Monday, June 28, 2010

Lowenbrau half-marathon

On Sunday, something like 20 volunteers and I ran in the 15th annual Maratón Hispaniola in Santo Domingo.  I had “trained” for about 4 weeks, which mainly consisted of running every evening that it wasn´t raining, for as long as it wasn´t raining.  We´re in the rainy season…  and are on the tail end of a hurricane, I think. 
We picked up our microchips and running shirts in the morning, and spent most of the day in the Peace Corps office using the internet. I think I ate like 4 bananas. Then, we crammed 11 of us into a taxi minivan, and headed to the Mirador del Sur park. The place was packed with lycra stretched over muscle, and hardcore runners jumping and stretching and peeing on the sides of the port-a-potties, wondering why so many people were waiting in line to use them. 

Natasha and Mas were there as athletic supporters, cellphone holders, and rum consumers (gotta do something between the start and finish, right?).

It started to downpour half an hour before the race, and the temperature went down by about 10 degrees.  When the race started, it was drizzling, and steamy-humid, but rather cool (keep in mind that 75 degrees warrants a jacket here.)

Sabrina and I ran together for about 17km without stopping.  We passed the time commenting on other runners, and yelling like idiots when we saw someone we knew. The first 8km or so were through the wealthy neighborhoods, the kinds of places we had never seen on the island before, where the windows don´t have bars, and the lawns aren´t mowed by machete. 

The rest of the race was up and down the Mirador del Sur (something like the “southern view” or “watcher of the south”), a nice stretch of road with parks and trees and a view of the ocean beyond the city.  This was also the most painful stretch of the race, because the road was only slightly curvy, boring, and you could see all the people way ahead of you running the opposite direction on the other side of the street.  I think I was at km12 when I saw the first person pass me on the other side.

I started to powerwalk around km18, and Sabrina kept on.  I met a Dominican runner, and we ran/walked the next km or so, chatting about where we were from, and what we studied in school. The boredom went away, and I got a burst of delirious energy, and started to run ahead.  By km20, I cranked up my iPod, started yelling incoherent fragments of choruses, and drenched myself with the fundas of agua they handed out on the side of the road. 

I could see the finish line, and fireworks started going off overhead. FIREWORKS, I´m not joking. Bright lights, throngs of people yelling and clapping, huge banners, a sky filled with fireworks, little kids high-fiving me, confetti, and then the finish line with a huge LED clock reading 02:18:23.  It was all a blur.
Immediately, someone shoved a Löwenbraü in my hand, put a medal around my neck, gave me a bag of treats, and clipped off the microchip tied to my right shoe.


At some point, I should note that Löwenbraü is a German malt beverage that may or may not contain alcohol.  So, not only was I an American running in a Dominican race sponsored by a German company, but I also pounded a malt immediately after running 13 miles.  It was cold, sort of bubbly, and everyone else was doing it…  I threw it up as soon as we got back to the Pension.  buuuuuuh

Mas and Natasha congratulated us as we finished, and gave us Snickers bars.  By this time, they had made a nice dent in the rum. 

The more people back home that I talked to before the race, the less confident I felt about running.  The day before, I was ready to drop out.  I really wanted to run it, just to try at something and possibly fail.  I would have even been liberated in failure.

The only thing that really pushed me on (besides my mom) was my host family and the people at my CTC, who know me as the crazy gringo who always runs in the rain. “Pero Adán, corres muuucho!” They were making plans with what I was going to do with the $$ when I came in 1st (included was a surprise wedding when my “novia” comes to visit).  When I showed them the medal this morning, they immediately started yelling and dancing, because they thought I came in 15th (the medal has a big 15 for 15th annual.)

Saturday, June 26, 2010

housing

I've been looking for places to live, and have had two leads so far.  One is a one bedroom apartment above this lady's house, and I have to wait for her to get her US visa before I can rent it (she married an American, is leaving the country.)  The other is an apartment above a hardware store that is under construction, but I think I'll have to disconsider it...  I look at it every morning when I walk to the CTC, and yesterday, I noticed they had installed glass windows.  CRAP!  I'll never be able to afford a place with windows!

