In the Spirit

My Christmas Gift
This is it! I am taking a morning trip to the closest larger town and indulging in all sorts of stuff. I am sitting in an internet center paying 90 cents an hour for as long as I want; CNN, health.com, and even People magazine websites are going to be graced by my presence! I am going to buy all sorts of special holiday things like mandarin oranges, raisins, fancy dairy products and a yet undecided very exceptional Christmas morning meal. Dominican Christmas is a lot like all of the other holidays. Late large dinners with special meat like goat and pork, goopy pasta, drinking, dancing and music so loud, there is little need to make conversation. There are lots of family visits and very little gift giving. I have been invited (maybe because I asked to be invited as I was giving her peanut candy) to eat with one of my favorite families.

The small Americana problem is that everything is celebrated on the 24th. This makes the actual day that we like to cozy up and walk town memory lane one big anticlimactic hangover. Last year, orange juice, a grilled cheese sandwich and coffee with milk and cinnamon was the perfect breakfast before church. This year, I just don’t know. I do know I will be on the phone quite a bit, visiting mass multiple times and trying to get into a spirit of sorts!

What’s New in the Water?
We have had cases of cholera in my community but it does not seem to be exploding the way an outbreak implies. It feels more like a new town gossip topic than a very real and scary epidemic.

I just went with a group of kids to the aqueduct and learned so much! They have remodeled the tank and filtering system and I had no idea how our river water was showing up so clean looking. The tour guide told us we were the first to see it, a curious fact since it is around six months old. I have realized and accepted that the only way to ensure high educational event attendance is to give them something. Call it unethical or bribery but I will be busy putting on a contest with rewards and handing out snacks over sitting in an empty classroom with my scientific talk prepared. I accept that our aqueduct trip was full of kids because they were hiking for prizes from an art competition that we held the week before and not because their thirst for knowledge. We are all human, after all.

A Time to Travel
Peace Corps is different for every volunteer but it is a stretch to call it a job. No matter where we are and what we do, we get our US$300 per month. Most of us prefer to be busy and make it happen ourselves. We run clubs, teach classes and solicit grants to implement projects making it a lot more like a game to fill our schedule than a nine to five. In the same sentiment, we don't vacation like your average worker but rather more frequently and more stingily. At least once a month, I go to the capital city on a 4:30 AM bus filled with people and blasting merengue. I pack two hardboiled eggs and splurge on coffee at the only stop to the six hour ride. On my way to the Peace Corps office, I stop at the embassy to take a hot shower in the locker room and use their flushing toilets. Hot showers are the ultimate luxury and of course, do wonders for cleanliness. My trips usually involve hostels, cold showers, lots of bananas, bottles of drinkable yogurt and expensive apples for that Northwest reminiscence. I wear my special clothes, enjoy unlimited internet, freeze in air conditioning, and sweat in public transportation.

In the past month, I went to an all day Thanksgiving party, had a fabulous outdoor time on Pico Duarte (the highest mountain in the Caribbean) and wore a dress at the country director’s soirée. I am also planning to go to the beach for New Year’s Eve. The best is that I am going to Atlanta in January officially to look at Emory but really to be with my mom. It will be my first time off this island and into the states in 22 months! Bangarang!