ONE YEAR OMGALKSDJASKDJALKJDAD

That's right. One year ago today I boarded a plane with 32 strangers to embark on the adventure of a lifetime. Or some super cliche shit like that.

No but seriously I can't believe it's been a year, maybe the fastest year of my life thus far?
I could have NEVER predicted what it would be like but it's definitely been one hell of a ride. So glad my Peace Corps family has my back, without them I wouldn't still be here. 517-13-01 we out here!!!

Well, in celebration of the anniversary I'll give you a photo memorial. But not before telling you the 25 things that make it official that I'm a year deep (sorry people at home, this is mainly for PCVs, pictures below):

1. My pinta...neon and obnoxious prints. flow.so.hard.
2. My nails are always painted and matching my toes (duh, gotta be bien combinada)
3. I walk around with an umbrella not for rain but for shade because I HATE THE SUN
4. I crave beans and rice (I wish this were false)
5. I scrunch my nose (non verbal communication for "what?")
6. My spanglish is at an all time high
7. My English is at an all time low ("I have hunger.." english is hard)
8. I don't do anything when it rains or between the hours of noon and 2.
9. I scream WEYYYYY out car windows and from the back of motorcycles to get people's attention
10. There is always music blasting from my phone or apartment
11. Other people standing near me when I'm sitting down makes me nervous (sietate, por dios)
12. I show up to meetings 30 minutes late just to suffer a bit less (since most will show up an hour late)
13. I answer my phone basically no matter what I'm doing because I don't have minutes to call that person back
14. I tirar back when I get piropo-ed
15. Lines? those are for Americans. That Doña will run you over!
16. I can't go more than 2 weeks without going to the beach (torture, I'm telling you)
17. Presidente beer still doesn't taste good
18. I forgot what it's like to go out like a normal person...can't we just dance Bachata?
19. Brug and Jug (Brugal rum and jugo) emborrachars me de una vez
20. I WALK REALLY SLOOOOWWW
21. I talk to the stranger next to me on the guagua
22. I speak in PC acronyms
23. I refer to diarrhea as "the princess"
24. I plan my day around the electricity schedule
25. I live to plan the next beach party. Holler!

 Day 1

First night in country..how do I put this thing up?

 Volunteer visit to Pedernales

 Training in Yamasa

Swear in Ceremony!

4th of July in Samana

Ridin' dirty in Barahona

 Calle 8 Montecristi

 Med Mission at ILAC in Santiago

Construye tus Sueños National Conference 2013

 "Eso es cacaaaooooo"

 Thanksgiving rooftop bash in Santo Domingo

 Presidente brindando in SD

O'toole's!

Chicago

 NYE in Cabarete

 Patronales in Nagua

Mini Vac at Playa Grande, Rio San Juan

Trip #2 to Montecristi to see this gem

T-minus 14 months to go! 

xoxo Kaley

Recent Happenings in my Kitchen

Now that I don't live with a host family I finally have full control over my diet...which means a few less rice and beans meals. And not much meat because I hate raw meat and here if you want chicken you're getting all of the chicken, including the feet. barf.

Food availability here can be tricky. Sometimes rice and beans is all you can get and in that case that's what volunteers eat. Some have never cooked a meal here because they continue to eat at their host family's house. I live in a decent sized pueblo so my food availability is pretty good.
The Dominican diet doesn't have nearly as many veggies in it as the American one. Maybe that's just my opinion, but I happen to like veggies so I stock up when the truck comes by.

Some veggies in their routine bleach bath before consumption. 

Apparently I was hungry? Yes those are Kraft singles. There are some things I just can't live without!

Veggie fried rice with teriyaki sautéed cabbage

Cucumber-onion-dill vinegar salad

Passion fruit juice :)

Midnight snack: Peanut butter and banana sandwich with homemade dark chocolate sauce

Rosemary pan fried potatoes with cheese and 2 over easy eggs. And hot sauce. 

Tuna salad on whole wheat toast. 

There you have it. Because I know you were wondering what I eat these days.  There are things I can buy here in my pueblo, things I have to buy in Nagua (wheat bread, yogurt, kraft singles, cereal) and things I have to buy in Santo Domingo (good cheese, salad dressing, good hot sauce, olives). Enjoy all your delicious food (and conveinence) up there in America!!! And your dishwasher. Man I hate washing dishes. 

xoxo Kaley

When I work

So you could definitely say that Peace Corps volunteers do not work a typical work schedule. In fact, when we arrive to country they tell us that we work 24/7.

