hello hello! This weekend we all got to visit volunteers at their sites and see their projects and their daily lives. I went to visit a health volunteer Meredith, who lives in a tiny tiny community called Jabonico, in Monte Plata. Jabonico is a batay, which means it was originally constructed as a place to house workers who came to work at sugar cane fields, or in this case, Dole pineapple. Most of the companies have left, and now they are some of the poorest communities in the country. Jabonico is beautiful, with mountains on each side of the road. Great views from all over. I used a latrine for the first time and was pleasantly surprused at how clean and non-gross smelling it was!
I got there on Thursday evening, and on Friday we caught a guagua (a small bus-type vehicle where you can PACK people in) early and headed to a pueblo (bigger than a campo, smaller than a city) where another volunteer, Phil, lives. We met up with other volunteers and other people in my group who were visiting the volunteers. So Phil has an ecotourism project where his youth group is trying to start up tours of a cacao production plant as a tourist attraction, and the group wanted to do a run through of the tour for us and get some feedback. The tour was really interesting and smelled delicious. They gave us delicious hot chocolate when we got there.
The next day we went to another volunteer's Escojo graduation. Escojo is a peer education program that teaches life skills. On Dominican time of course, the 2:00 graduation started at 4:00. The kids were all dressed in their finest apparel, in prom dresses and suits and ties for the guys. All the girls' hair looked awesome too. Overall, an awesome chance to see a few people's sites and kind of see the real PC experience after training. I was so excited and impressed to see how many projects Meredith had undertaken in her (almost) 2 years of service. She has a girls volleyball team, did a food security project with chickens and organic gardens, built latrines, built an aquaduct for clean water, and did a bunch of programs on nutrition, women's health, etc. I'm excited to do a bunch of projects like this, too.
So I'm in the capital now with 3 other trainees, hanging out at the Cuerpo de Paz office and using taking advantage of the free internet. Planning on heading over to the embassy in a little to use their pool and their hot showers! Some empanadas may be in order a little later... :)
