It's Almost As If I Was An Adult Or Something

Weird.

I’ve moved! A lot has changed actually, since you’ve last heard from me. I’ve moved, I’m cooking for myself (and loving it), I bought some stuff for the house (and completely blew out both my move-in allowance and my allowance for February and am taking out a large loan from myself once again, before I’ve managed to pay back one from earlier), I’ve started my youth and health committee meetings, and of course am still learning this pet-owning thing. Oh and I went to Carnival. YAY! Oh, and I’m planning for my brother’s visit. YAY! He loved his trip here so much, he’s coming back to play some more, which coincides with my birthday.

So first things first. Carnival. After our 3 month in-service training a bunch of us water and health volunteers went to La Vega where our business friends were doing their in-service training and where the largest Carnival celebration is held. It was incredible, as I’m sure you can imagine. Basically it was TONS of people watching a pretty unorganized parade of people in costumes with really elaborate masks, sponsored by large corporations, as they walked down the packed streets. The best/worst part was that these masked people carried these whacking sticks to hit the people who weren’t looking and those hurt a lot. They tended to keep to the rump area, but also managed to get some of us on our legs and me on my wrist, which probably wouldn’t have hurt at all if my watch hadn’t been on that wrist, so I got a bruise. But I’d be lying to you if I said my bruise was as dramatic or as painful as some of my friends’ who got hit on their legs and bums. I’ve got some pictures to prove it. Check them out. And something you can’t tell from those pictures is that all their bruises were 3 dimensional. Yikes. But we still managed to have a great time.

The move went pretty smoothly considering it’s said to be one of the most stressful things a person can endure. Well, let’s put it into perspective for a moment; fact 1) I’m a Peace Corps volunteer which automatically means I have about 1/100 of the stuff that a normal person would have to move, fact 2) I moved down the street, fact 3) I am living in a country where there is always someone around, and that person most likely always wants to help you in any way they can. So, the move was easy yes, and if it hadn’t been, that’d be stranger than the fact that it was easy. Dominicans, like a lot of people, particularly Latinos, are very family-oriented people and see living alone as a last resort, very odd, only for bachelors, or for people whose children have moved away and spouse has died. So, with regard to this move I got a lot of people asking me if I wasn’t scared to live alone, and a lot of offers from parents to have their children sleep in my spare bedroom so at least I wouldn’t have to sleep in an empty house.
Well, of course as Americans, living alone doesn’t seem so strange, although I must say that I can’t think of a single person who’s living in a house by themselves in the US… but still, I don’t think my parent’s friends would offer to have their children sleep in my house in the US. They’re sweet offers, but I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I turned them all down.
And as far as being scared of living alone goes, or of being scared of this house, if I’m too rational to have not cried in this country, not when I was super sick and it was all I could do not to pass out on the toilet, not when it was my first Christmas alone, a very sad day, and when my one advocate here left me in her house alone with a man who made it his mission to critique everything about my eating, then yes, I’m too freaking rational to be scared of some rats!

Besides, I have a killer attack dog.

So the house. I was all set to live in a yellow cement house with backup battery power, with some furniture already there, a fan, an outdoor kitchen and cabana sitting-space, and then they wanted 2.5 times what people normally pay for rent here! So, it was back to the drawing board for a bit, and then it was decided that I would live in the house in which my don’s father used to live. It hadn’t been lived in for 17 years and boy could we tell when we came in to clean! That was a fun day. We cleaned with a hose, a broom as a scrub brush for the walls, windows and ceiling, something that translates to “acid,” and bleach. It was incredibly dusty, and then with the hose water it turned to mud all over the floor which we swept through the rooms and out the back door. We doused the furniture with water and a good scrubbing too. My most “PC Moment” was when I pushed a large cabinet away from the wall to find the space below it completely full of poop, dust, and snail shells. Well, to scrub I added bleach, acid, and water to the mix, and those snails must leave a lot of goop when they’re allowed to take over an area for 17 years. The mixture became quite slippery and while scrubbing and exerting a lot of force downwards, I found myself going for a little ride across the floor. It was fun, like ice skating amongst the crunching sounds of snail shells being broken.

The place looked like a new house afterwards. And now that I’ve bought a few things for the place and that I’ve moved my stuff over, it’s really beginning to feel like home. It’s definitely rustic for our standards, and it is a step down from the house I had with my host family, but compared to volunteer’s homes I’ve seen, it’s great. It’s certainly big enough for me, which is awesome.

I’m in the center of town, across the street from the park, from the meat shop, from what will be a little store (that’s under construction now), next to the fried meat stand, next to a colmado and about a second from the school. I see positives and negatives to this location, so we’ll see. The house is peach, definitely a color step down from the white and yellow of my host family’s house or the yellow of the potential house, but it could be worse; it could be pink (though this peach could definitely be described as pink…shush, don’t tell Beth.) There’s a great, shaded and gated sitting space outdoors, a sitting room, an indoor bathroom which doesn’t work yet (the toilet drips water on the floor when the house gets water from the tap), and 4 little rooms which could be used as bedrooms, or a kitchen. Right now one is my bedroom, one will be a sort of guest room, one will be a kitchen and one is where my clothes and refrigerator are now, so clearly that’s my kitchen/dressing room. The house is part cement and part wood, and the one big down fall I see now is that it’s set down from the road, which you’ll recall is dirt, so there’s a lot of dust. I’ll figure something out though.

My first few meetings have gone well. People seem enthusiastic. I gave a presentation of my findings of the interviews which I was hoping to have about 40 people attend (though I went to every house of the community and gave an invitation to every house, which could mean as many as 400 people were coming.) In the end, 74 people came and listened, looked at the map I made of their community, the ladies who helped me with the interviews received certificates that I hand-made, ate some snacks and left. I was glad to have so many people and they asked great questions and thanked me and were really curious, and that, of course, felt awesome.

The youth and adult meetings both went well too. The youth, as you can imagine, are very spirited and lively and I am really looking forward to working with them. The adults, who are enrolling in my nutrition course aren’t quite as enthusiastic, but I think with time they’ll come to see that the material is useful and will bring their friends and we’ll have a good time. For the kiddies, I’ve decided to have a play group that’s going to meet on Saturdays but we haven’t met yet. I’m hoping they’ll get excited about it and it will make a nice transition into the youth group for those who are right on the cusp in terms of their age. The topics we cover in the youth group are a bit mature for some which is why they’ll be invited to the play group instead. I’m hoping for it to be like little mini-sessions of summer camp with activities such as those.