a capital homecoming

Semana Santa is over, and we´re back in the capital. For an idea of our timeline, we spend one and a half weeks in Santo Domingo, and this Monday we find out our permanent site. Then we visit that site for a half a week and meet all the people in town and our new families there. After the visit we return to our training grounds in the capital for a last week of settling-in workshop stuff, and then we swear in on Cinco de Mayo and move to our sites for good. Scary and exciting, all wrapped up in one. I´m sad to have left El Seybo, it´s been a great little town!

Our host brother Adonis commented that Jenny and I were his buddies, which was a huge thing for this little kid who people only talk at instead of with. It was hardest to say bye to our host mom Daisy and one of my sisters who I´d gotten to be really good friends with. I wasn´t sad to leave the crazy puppy at all, though! We had a fun last lunch on Monday all eating together and chatting, and telling stories together.

We had some vacation days during Semana Santa before Easter after finishing up a few days of training with our group in El Seybo, and the break from workshops about computers and teaching and Spanish was welcome. Jenny gave me a haircut Thursday morning to start out our vacation that´s unexpectedly short right after she cut her own hair. We were supervised by my little host brother Adonis and the neighbor´s visiting relative (also Adonis) who were riding their "horses" which were actually palm trees right next to us. As far as I could tell, it was a pretty close race. I´m thinking about visiting her every time I need it cut from here on out – it´s great! On Friday morning our family mentioned that we were going to go to the beach later that day, but it turned out that it was one of those Dominican comments that means that a stated plan is actually just a thought running through the person´s mind. Instead a few of us ended up going down to the river in town to hang out at the get together the town was having: there was volleyball, swimming, boxing, hula hooping, political stuff, and lots of drinking – but no music, because it was Good Friday. Ironic? Maybe, but enjoyable, and we didn´t get our eardrums blasted out for once!

On Saturday our host sister and her boyfriend Jesus were taking their half sister back to her house a ways away, so Jenny and I went along. Road trips are pretty fun here, because you always stop a million times to buy things from people on the side of the road or get out for some reason or another. One little clarification: when I´ve talked in the past about our truck rides, we actually pay for those. People drive trucks as another form of public transportation here which is really good on unpaved roads. Anyway, the sister lives in a little town called Yuma, and after dropping her off there we headed the 15 minutes farther to the coastal town of Boca de Yuma to eat by the water at a little seafood stand and walk around by the water. It was close to a national park that I want to go back to someday soon. To get to the beach there, you have to take a little boat across a canal and walk a good little ways, or take a boat out into the ocean. We didn´t go all the way there since we didn´t have our suits and it was starting to rain, but instead went back to Higüey, the big town between El Seybo and Boca de Yuma. There was a beautiful cathedral there that we got to visit with really cool architecture that reminded me of Gaudi. Jesus (the boyfriend) decided he wanted to go by his aunt´s house which turned out to be in Miches, far away from where we were. So we were in his car a long time that day, but I never get tired of seeing more of this beautiful country. The aunt lived on a farm and so we explored around a little bit before it got dark. I convinced everyone to work on their palm tree climbing skills and so we were climbing when we got surprised by the toro that´s guapo. Guapo does not equal good-looking like it does in the rest of the Spanish speaking world. Here it means angry, and to be around a bull that is characterized as guapo by the excited kids around us was sort of scary.

Speaking of crazy words here, anyone who can email me the correct answer to the next question gets a piece of real snail mail from me. But no cheating online or anything. If you ask for a guineo here, what would people give you? One hint: you wouldn´t get a punch in the face.

On Easter, the group of us went for an awesome hike in the next little town over with the volunteer there to some waterfalls. Jenny managed to step in three different cow patties. They say here that stepping in one means you´re going to be rich, so I think she may just get lucky. We all got eaten up after we swam right below the falls – my legs look like I have chicken pox.

On one of the guaguas on the way back home Monday, a couple of things scared some of us. 1) We all have started to sort of enjoy bachata music, and even hum or sing along when the songs that play lots come on. 2) We all got really excited to see mangoes at the markets there downtown, just because we´ve been anticipating mango season for a while and watching the mangoes not turn yet is painful. Now we know there is hope! 3) We finally saw a real cinqueño, who are actually more common in El Seybo. Maybe he was from there. That would be a person with 6 fingers on one hand, and we had been trying to spot one the whole time we were in El Seybo. This guy stood right in front of a couple of us, and on a scary swerve he grabbed the seat in front of us and actually brushed my forehead with his sixth finger.

One more thing: sumo dog. Come to find out from another trainee here, dogs see size horizontally instead of vertically, so human legs look very non-threatening. Some trainees have thus built on this information to form a defense mechanism that we like to call sumo dog. It´s where the human being chased by a dog drops low to the ground with their arms spread eagle and makes some sound. I tried it while running with Jenny the other day, and the dog that was chasing us actually whimpered and ran away as fast as it could. The only negative side effect was that Jenny had a hard time running up the hill because she was laughing so hard. One warning: this has never to my knowledge been tried on groups of dogs, only solitary ones. But go ahead and try it at home :)

Don´t forget: guineo.