It's 2008

Happy New Year! I spent New Year’s with Peace Corps Volunteers at the beach and it was beautiful. I was battling a fever the whole time, but luckily I didn’t feel too bad, and a good dose of denial will really get a person far.

Puppies were born on December 29th, 2 girls and 1 boy, to my project partner’s dog. They are adorable, as all puppies are, though I must admit I haven’ t been able to pick them up yet. I learned the hard way the other day that you really shouldn’t disturb a nursing mother, and since then have slowly been rebuilding the relationship I’d established with the puppies’ mother. She loves me now though, so I think it’s only a matter of time before I can hold those little guys. My project partner had offered one to me a while back, and if all still goes according to plan, I think I’m going to ask for one of the girls. I had a dream the other night, which as I look at it will really make me seem like a religious nut, which I hope you know that I’m not… a little girl from my project site approaches me and tells me to name the puppy Angel, which means the same in English and Spanish. I am big on dreams, always looking for hidden meaning and thinking deeply about them, so of course this means that my mind is made up on the name for the puppy. I’m going to go with Angelina and will probably shorten it to Lina because a long name for a puppy just doesn’t seem right. What do you think?

Other big January news is that my family is coming to visit! I’m going to be going to the airport within a matter of hours to pick them up and find our way back to my project site. While they’re here I’m hoping to play in the water a lot, perhaps go to a sand island that is a huge tourist attraction near here because of a great reef for snorkeling, play dominoes, dance meringue and bachata, eat fish and tostones as well as other tropical wonderfulness, and just take it easy, as I’m sure Chicagoans are a bit stressed by the weather up there. These will be my first visitors, and you can ask them when they go if they enjoyed themselves, and if they would recommend the trip to anyone else. (I think I know what the answer will be.)

My Dona came back to me on the 8th of the month and not a moment too soon. Since she’s come back I’ve been eating a lot more, and also filling up on those wonderful batidas I told you about, like smoothies but better and with tropical fruit. I’ve been spending a lot of time talking with her, and after Dia de los Reyes, the 6th, a day when Dominicans give toys to children in honor of the 3 Kings which officially marks the end of the holiday season here, I got back to work on my community diagnostic and have now completed the amount of interviews that my boss said I needed to. I’m going to do a few more though because there are still some homes I haven’t visited. (I went to a Dia de los Reyes party that a neighbor who seems to have a bit more money than most of the rest of the neighborhood put on for all of the children up to age 9. Each kid got a hot dog, a bag of cereal and cookies, and a toy. It was nice to see kids with new toys. There were probably 40 kids there that day, and they really seemed to enjoy themselves.)

I’m trying to ride my bike every day, though with all the rain we’ve been having, leaving so much mud on the roads, it becomes just as hard to get myself on the bike as it is to actually ride it. More important I think, is to keep visiting houses and building trust with the families in the community. I’ve finally been able to reach out to some Haitian families. My next-door neighbors have now formally met me once I insisted on going over there with a woman helping me with interviews, and I was very much relieved to see that some Haitian children were invited to the party. They now wave to me on the street. I finally was introduced to some of the men who live in a house next to the school as well. They are all day-laborers, and there are 10 of them, who live together in one little house. It’s not much, and there are still a number of homes that I haven’t yet been to. It was a challenge to get this far and I know the interaction between the 2 cultures will be something I struggle with for my 2 years of service here. Luckily, Peace Corps offers a Creole training over the summer, so hopefully I will be able to facilitate my own interactions more easily then. Until then however, it will be something to work on.

What are your New Year’s resolutions? Mine continue to be to get in shape, so that I might be able to climb Pico Duarte while I’m here. Another is to finally become fluent in Spanish, and pick up some Creole as well. Another is to continue to stay positive and remember that this is the perfect job for me. (I still haven’t cried in this country, which might make me seem a bit cold to some of you, but honestly I think it’s just that every time I’ve been tempted to be sad or frustrated, where tears might ordinarily be in order, I remind myself that I’m in the Caribbean, doing what I was born to do. So no matter what it is that is getting me down… people not fulfilling promises to help me work, power outages, people showing up over an hour after the time the English classes they asked me to give were supposed to start, the Haitian situation, my host father telling me I don’t eat, at every meal, of everyday, people laughing at me, missing my friends and family, people saying things in Spanish that I didn’t pick up on quick enough, or dermatological problems including but not limited to mosquito bites, rashes, other bites that itch and puss, and acne that hasn’t been so bad since junior high… I’m able to get out of feeling sorry for myself.)