It doesn't take long for someone to get a US visa, right....??

Friday, June 25, 2010

Adelyn


My sister (real, not host) is having a girl!  Above is Adelyn.  I think she's looking pretty fly for a fetus.

I'm going to be going back to the States sometime in December to meet her!

Friday, June 18, 2010

Chess

I’ve been teaching kids how to play chess for the past few days.  I don’t especially like the game, and I’m not very good at it, but everyone is amazed by it.  Most of them have picked it up really quickly, but very few seem to grasp how the pawns move.  They constantly try to make them move sideways, backwards, and diagonal, and attack by moving forward. 

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One girl picked up the game really quickly. She got the hang of backing up her moves, and beat a few of the guys pretty easily.

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Between chess and Uno, I’ve been playing a lot of games lately.  I started to make progress on the community diagnostic, but then all my youth decided that they did not want to go around doing surveys… soooo I’ve gotta find some new youth. 

Monday, June 14, 2010

Taíno festival

 

On Sunday, my town had a big Taíno festival.  This is how I learned about it:

Host mom: Adán, there is a party with a bunch of americans. They will probably give you popcorn. I´m not going.

Host sister: Yes, lots of americans.  They like pottery. It is someone´s birthday. I´m not going, I don´t care for pottery.

Me: Oh. Maybe I´ll walk by it. Where is it?

Host mom and sister, looking terrified: It is about a kilometer away, you will die in the sun.

It was about a half-k away, but Sugeidy, Cristian, and I took motorcycle taxis anyway.

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It turned out to be this big indigenous art festival, and probably the only thing my town is known for, besides growing cacao and plantains (which… everywhere does…).  Quick note: Sugeidy found out that if you poke the above statue´s dong with your umbrella enough, a guy with a gun will tell you to stop.

Music circle!

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This is Sugeidy and me enjoying a Presidente beer.  It comes in liters. As you can see in the background, Coca Cola can find its way even to small remote towns only known for growing cacao and plantains.

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The below picture was explained to me as representing the indigenous religions.  In an interesting example of religious syncretism, which you can just make out in the picture, most of the people sitting are drinking lots of Presidente.

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I arrived on the back of a motorcycle (hence my carrying around a helmet all day).  Others arrived on horses.

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There was a lot of music and folkloric dancing.  The coolest thing was when they were dance-fighting with machetes.  Cristian had my camera then, and it was set to “video” mode, so all I have from that is 40 minutes of seasickness.

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This is probably the only souvenir I´ve ever bought.  I think she is the moon goddess, and she is artistically displayed in this photo with my mosquito net draped in the background.

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La Barca Tipica

On Saturday night, the CTC had a fundraiser at the local car wash (car washes turn into clubs at night.  This explains why they have bars).  It was pretty great, with live bachata/merengue music, and a huge turnout.  I think they actually…lost…money, due to confusion, poor door management, and people sneaking in.  I had an urge to take charge, but the last time I did that the military started arresting people.

Here’s a shot of (from left to right) my host sister, Elli; the adult literacy teacher, Diosmaris; my project partner and the radio coordinator, Sugeidy; and a random woman who jumped in the picture.

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Just for comparison, here is a typical shot of volunteers at a car wash. You can see that we have a lot of cultural sharing to do.

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Live music!

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Lots of people!

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I am convinced that there is only one bachata song and one merengue song.  Sometimes, they may play it faster or slower, but I think it is still the same song.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Diagnostic, bees, and Chinese food

I started work on my community diagnostic this week.  I’ve written up two surveys, and am planning out how to convert the CTC youth into my interviewing minions.  I meet with the Peace Corps people this Friday to go over the diagnostic stuff, so hopefully I’ll have it all sorted out by then!

I got stung by a bee for the first time in over a decade.  That was unexpected. I’m a little bit at war with most of the insects and smaller mammals here.  I’m still trying to figure out how to protect my clothes from the rats, and my peanutbutter from the ants.

