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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------{ May 10, 2007 }
Mango season is starting
I've been in Santo Domingo since Friday and I'm heading back to my site shortly. Christina, our PCVL (Volunteer Leader) for my group is coming up to my site to see how everything is going and will stay the night. I came first for medical (which has gotten much better) and also for language training, which I am leaving early from. I had a nice weekend last weekend where I stayed at Sarah's house and relaxed, saw Spiderman 3 and read. It was a nice little break.
Monday I went to Pantoja to stay with my Santo Domingo host family and have language training. There were only 6 of us so it was a good small group (3 classes). We got to do pretty much whatever we wanted. We played dominoes, listened to music, went to an art museum where there were Picasso drawings and got some evaluation. I knew I wasn't really going to learn anything new, but I wanted to know if I was making any consistent mistakes in the language in order to work on them, but my professor just told me I'm doing fine, mostly self-correct when I say something wrong, and have developed a campo accent where I cut off words. Well, what do you expect? I'm sure it will be that way for a while. It was a pretty relaxing atmosphere and I'm glad I was able to make it.
I got a huge surprise last night...one of my PCV friends is pregnant and is going to early terminate and marry a Dominican. I was struck speechless when she called last night, as this came mostly out of nowhere. I'm still floored.
I mentioned before that the DR was having a competition for Quality Coffee in the country. Well, Juncalito did fairly well for itself. There were 3 different categories that were judged. We won 2nd place in the group category. There were also categories for individuals and individuals that are associates. One of our associates won 1st in the associates category and 3rd in the individuals overall, and a grower from our area won 1st in the individuals. The winners are guaranteed a certain price above market for a fixed quantity of coffee but I believe we've been contacted by some others who are going to pay more. This is an excellent opportunity for my association so I hope this shows the socios that producing a high quality coffee pays off even though it is a difficult process. These winners are only the best of our coffee, and we have a lot of socios who really need to work on their quality. There are so many stages in the production of coffee that there are a lot of chances to mess it up and change the flavor in a bad way.
I may start teaching English classes soon. Other than that, I'm working on a report of the coffee that we've sold since 2004 to see how much per month, at what prices, etc. to know our capacity and its growth. This is going to be very helpful while working with exporters and others interested in buying our coffee. It doesn't matter so much for the internal market where we sell the majority of our coffee but clearly we want to get away from that. I'm enjoying my house and looking forward to Patronales in June. Patronales is a celebration for the patron saint of a town and it lasts for 9 days and there are a lot of parties and activities. It should be a lot of fun.
Posted by katie on May 10, 2007 10:39 AM | Permalink
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