Thursday, July 11, 2013

Surviving Chantal/Weekend Adventure to Jarabacoa!


So, as the title of this blog says, we survived the tropical storm, Chantal! The storm was predicted to head straight toward The Dominican Republic, but because our God is gracious and all-powerful, it passed on by! We did get a lot of rain but nothing out of the ordinary. I just wanted to update everyone who was worried and also show my gratitude to all who prayed for our safety. GOD IS GOOD!

Anyway, I mentioned in my last blog about our journey to Jarabacoa and now I am going to elaborate! Jarabacoa is a city in the mountains in the middle of the DR(about 4 hours from our community) where Christine, our professor, is living with study abroad students right now. Christine enjoys putting a lot on her plate so this study abroad program is one of the many things she has going on this summer. She did her undergrad at Indiana University and now runs a study abroad program for Big 10 schools each summer in the DR. The program is research based and the students spend 3 weeks in the city life of Jarabacoa and then move to the rural life of our community for another 3 weeks. The students are coming into our community this Saturday, and we are all real excited! Okay, now on to explaining what we did in Jarabacoa! I first need to start with how we got there, though. Hold on one second, I need to provide a quick background story. So, the reason Christine is connected with this community is because she did her dissertation research for anthropology here and then ended up living here for another 10 years. While she was here, she "adopted" three kids who are now in there  late teens and 20's. Anyway, her adopted son, Richard, came to Jarabacoa with us to help us navigate! To get there, we had to take public transportation which involves many short trips to cities in 15-passenger vans. They don't really seem to follow the 15-passenger rule too well though. 
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Here is an example of 24 people crammed into one "guagua," which is the term they use here for any type of car!
So, we needed to take four different guaguas to get to Jarabacoa and on these guaguas, they just randomly shout out an amount of money that you then proceed to pass up to the driver! On the second leg, we decided to just hitch a ride with a random guy in a truck who was happening to go to the next city where we would need to hop on the next guagua. Yes, we fit 7 people in a small 4-door truck with all of our luggage for the weekend. Yes, the trip there was quite a squished adventure, but a great one! Christine is staying in an apartment in Jarabacoa so when we got there that is where we went. It was a great reunion because it had been awhile since we all had seen her! We were also very excited that in that apartment was a kitchen! As much as we have all enjoyed being waited on hand and foot, we wanted to do some cooking! We had thought of some meals that we missed and wanted to make! Before it was dinner time, the study abroad students came by so that we could meet them! I think I forgot to mention in my last post that this past week us 4 girls made the sweet potato dulce(sweet in Spanish) with Mama Purita! I also don't know if I have explained what that is yet either. So basically it is Thanksgiving in a bowl. It has sweet potatoes, coconut, milk, brown sugar, vanilla, and cinnamon that just eventually becomes a big ol' mash...SO GOOD! Anyway, my purpose of explaining that is that my mom sent me with a tupperware bowl of the dulce to enjoy while we were in Jarabacoa! So right before the study abroad students came by, we had started enjoying some! When the students came, we decided to give them a little taste of our community, they all loved it! It was great to meet all of them and we are ready for the six of them to come hang out with us here in La Esquina! After they left, we headed to the store to buy groceries for the meals we wanted to make! For dinner Friday night we had pancakes(with peanut butter and honey of course!) eggs, and sausage. We were planning on making homemade salsa right when we got there but then discovered that there would be a market that sold fresh vegetables in the morning so we decided to wait. But since we had really missed spicy foods, we decided to buy a little Tostino's while we were at the store anyway! Dinner was great and we just spent the rest of the evening hanging out with Christine! Speaking of Christine, she lives in a one bedroom apartment in Jarabacoa and we decided to all "sleep" on the rock-hard floor, which didn't really work at all. Oh well, it was okay! The next morning we headed to the market to buy all the veggies we needed to make salsa. We had brought a few mangoes with us to give the salsa a little "Dominican" twist! The sad part was they didn't have fresh jalapenos, so we had to use pickled but we were still able to choke it down. For lunch we went over to where Christine's godchildren live and spent time with them and their family! The girls are so precious, but a lot to handle! 
Here is the older daughter, Channel, who is quite the model!


