Flamingo Tongue

Hey there!

Sorry it has been a while since a little update. There is actually not too much new going on actually. It is very odd to think that I've been in country 1 year coming up early March. In certain respects it feels like a year. In others it seems like a blink.

I managed to make it out to see the Humpback whales in Samana thanks so much to Ben's family! He has the real pics but it looked a little something like this. I have always wanted to see whales breaching and with this trip I did! Thank you to Jeanie and Kathy again!

At the year mark I'm feeling much more of the urge to do some physical project to keep me busy with my community. I've made phone calls to find contacts with some organization to help me out with water filter installations. It's sort of a restless feeling waiting and not hearing back or having something on the horizon to make me feel busy. I was just telling someone that the most frustrating part of the job for me is not feeling productive every day. I like having things to look forward to and the lack of reliable communication to make plans is making it difficult. Waking up with a sense of purpose is key in one's mental sanity and happiness I feel.

My main focus at the moment are the literacy groups. I have about 5-10 dedicated kids that come to my house about 4 times a week and we read a different story out loud, ask comprehension questions, and for the kids that really are struggling we do little excercising with pronunciation. I've also converted this into a little nature appreciation club (the start of brigada verde possibly). I've been painting some of the local birds with the lovely art set my Nana gave me. The kids draw the bird of the day and then we go outside with the Binoculars that mom gave me and they hide their drawings around and have each other find them. Then we do a little talk about how important it is not to kill the birds with gomas (slingshots). I'm hopefully going to have a guy from the University of Vermot come out and do something in my site with respect to the migratory song birds because my site is an ecological corridor between two scientific reserves and there is a potential carbon credit/bird habitat conservation project to be talked about with him. I just hope that it is more than an idea.

My friend Eva and I have also talked a little about doing something for international women's day. She lives right down the road from me so we can collaborate. I'm thinking about doing a carpentry workshop as an activity for the women in our communities - teach them something like how to make photo frames (Eva is going to do an art workshop so that could go hand in hand) while also showing them a bigger project (like a stool or bench). I am teaching several of the adolescent boys in my site how to make benches and spice racks - but it'd be wonderful to get some girls involved so that is my hope. The same idea with guitar lessons - the only people that want to learn to play guitar are the men and it'd be great if some of my girls wanted to join in on the lessons.

I've been cooking a lot! I'm much better at making bread now and my garden just produced it's first ripe tomatos. I have so much basil I don't know what to do with it, although gifting pesto to other volunteer friends is a very fun passtime. It is very nice to make another volunteer smile - the volunteers express appreciation much more than my Donas and it's just nice to see it written on someones face accompanied with words (en vez de - Da me algo Sarah). Dominicans show it in different ways....just harder to see a veces.

Otherwise to fill my time - I just came down to the capital this weekend to get my ReefCheck Dive certification (reefcheck.org). It was basically a fish/invert ID class where you learn what you are actually seeing down during the dives and enables you to participate in these surveys that monitor reef health. We did our first survey this weekend and it was really great to get to go on another dive and get a change of scene from the campo. I am thinking about doing the advanced Dive class when the next one happens (which includes a night dive and a 100 ft dive) because it'd be awesome to have that on my resume (for possible marine research gigs) and also because it's really fun.

By the way - this is a flamingo tongue. We learned this in the ReefCheck course. It is awesome

I am SUPER DOOPER excited for Jenny and Patty to come visit me during my birthday week and the trip is starting to sound ridiculously fun. Ryan is coming out at the end of April and he also is dive certified so we are going to aprovecharlo (take advantage!). YES!

Here is a pic of some of my volunteer friends during the Superbowl. My computer is out of service for the moment and I can't upload some other pics I want.

Hope you are doing very well and update me your adventures soon! A special thank you to those that are writing me! SPECIAL LOVE for June and Michelle for their video they sent. Also Jess Wall for the special cameos. I watch it when I'm missing you guys.