This weekend, I went down to Santo Domingo, and hung out with another volunteer, Natasha, for the day.  This mainly consisted of going to the Embassy pool and lounging around, and eating dominican chinese food.

Friday, June 4, 2010

How Literacy Classes Went

On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week, I covered the first half-hour of the adult literacy classes at the CTC. The first day, three students showed up in the first 15 mins, so I started class with them. I read the first two paragraphs of a newspaper article about how literature can introduce you to new, better worlds, and then dissected the word "mejor," and came up with other words that start with "me." One of the students was into it. She came up with words and sentences, and was excited and talkative. The other two lagged, but were able to come up with words.

Then, some other students started to arrive, and didn't know what was going on. Before long, I had 8 women, between 18 and 65 years old, most of whom were confused about what we were doing. I scrapped the alternative exercise, and returned to the workbook, but no one knew what page they were on. Good start.

Finally, the teacher walked in, and everyone cheered. She got them back on track, and handed the class over to me once again. We had 5 words, and we had come up with other words with the same beginning syllable, and make sentences with the words. They had been doing this for many days, but were confused by the directions I gave them. The teacher stepped in once again, and repeated what I said louder, gave them the first sentence to write, and they silently wrote it down. They knew how to spell the words pretty well, but swapped L/R, V/B, and LL/Y, and the teacher said not to correct them, since it would just confuse them. When they made other mistakes, she would erase the sentence, rewrite it for them, and they would copy it.

One girl, who was about 18, was 20 pages behind the rest of the class, and the teacher only paid attention to her for about 10 minutes out of the two hours. She was repeating the sentence the teacher read, and copying it in her workbook. It seemed like she knew what she was doing, and continued to work on her own.

The next day, I decided to keep to what the class was comfortable with. We all opened to the correct page, and read the words and sentences we had worked with the previous day. The teacher arrived, and stopped class while a student copied the previous lesson from another student's workbook. We couldn't go on until she finished. After she finished, everyone participated in reciting the new words for the day and copying them (I know, that's banking). Then, they came up with words that had the same beginning syllables, and they wrote them down without copying anything I wrote. Good. Then, we came up with a sentence using the words, and they wrote the sentence without copying. Great! Even for conjugated verbs, they seemed to be able to write the syllable that had that sound.

While they were writing another sentence, I turned to help the 18 year old. We started re-reading the sentences from the previous day, but she couldn't do it. I read it through once, and she repeated, just like she did with the teacher, and then copied it down in one long, unbroken word. I asked her to read the sentence, and she couldn't. I figured it was due to the lack of spaces, so I had her re-write it with spaces, word for word, and put boxes around each word, and she was able to read it!

The third day, I had my project partner and the teacher's husband to help out. We started class like normal, reviewing the previous day, and then came up with words for the new lesson. Instead of dictating a sentence for them to write, I had them each write their own sentence. They were able to do this will a little difficulty, but a few of them then went on to the next word, and wrote a new sentence by themselves. Great, they're doing it by themselves, at their own pace! Others got stuck, and started copying parts of their neighbor's sentence, even though it didn't make sense, or was for the wrong word. Soon, I couldn't get everyone on the same page, so the teacher's husband took over and dictated the sentences to copy, and I worked with the 18 year old.

We started a new lesson, and I quickly realized that she had no idea what was written down if I didn't read it to her first. I flipped to the previous lesson, and she couldn't read what she had written--not even a single word. I rewrote one of the sentences, and asked her to put a box around the word "trabajar," and she boxed in half of the first word. The entire lesson had been on the word "trabajar." She hadn't been reading, she had been reciting. She did not know the sounds for any syllables or letters or vowels. She was 140 pages into the workbook, and had been "writing" and "reading" entire sentences. All my hope drained out at that moment, and I wrote "mi, me, ma, mo, mu," and asked her to read it. "Trabajar?" I realized that she was embarrassed, and she just wanted to get out of the situation. Shit. Ok. I read the next sentence, she repeated it, and then copied it down. I felt sick.

Class ended. I went for a run.