This is Chanthal making Alicen into a beautiful princess!

We spent the remainder of the afternoon just hanging out with them until we headed back to Christine's to make quesadillas to enjoy with our homemade salsa! After dinner, we went dancing!
Here is us 4 before we headed out!
(Taylor, me, Susie, and Alicen)
We had to have a crazy picture of course! Love these girls!
We decided that after not sleeping too well at Christine's we should probably stay at the house with her compadres which actually had a bed. We did squish all four of us sideways in a full size bed, but we slept much better! Sunday morning we headed back to our community. We definitely had more squished adventures in guagua's and trucks along with rain on the way back! This time, we fit 8 people in a small 4-door truck. It was so great! 

So, when we were in Jarabacoa, Susie decided to buy some hair dye so the following pictures are us dying her hair! Apparently it's a thing she does to go red in late summer to fall. It was a fun experience!
Here is Susie before!


During: her hair could basically just stand up like that because of all of the dye!

Us waiting to rinse it out!

Rinsing it out!
We bleed maroon...WHOOP!
The finished product!


I mentioned in a previous blog about our Fourth of July Adventure in Cabrera with pizza and ice cream. Here is a picture of that night:
This is us four at the Pizzeria with Gabriel creepin' in the background!
I also mentioned in my last post about us starting to collect items for our keyhole garden. It has been going great so far. We have been passing out plastic bags to houses, explaining the garden, so that they can start saving things that we can use! It has been successful and the community is loving it. I am kind of having technical issues when posting these pictures so sorry if they seem to be in odd places!
The huge cardboard box that the owner of the Colmado(convenience store) gave to us!



Alicen and Trini with things we have collected!

Here is the bags we have been handing out:
 This is my little friend Bobby and I watching the boys play baseball, gotta love the big cardboard box proudly displayed in the back!

These next two pictures are part of the buildings that make up La Esquina(The Corner) and where the community got its name from!
Alicen and I in front of the Colmado.

These are other buildings that make up the corner. We are really excited about the building on the left because some of our friends just bought it to have a new place for their motorcycle shop and feed store. We love the new location!
This is my novio(boyfriend) Ericson. Yes, his grandparents actually refer to me as his girlfriend. He is Taylor's Dominican nephew and I absolutely love him! Once again, please notice the plastic bag for collecting items in the back!
I know this blog has been really random and hasn't flowed that well so sorry! There was a lot that I wanted to share and I didn't really know the best order to put it in! Alicen, Taylor, and I have been spending a lot of time translating curriculum for the garden and creating a blueprint for how the garden will be set up. We are hoping that the beginning of this next week we will actually be able to head up to the school and start preparing the area for the garden and then once we have enough collected items we will start planting! We cannot describe our excitement for all that God has in store these next few weeks. Thanks again for all the prayers!



Monday, July 8, 2013

God is Good!

