One Year Conference

A little over 1 year into our service us health and water volunteers got together with our bosses to discuss our first year and our year ahead. The conference, like all PC conferences, was 2 nights long. It was held in the mountains and was a bit cool, but definitely doable. We spent time giving presentations of what we’ve been up to, how it’s been going and if we’ve been successful or not so much with our health goals: 1) nutrition for women and their families (and gardens), 2) sex ed for youths, 3) reproductive health for women and their families. (I feel I’ve done pretty well with numbers 1 and 2 and haven’t started with number 3 yet.) We were able to help one another generate ideas for future projects as well.

The last day of the conference all but 1 of us headed north to a restaurant which cooks delicious Indian-Dominican food and has rooms and a pool. We rented out the whole place and had a ton of fun. The food was great (and some of it was even spicy which was great because spice is a rare find in the DR.) We took some great photos of ourselves jumping into the pool and other such nonsense.

The next day I had to be among the first to go back to my town because I was supposed to have a meeting to discuss possible places to put the library. It didn’t end up working out the way that I thought it would but we were able to decide to work together (me, the youths, and other community members) to BUY the perfect piece of land, which hopefully will work! Keep your fingers crossed! The next day I wrapped up a lot of loose ends because the day after that, I left to go home for over 3 weeks! The night before I left my town my youths threw me a huge party which was SO great! They bought me Christmas presents and made me feel incredibly appreciated and loved. A few of my youths got really choked up to see me go and made me swore I’d come back to them. I know they didn’t have to worry, and now that I’m in the airport on my way back to them, it seems like I was right! I told myself to remember how good they made me feel so that I could ease myself into the transition back south easily. It’s always a struggle to leave home, but I know there will be some happy faces when I get back!