, i just put some new pictures online, so be sure to check them out.

second, i apologize for the oddly timed and sometimes rushed emails. i have been working offline in my freetime and then coming to the internet cafe about once a week to send off the stuff i´ve written and save the emails i have in my inbox. sometimes i respond quickly if its just a short answer or whatever, so things get kind of out of order. i´m trying to respond to everything though, and to get good, real emails out to everyone as often as i can. hopefully i´ll be able to figure out a bit better routine or something here soon, and not be as dorky sounding.

third, i leave tomorrow to go into the interior, as i have mentioned before. my phone number will be different, and actually i´m not even sure if these folks have a phone i´ll be able to use, so stay tuned. if not, i can probably get to a call center and then have you guys call me back, if you want to do that.

ok, that´s all.

xoxo, i miss you guys!!!

i´ll put up photos of the new diggs soon because i hear that this one is going to be a good bit more ´humble´than the one im in now... time will tell. hehehe.

okay, bye!

Dominican Dumplings

What is a Dominican Dumpling, you ask? Well, I will tell you… but all in good time.

The last four days, as you all know, I have been out in another town visiting a current volunteer in my sector. The purpose of the visit is to see the real life situation of a volunteer; to have a chance to ask questions outside of the uber-structured training schedule; to travel to the interior independently using public transportation, and so on.

Well, my visit went splendidly. The volunteer I visited, Alexis, and I did a great blend of activities while I was there. We went to a couple of meetings that were related to her primary project, and a few for some of her secondary projects (like a youth group focusing on self esteem) as well. We did a pretty thorough walking tour of the pueblo, ate pica pollo, drank beer, went to the disco. We visited a couple of (mostly Hatian) bateys, but unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me for that, and got seriously stuck in the mud. Today, before I left to come back to the capital, we met up with two other volunteers in the area and their visiting trainees, and we went to the beach! There should be some pictures in the DR Photos link over to the right of the blog. (I also took some pictures of the house where I’m staying here in Santo Domingo, so be sure to check them out.)

OK, now what you’ve all been waiting for!!!

I had my first Dominican Cooking Lesson during my volunteer visit, and we made dumplings! Now, these are probably the least nutritional, most easy thing I could make here, but that is not the point. The point is that this was the first time I was allowed to have anything to do with the preparation of food in this country the whole time I’ve been here. Basically, the dish is: flour, oil, water, salt (made into a dough), balled up and boiled until they float, and then for a while more. Then, a sauce of melted cheese and sautéed green peppers, tomatoes, onions and spicy stuff is poured overtop the dumplings, and voila! Dominican Dumplings.

Okay, I’m really tired. If anyone has topics you’re wondering about, please shoot me an email and I’ll answer them as I get a chance. It’s hard to decide what exactly to write about on here because there’s just so much happening!

Oh yeah, and a word on my itinerary. Like I have been mentioning before, I will be leaving on Thursday, September 4 for my community based training. We’ll be in a campo called Juan Lopez (I think) which is outside the pueblo of Moca, which is near Santiago (if you feel like looking on a map). I’ll be there for 5.5 weeks, and have no idea what my access to internet and the like will be while I’m there. I also don’t know if I’ll have any or regular enough electricity to keep the laptop charged, but I’ll do my best. However, I will be in the capital for three or four days or something the couple days around October 11 for part of our technical training that happens in the capital, so I should (I think) be able to get to an internet place at least once during that time. We’ll see. Please write me though!!!! I look forward to hearing from all of you!!!
Take care!
Kira