So, I have not been sick for over a week now and am feeling great! My rash and bruising that lingered on my legs after my fever finally went away as well a few days ago! I loved how concerned the community was about my health and all the home remedies that everyone wanted to try on me to make me better! My friends treated me to a beach excursion once I was feeling better which was wonderful! We weren't really aware that we were going at the time though so we didn't have our swimsuits but it did feel great to just be outside and put my legs in the water. The picture below is at the part of the beach that we usually go to but on this particular day there were much more people than usual! Sunday's in the DR are beach days. The whole family goes and they cannot forget the big pot of spaghetti! Yes, spaghetti, that is one of the wonderful traditions in this country! Anyway, on this particular day we weren't with the whole family and were just with a few friends so we didn't have spaghetti with us, but I am hoping I do get to experience spaghetti on the beach at some point!
Me on the beach!
We have also made some other types of art such as bracelets, earrings, and wind chimes have probably been our favorite! We have made all different types with beads, shells, bottle caps, or just about anything we can find! We have loved making crafts where we just use things we find instead of having to buy stuff!
This is another part of the beach that we spent more time at collecting shells and just hanging out! We were the only ones in this little cove and we spent a good part of the day enjoying the sun and making memories with one another!
This is Jhondrayli(John Riley). I have no clue why he has such a normal American sounding name with such an odd spelling! Anyway, this is him cracking open almonds from the trees surrounding our little cove that we were at! He now has a new nickname, "mono," which is monkey in Spanish because of this particular behavior pictured above! The raw almonds were so tasty and he was pretty good at opening them up for us!


I don't have a picture of what we had for lunch, but it was pizza and it was great! The guys ran into town and ordered Canadian bacon pizza and brought Coke to drink for us. I can not explain how much I have missed pizza and just simply eating it on the beach was wonderful! Later, they brought back another pizza but this time Canadian bacon with corn. It was interesting, but pretty good! After we were done in that little cove we went to two other beaches and finally actually got in the water with our clothes on! It felt so good and was such a great day hanging out with wonderful friends! I will hopefully post more pictures later! Anyway, I took the rest of last week pretty slow because I didn't want to wear myself out after being sick for a week! 
Here are some pictures of things I spent my time doing!
Mama Luisa, Taylor's mom, showed us how to make peanut brittle and it was so good! We have decided this is something that we are going to try to make when we get back to the U.S.
 We still haven't started planting the garden at the school yet, but we have actually realized that we were not ready to start anyways. We thought we were prepared, but have started to understand the purpose of the stumbling blocks God has placed along our way. He needed more time to prepare us for something greater! We have started doing some of the activities in the curriculum with some of the kiddos that hang out with us to start teaching them about gardening! Below are some pictures of one particular activity!
We started by collecting plastic bottles that we found in the backyard and proceeded to cut them in half. 

This is Johanny and Trini digging for soil to place in our "mini gardens"

After cutting the bottles, we inverted them and placed the soil and a seed in the top. Then, we put water in the bottom half of the bottle. After, we unscrewed the top of the bottle just enough so that water can be draw into the soil, but the soil doesn't fall into the water!
This is Trini and I. She is such a sweetheart and loves to learn how to make and do new things! I have loved getting to know her and spend lots of time with her!
Here is an example of one of our wind chimes with the flag of The Dominican Republic painted on it!
So, something else that I have been doing this week is researching stuff about keyhole gardening because we have decided that type of garden would work wonderfully in this community. I will give a short explanation of how keyhole gardens work because I am not sure if anyone is familiar with how they function!

This is a diagram of the way keyhole gardens look.

This an example of a finished product!

