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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------{ January 31, 2008 }
Livin life in the loma
Since I last wrote I've been through another tropical storm, to and from the US and we have started a new year. I'll start with before Christmas. My Association participated in the Artisan Fair in December again this year but it was much more successful and less stressful for me, mostly because I was working with other volunteers who were also selling coffee and cocoa so the support was much better. We sold a good bit of coffee and I enjoyed the fair overall. 2 days after the fair ended I was still in the capital working on some other things when we got the news that another tropical storm was coming in but this time the Peace Corps wanted to consolidate everyone in Santiago, Santo Domingo and another town in the south. This was just a few days before I was supposed to be going to the States for Christmas. At first I thought I was going to get stuck consolidated in the capital and was worried because my flight was out of Santiago and I thought I wouldn't make it back to my site before I left. I did end up getting to go to Santiago, where we were consolidated for 3 days, but I didn't make it back to Juncalito so I had to buy shoes in Santiago because all I had with me were sandals and I didn't have a lot of clothes packed, but at least I made my flight!
I had a really nice time over Christmas. Brian picked me up from the airport and I had a bit of culture shock going to a trendy wine bar for the first place that I ate at, but it was interesting. I got to see Bill, Ashley, Susan and Tom in Maryland which was great. I'm glad mom and dad moved from Texas so that I could visit some friends even though it was brief. The rest of the time I was in Virginia Beach with the folks- it was nice and (mostly) relaxing. I got one of the most useful gifts I've ever receive this year- a battery powered lantern for when the power goes out! Perhaps not so useful but entertaining was the Jack Sparrow action figure that 'Santa' gave me...
I made it back to the DR with no problems and had a fun new years here, dancing it in Dominican style until 5 or so in the morning. Since I was out of my site for a full 3 weeks, I spent the first week and a half back mostly catching up with people in my town and having lots of cafecitos as well as hearing about all the good Christmas parties that I missed. Their way of trying to make me feel guilty, that and 'what did you bring me?'
I was proud of my association for actually filling out a grant proposal that I had been mentioning for a while before I had left. I would not have necessarily chosen the same projects as priorities, but at least we have got the ball rolling on some more infrastructure for the future as the amount of coffee that we are buying from our members is growing rapidly, as well as interest from foreign buyers. Not so encouraging was the accounting situation (shocking, I know). They had entered the information in the spreadsheet while I was gone (great!) but not balanced it with the cash drawer and check book (not so great). I spent an entire day making a months' work of accounting balance. We are getting there, slowly but surely. If I leave nothing else done when I go, I hope they keep doing that. Laly, the secretary who was on maternity leave, is back, so I am working on teaching her how to do it. It's not hard but I think part of the problem is that they are slow on the computer and know that I can do it much quicker so they try and see if I'm going to do it for them. I must not break down! Still working on that patience and it's coming slowly but surely.
During IST (which was before the Artisan Fair) we got to go to a baseball game and that was a lot of fun. My team (Las Aguilas/The Eagles) won the game and they just won the Final Series. The Caribbean series is here this year in Santiago with Venezuela, Mexico and I don't remember who else. I might go to a game on Sunday. I'm in Santo Domingo for committee weekend, which I usually don't come to but because I'm now president of the Coffee Committee I considered it important that I come. Now I just need to figure out what we're going to discuss in the meeting.
The other day I went to one of our campos for a meeting with some socios and the roads were so bad that 2 trucks got damaged and we had to walk a while and ended up going the rest of the way on a motorcycle. It was quite a trip- it should have taken a little more than an hour but it took over 3! Good thing for once that the meetings here never start on time anyways, so we only missed a little. It was worth going though- I hadn't been to Cerro Prieto before and it was beautiful. It's about 1380 or so meters above sea level and you can see really far around from the top where we had the meeting. It was definitely chilly up there and when I went back the other day with Roque, our tecnico, it was cold enough to see your breath. I know that's not much for home but that's freezing by Domincan standards.
Posted by katie on January 31, 2008 06:18 PM | Permalink
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