Pazitively Loca: What exactly am I doing?

Something I ask myself every day.

But in reality, the first 3 months of volunteers' service is a community diagnostic. Which really means hanging out, going to events, integrating, talking to people and eventually doing surveys and interviews.

They say you should go to everything. Which I do. So far I have made countless trips into Barahona with my project partners for work purposes, gone to Santo Domingo and beyond to buy food for the fish, gone to several church services, women's meetings and fed the fish too. Although I did skip a 3km walk to the next town for a burial...I'm present for interviews with foreign organizations, newspapers and visits from the organization that funds the project.

I sit on my porch and chat with the neighbors and my host mom and I walk around in the community. I need to walk around more but it's so. Damn. Hot. Yesterday I found myself making decorations for a wedding on Saturday. And this is always happening when I'm not doing anything...

Note he has 2 different color eyes.

I have to present the information at my 3 month mark in service. The whole point of the diagnostic is to identify the project's and community's needs for the next 2 years of service. I definitely have my work cut out for me. I have lots of ideas...

In other news, I was in the capital last saturday to visit some friends from home who were PCVs here in the 90s. They are here working up in Sosua on a literacy project.

This weekend it looks like I'll be attending a wedding and also getting together with the other PCVs in the south at the San Rafael house. You remember this view, right?