So, keyhole gardens... They are made entirely of items that can be composted. A barrier is needed such as rocks or bricks for the outside. Then, a 3:1 ratio of brown to green items is needed to create the surface to plant on. Brown items consist of cardboard boxes, paper, newspaper, magazines, feed sacks, clothes, and anything else that can break down.  Green items consist of soil, manure, branches, leaves and other such things. To build, you place cardboard boxes all on the bottom and outside of the structure putting water on top to attract the bugs. You also place a sort of trashcan in the middle right behind the path to use later. You continue to do this alternating between brown and green items until the area is full. Then, you place real rich soil on the top and plant! The "trashcan" in the middle serves as a place to continue to place items that will compost and create more nutrients for the soil!  I hope this was an accurate explanation and that you understand now. I have spent some of this last week maximizing my vocabulary in Spanish so that I can explain this same thing but to people here. I have successfully explained the garden to around 10 people and have asked them to start collecting any of these items that they have! It has been great because they have told me what they have started to collect and let me know that they have started telling others to do the same!  It is really becoming a community effort which is what we wanted all along. Now I am beginning to understand the reasons why we haven't been able to start planting the garden yet. The Lord wanted us to inspire the whole community to become involved and we needed time to gain knowledge for explanation! The Lord works in marvelous ways and I love when he reveals the purpose of his plans. I also enjoy thinking back to the times when I was frustrated that we hadn't started yet and realizing that there was much more God needed to still prepare. So, I have been spending time having conversations with people in the community explaining keyhole gardens and showing them how they can help! It has been very rewarding and I am loving every minute of it! When I ask people if they understand, their response is usually "mas o menos," meaning more or less, so I still have work to do but hopefully people are getting it! Anyway, there was a special holiday this last week in the U.S. that of course we still celebrated here in the DR. Our initial plans didn't happen, but nonetheless, The Fourth of July happened. We had wanted to build a bonfire and roast marshmallows and make S'mores but we had a hard time explaining marshmallows or finding them! So then we decided we could get hot dogs and roast them instead. Well, that didn't happen either because someone mentioned pizza and we decided that was American enough! So, we went to a nearby town called Cabrera with about 12 of us and had pizza and ice cream! It was wonderful! The food here has a lot of flavor, but definitely isn't very spicy so my friend Alicen and I spotted the Tabasco sauce on the table and made sure to douse our pizza in it! We got very strange looks, but it tasted SO good! I think we have a few pictures from that night which I will post later! I am sad because we also wanted to teach the community how to "Two-Step," on Independence Day but like the rest of our ideas, that didn't happen. But, we are definitely still going to do that at some point! Another thing we wanted was sparklers, but hey, the pizza and ice cream was a success! Anyway, this weekend we went on a trip to a town called Jarabacoa where our professor, Christine, is staying right now with a group of study abroad students. It was a great weekend, but I think I am going to wait to explain about it because this is already long and I want to post some pictures too! Thanks again for your love and support for me this summer! It is going by so fast but I am enjoying it SO much!

Monday, July 1, 2013

Psalm 46:10 "Be still and know that I am God."

So, this post will actually be short! I am sad because as of today, I officially have exactly a month until I am leaving this wonderful country. I will definitely be looking forward to going home, but also not wanting to leave! Anyway, this past week has been very interesting and yet not interesting at all. Starting on Friday night I wasn't feeling that great and discovered that I had a fever. I rarely ever get sick in the states and I am really not the best a being sick. Even though my body needs the rest, I really struggle to just lay on the couch all day while my body heals. So Saturday, I took it pretty easy and actually just hung out on the couch. Christine, our professor, did come visit us on Saturday night and so I did hang out with her and the other girls some that night. Well, Saturday night the fever got a little out of hand. It got up to nearly 104. I figured that was probably significant enough to need to go to the hospital. So Sunday morning, Christine, Taylor, and I went to the hospital in a nearby city. "Hospital" here is a little different story. It was basically a room with a few beds and a doctor. She talked to me and tried to figure out what was going on. I had to go to a clinic to get blood work done to ensure that I didn't have Dengue, which is the disease caused by mosquitoes that Christine just got over. Thankfully, the blood work showed that I didn't have Dengue! We went to a pharmacy and I got me a good supply of Tylenol. Then we went home and I just slept all day. Well then proceeded to do that everyday until Friday morning when my fever finally broke! So, I am feeling so much better now, finally regaining strength. My diagnosis was some sort of virus that has been just making its way around our community. It pretty much is just a fever. But there is also a little rash and bruising that has decided to linger on my feet and legs. I think it just is a result from poor circulation during my fever. It is getting better and I am so thankful. The Lord definitely works in crazy ways. I love how He needed to make me physically weak so that in Him I could be strong.  The Lord knows exactly what you need always and this week I needed to be still and know that He is God. Thanks again for all the thoughts and prayers!