Hello! Not much new this week. I’m starting to get into a routine that looks a bit like this:

Monday- interviews (morning or afternoon depending)
Tuesday – interviews in the morning, English class in the afternoon
Wednesday – interviews (morning or afternoon depending)
Thursday – interviews in the morning, English class in the afternoon
Friday - interviews
Saturday -morning trip to the city for internet + errands, fun event at night
Sunday - sleep-in and do nothing. Bake.

Most nights you can find me at neighbors houses, being force-fed and hanging out with the youth.

I typically wake up at 6:30 and go to bed at 10pm. I always come home by 12:30pm for lunch and a nap.

Mind you, this schedule is as flexible as a bendy straw; if I am given any other opportunity, I take it and leave my interviewing to the side (I have 2 whole months to finish interviewing). I have covered about 30 houses in two different communities (out of a total 95) in the past 3 weeks. Sometimes I cover 2 houses in a morning, sometimes 6. It simply depends on my project partners schedules (they take me around and sit through all the interviews helping to interpret). Much of the time I am with women who have to leave early to prepare lunch (the big meal of the day).

Last week I was in the capital for 4 days to celebrate Thanksgiving with all the other volunteers. For a price of $20, we were invited to a country club on Thanksgiving to spend a day swimming, socializing, eating a massive amount of catered food (turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, salad, pecan pie, pumpkin pie, cookies, key lime pie, etc.). It was crazy to see the other 110 PC volunteers who I have yet to meet (older volunteers). There was a talent show, a dominoes tournament, field games, and a slide show. The all-day affair was great, and it was nice to get out of site to talk with other new volunteers about their sites.

This little 4 day vacation also included stuffing 8 people into a hostel room with 2 beds, spending $14 US at a nice restaurant for pesto gnocchi and 2 cosmos (cheap by American standards, expensive for volunteer standards), and spending lots of time on wifi at the Peace Corps office. It was a successful break. The only real drag is getting from my site to Santo Domingo, and visa-versa. It takes about 5-7 hours each way on multiple forms of transportation (walking, bus, truck/motorcycle).

The biggest problem this week was a bout of gastrointestinal problems, which kept me at home Monday. Interestingly enough, I am the only person in the town to drink purified water yet I always have so many more stomach issues than everyone else (and I know this because I ask in my survey about curing diarrhea and they all respond…”we don’t suffer from diarrhea, thanks be to God”). HOW?! My stomach issues thwarted my plans to go into the city to print English teaching materials and purchase supplies for World AIDS Day (this past December 1st). My youth were planning on painting a sheet and hanging it in front of the clinic to show support. This did not happen unfortunately. Lesson learned: I should constantly travel with pepto bismol in my wallet.

Other Updates:
• The latest issue of the Gringo Grita (roughly translated.. “The American Cry”), which is the official magazine of Peace Corps DR came out this week (3 issues/year). It always has fun interviews, reflection articles, poems and recipes. Also, it had 39 reflection surveys for all the volunteers that just left this past November (service was up!). It’s so interesting to read about each person’s site, what they wish they had done in country, what they learned through their service, memorable stories and funny pieces of advice. Here are some interesting stats compiled through their surveys:
o 50% of volunteers dated a Dominican
o 60% of volunteers dated a fellow volunteer (clear overlap between Dominicans and Americans)
o On average, each volunteer secured $13,000 US of grant money for their projects
o The avg number of visitors from the US was 6.3 visitors/volunteer
o 50% of volunteers pooped their pants sometime during service
• I am seemingly becoming a bit more Dominican everyday. I broke down and bought jeans that are too tight for me ($8 Sarah Jessica Parker label jeans bought from the Haitian market, that are sent over from Goodwill in the US). Too tight jeans are the norm here. Also, I was gifted a bright pink $3 “Playboy” tank top with the signature bunny printed all over. The Playboy label is all the rage here (while I find it extremely trashy). I wear this tanktop often.