April 30th: Yesterday I traveled to my permenant site for the first time. As they do with everything else, PCDR is easing us into this with a four day trial run. Then we get to go back to the capital and have a couple parties before plunging into relative isolation. I say relative because being a volunteer in the DR has a few sweet perks, one of them in particular being that there are about 150 Americans on two thirds of an island that’s about the size of Michigan. Not that I know all 150 of them, or that there are any closer than an hour from me, but in other countries the ratio is much, much smaller. So before getting to see where we’re going to live for the next two years they make us dress up real fancy and wander around a room of people who don’t speak our native language but whom we should probably attempt to impress because among them are the people that requested us in their community and who will be our main support team for the next 700 days of our life. Stressful? Umm…yes. All with good intentions though. I told my fellow aspirantes (aspiring volunteers, as we were at the time), “When I get back to the States and have interviews which would normally be stressful I’m going to ask – ‘is this going to be in a language I speak? Yes? Okay, no problem!’” So after I choked down two glasses of mango juice and went to Miami (a phrase they use for numero uno) I was one of the last volunteers to be adopted and we began our journey of everlasting friendship!
Our luxurious casa
For the next two years I will be living in a small mountain community outside San Jose de las Matas on the North face of the Cordillera Central, the mountain range containing the highest point in the Caribbean, Pico Duarte. It is unbelievably beautiful here, but if you know anything about geography and weather you might understand better than I that the winds bring moist ocean air onto this island from the north, and as it travels up the side of the North face of the mountains it dumps all that moisture onto the people living there…well I just became one of those people. I don’t know this place well enough to say, but I’m sure there are times of the year when this place doesn’t get much rain – a “dry” season if you will, but this is NOT that time. When I arrived at my site for the first time it was raining and 24 hours later…still raining. You must understand that in this country it’s a bit different when it rains, its sort of like an extremely severe blizzard in that everyone runs for their houses and no one leaves…not for work, not for meetings, nothing. Especially in the campo, nothing is urgent enough to go out into the rain for. So needless to say my new project partner did not come to pick me up and show me around.
The view from my house
If there ever was a plus side to being stuck inside a house in which 10 of us live, it’s that my new younger siblings are absolutely amazing at entertaining themselves. I assume it comes from living for years in a country where sometimes there’s electricity for the tv and sometimes there isn’t, but there isn’t too much to watch anyway besides a little Spanish dubbed Pokemon. Anyway, they are teaching me the local trees and plants and Spanish of course. We practiced our world geography with the map, played Frisbee, and ate pineapple and honey (which is delicious by the way, but the sweetness situation in this country is severely out of control). I also spent a few hours playing dominoes with my new, half crazy abuelos – grandparents. It’s an interesting situation because I cannot understand either one of them and we don’t keep score, so the game never really ends. Eventually it gets too dark for them to see the dominoes and they start taking two to five minutes a turn…if I’m lucky there’s no electricity and we’re forced to call it quits…if not, I spend the rest of the evening nodding at the same questions over and over – which I don’t understand – and exchanging silly faces with the old man across the table, who I am convinced would be hilarious if he could still speak audible words…in any language. It makes for quite a bit of humor if you can appreciate the situation unfortunately I’m using the only person at the table who remembers what we’re laughing at. Now let me tell you that kids can either make or break a host family…my first two included little sisters who were very sweet but did more to drive me nuts than improve my Spanish. Now, I have three very intelligent and thoughtful younger brothers, ages 11, 12 and 20, and my Spanish is sky-rocketing. Not that I’m fluent or anything, still struggling quite bit, but at least I am learning something everyday. They are so helpful that sometimes they just sit (probably bored out of their minds) and listen to me read random things aloud to correct my pronunciation…over and over again. Needless to say, they are extremely patient and I never feel like an obligation. We’ve been having many, surprisingly meaningful interactions since I imagine that this is the first time they’ve ever tried to communicate with someone who doesn’t speak their language. My dad is quite jovial and interacts with me a lot and my mom is classy, professional, soft spoken and beautiful.
Aside from my amazing family the best thing about my life right now is warm water. That’s right, after 63 days without even so much as a luke warm faucet, I have been blessed with the gift of warmed H2O. I don’t know where in the process of traveling, from the tank in the backyard to the PCV pipe sticking out of the wall in my bathroom it is warmed, but I would not even blink an eye if they told me it was un milagro – a miracle. In fact, I believe that it is, and I will never again take it for granted. I challenge you all to take just one or two straight up cold showers – and don’t give me that “you live in a subtropical climate” stuff either because it does get cold here, and indoor heating and cooling do not exist in the campo! Good luck!
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