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Some picures of the water volunteer group´s latest adventures. see you in a couple weeks.
'ryan

Ocoa -- pajaros, charcos, and pocos tigueres

I've come down from the mountains for the day to write to you all.  our technical training is in a small community called Mancebo in the 'Cordillera Central' (the largest of the the mountain ranges. We're surrounded by cactus, palm, and pine trees all in close proximity. It's much cooler here. We actually feel cold at night sometimes!!!!  The people are great, pretty much all farmers working a mix of subsistence agriculture and potato contracts with Frito Lay. Frito Lay potatoes are really great mashed by the way.  There is a nearby river where I can bath daily, sometimes we jump off the cliffs from a waterfall into the charcos (natural pools).  The community is mostly older dominicans, young kids, and migrant Haitian workers. Despite a steep gender disparity (at least 2:1 men to women) the community is really easy going and fun.  The dominicans are finally starting to believe or realize that I really can speak spanish and the Haitians have been pretty fun all along. I learn creol with a couple of haitians in return for teaching them some english. We use Spanish as the go between language to translate (of course).

I eat enormous proportions of food daily.  The families we live with are somewhat overcompensated perhaps for our meals. I get an enormou

s plate of beans and rice for lunch with various sattelite dishes everday.  for breakfast or dinner I sometimes get fresh, hot cow's milk with various delicious things in it. This week we'll start the construction part of our training. we're going to learn to build a spring box., water tank, latrine, and river crossing among other things.  Gotta go, I'll try to put up a picture of the view from my host family's cook house.

El Castillo de Maico

The ridiculously over-structured (but worthwhile) part of my training is coming to a close. Tomorrow I'll head north a bit to the mountains near San Jose de Ocoa for community based training. This goes til almost the end of october when I'll begin my real service.  In the second part of training we'll be doing more training related to the water and sanitation projects I actually be working on. Of course, we'll keep learning more spanish, etc. Mostly what I know is that it will be colder (good), it's a community of about 200 people, and it's a pretty area. I'll tell you more when I experience it.

This past week I spent thursday through sunday visiting a current water volunteer.   On friday we spent the morning in the trenches digging and placing a water line.  It's really impressive what a crew of 10 men can do in 5 hrs with just pickaxes and shovels (and of course, lots of food).  As usual, I got some wicked blisters on my hands, but they're better now.  Mark (the volunteer I visited -- from Holland, Michigan) has been at site for a year.  Friday was the fourth day of construction, so it was an exciting time to be there.

On saturday, we took a 1 1/2 hr hike through the mountains (sort of like walking in michigan forests -- just with really big leaves, lizards, and bigger climbs).  Anyways, after up down, and down a river we arrived at aguas largas (long waters). It was a site of a previous volunteer who left just weeks ago.  We had to troubleshoot a solar pump that brings water to the higher parts of the community.  As is the case for most good work, we were rewarded with an awesome meal of rice, beans, chicken and an avocado that tasted like butter.  On our hike back, slightly more tired, we stopped at los caraballos, another volunteer community where the spring box (collects water from the spring) had been damaged by a landslide.  Anyways, the hike was beautiful, and it was great to have seen three different possible living and working situations for me over the next couple years.  To put things in perspective, water volunteers, by definition are placed in communities that do not have running water. As this is generally considered basic infrastructure, it is also uncommon for these communities to have electricity or phone service. As such, they may to be some of the prettiest communities with trustworthy and down to earth people.

One thing that was funny, in Pies de los Picos, Mark, who would be called Marco in standard spanish, is referred to as Maico.  Some dominican accents have a tendency to switch the 'r' for an 'i' or 'l' sound.  Anyways, Maico sounds more like michael, so I wasn't even sure at first if Mark was his real name.

Well, I've got to get home and pack for my move tomorrow. We're going to a 'Car Wash' this evening before the volunteer groups go there different ways.  Car Washes have evolved here as social scenes where people have their cars washed by day and dance, drink, and hang out at night. Apparently people even wash cars as the festivities go on, although I haven't seen this. It's a pretty fun concept and an efficient use of space.

I'll leave a couple of pictures from my visit with Mark. I promise to post some eventually of me with host family(s), volunteers, and so on.  later...

bananaland

Hey,

so I've been here a few weeks now.  I'm trying to get in a few words and a picture, and then walk home before a rainstorm hits. I'm finishing up the first part of my training in the capital city of Santo Domingo. I've been living with a wonderful host family who make sure to get me my daily ration of fruits and various carbohydrates (plantains, bananas, yucca, plantains, etc).  Fortunately they're also way into beans which they call habichuelas, not frijoles. Chickens are our favorite animal to bite into. they're sort of a pet and food source in my neighborhood.

Improving my spanish and more importantly learning to understand and speak like Dominicans, who are known for a pretty strong and difficult to follow accent has gone well.  As usual, guys are the hardest to understand.  Evidence of my improvement is that I can now joke with my host father, Milongo and his son who lives near by.  At first I could hardly understand a word of the 'old man' style or 'street' style dominican spanish.  Our neighborhood is I think the way a neighborhood is supposed to be. everyone knows eachother and social activities break out unexpectedly.

one of my favorite activities has been chatting outside the house with neighbors/relatives/ peace corps friends while waiting for the electricity to come back on at night.  the electricity is important just to keep the fans going to make sleeping better.  I've played a bit of baseball both in the street and on a field mostly with other volunteers and/or young kids.  I'm pretty good at dominoes (for an Americano -- still need to get better at counting the tiles).  I think I'm probably on par with the average Dominican dude at dancing bachata and merengue.  Besides being a lot of fun in itself, knowing latin american music and how to dance to it seems to be an easy way to make conversation and gain respect -- since they assume americans can't dance.

My training thus far has been a lot like school. I walk about 1/2 an hour everyday to a training center among various school children and other ridiculous looking gringos and then have various lessons throughout the day. The big differences are that our classes are outside in ramadas (huts -- sort of) and the school lunch is awesome - although there is no grilled cheese and tomato soup.

Tomorrow I'm traveling north, past Santiago to a place near Altamira in the mountains to visit a current water volunteer and learn more about my future service. I'll be there thru the weekend and then later next week I'll begin technical, community based training in a different mountainous region more to the south. besides more spanish and cultural stuff, we'll learn (and build) water and sanitation infrastructure for a community that needs water, etc. It's sort of like practice for our individual projects.

My actual service begins at the end of october. not til then will I know exactly where I'll be for the next 2 years.

Anyways, gotta get home before the donya gets too worried.  In summary, yes it's hot here, I sweat a ton every day, but I feel super healthy; the people are great; certainly different and similar enough to Mexicans or Bolivians or whoever to keep me happy. how's that for grammar.  I'll try to throw in an insufficient picture of something here. hasta luego!