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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------{ October 25, 2006 }
Ecotourism? Maybe not.
Thanks for all the birthday wishes- it was great! My family did a lot for me- they bought me a shirt, a bottle of wine (b/c I told them I liked it and not beer), and my mom made this really good fruit/juice thing. I got a few other things too, but they are so generous for not having much. We also got the whole training group together the night before to celebrate my birthday and that of one of the Spanish professors. It was nice that our trainer did that because my community is so much farther than the others (they can walk to one anothers' in a reasonable amount of time, but it's 2 hours from ours to the closest of theirs). Lots of dancing, dominoes and chatting.
Last week for training we were focused on producers (agriculture), mostly coffee. I am quite tired of hearing about coffee, how it is processed, its challenges...etc. If we have another session on it, I might bang my head against a wall. We also had a second interview with the PC leader of our group to talk about sites, which we'll find out about in a few weeks. This week we're focused on ecotourism. It's definitely a buzzword for tourism around here but the problem with it is that they aren't really environmentally educated so it's hard to support true ecotourism. I also don't think any of us are going to have ecotourism sites- supposedly 70% will be in producer sites, 20% in artesania and 10% in other kinds of sites.
Saturday night I went dancing- a Dominican pastime that I definitely appreciate. The guy/girl ratio at the colmado was 6 or 7 guys per girl. I barely got a rest. A friend, Adeline, and I heard some rather colorful pick-up lines and several old men proceeded to tell me that they have land and a good home. I'm getting pretty good at merengue and bachata. They don't dance a whole lot of salsa here.
I'm getting eaten alive by these little bugs up here. I forget what they're called, but they're not mosquitoes. I've started to only wear long pants now because I have so many bites on the back of my calves that I look like I have a disease or something. Despite my complaining, I'm really enjoying it here but am definitely looking forward to getting to my own site so I can settle in and feel some sense of permanence.
Posted by katie on October 25, 2006 01:12 PM | Permalink
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