My thoughts exactly. 

And it's the truth. Kind of. I'm a huge believer in "if you love your job you never work a day in your life".  Because it's true! 

How is it that I work 24/7 you ask? Well, the three main goals of Peace Corps are:

• To help the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women
• To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served
• To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans

So let's break it down.
Goal #1. Meeting the need for trained peeps. I'm here, and I'm doing everything I can for my project. So that's like the actual going to my project and working part, which I do probably 3-4 days of the week. I also teach an income generation class to women and hang out with young people, injecting my dos pesos about how they need to graduate from college and wait to get married and have kids (not necessarily in that order) whenever I can .
Goal #2. Spreading the joy of American culture. I am doing this every time I leave my house by getting started at, 24/7. I'm used to it by now. Practicing English with Dominicans, talking about food, customs, weather etc in the US and answering any other ridiculous questions (what year is it in the United States?).
Goal #3. Spreading the joy of other cultures with Americans. Believe it or not, sadly, this is the hardest one. You ass holes who are outraged by the Coca Cola Super Bowl commercial are not making it any easier. But this blog is a good example of goal #3. Talking about my experiences with I'm home is another...but the real life saver for goal #3 is social media. Instagram, specifically. If you're on Instagram check out the pics other PCVs upload by searching #peacecorps. Pretty awesome.

In addition to all of that, I gotta integrate into this culture, gain trust from the people I live and work with, make friends and do all of this in Spanish. It's a lot. And often stressful.

So that's why I don't feel too bad when we have our regional minivac meetings at the beach....

In our swimsuits. With plenty of booze in pineapples. 

Then we stopped by the Laguna Dudu on our way back to Nagua. Laguna Dudu is like this huge lagoon above underwater caves. It's about 20% saltwater and they have an awesome park and zipline. Fabulousness. 

Boys playing soccer right before Jackson broke his toe :(

On Sunday I headed to Santo Domingo early with my host mom to the Geraghty med mission (more info here). Last April she had her thyroid removed and when they did the surgery they also paralyzed one of her vocal chords. When I got the email from PC that Geraghty was bringing an ENT specialist I immediately sent an email to see if there was anything they could do. Dr. G emailed me back saying they would bring the equipment to inject her paralyzed vocal chord in hopes to make her talk and breathe normally. She'd kill me if she knew I put this on the internet but here she is post surgery happy as a clam!

Everything turned out well and hopefully within a month she will see results. 

Sunday night despite being exhausted I dragged myself to a sports bar (like a good American) with some other volunteers who were translating at the med mission to watch the Super Bowl and eat wings. There were margaritas too. 

My trip to the Capital will end tomorrow with maybe on of the coolest things I am working on here. I was invited to work on a commission with the United Nations Development Program to work on a project platform for a sustainable cacao industry here in the DR. All of the big players in the cacao sector are participating and it's an awesome initiative to improve the productivity of an industry that has an incredibly high demand internationally. Info here on the program in general and a detailed description of the project here (in Spanish, sorry non bilingual friends). 

Love and paz from the DR!! xoxo

Kaley

A boat

So today (Sunday) I had to work. Not by choice but a lot of associations and organizations at a local level meet on Sundays because it's when most of their members can come. 

A little background. When volunteers arrive to the country for training we have no idea where we will live for the next 2 years. Don't know what out job will be or who the family is that we will live with for our first few months. And for all I know neither does my boss. Hah. 

To find projects for business volunteers there is a decent amount of (dique) sight development involved. The projects must be identified as feasible and workable an the community safe for a volunteer to live. Well 'tis the season. Another batch of business volunteers are arriving in March (yes, that means I've been here for almost a year. No idea how or when that happened) and they are in need of projects and sites for them. Peace corps reaches out to current PCVs for ideas and potential sites. 

So that's what I did today. Thanks to one of my coworkers from SODIN (the development organization I work with) I went out to a community called Boba which is located between nagua and cabrera to check out a fishermans association and ecotourism project in the community. The site is beautiful and right on the beach...

There's also a lagoon 

But the most curious part of my visit? This. 

A fishing boat, right? Nope. A fishing boat doesn't require this kind of security. 

He's a Dominican marine and that's an automatic weapon. 

So what is this thing?

It's a human smuggling boat. Someone back in the mangroves makes them and then they float them out to the ocean to fill with people who have paid roughly 1000 USD to go to Puerto Rico. The trip takes 3-4 days (without any complications) and obvi there is no bathroom on this ship. Give that some thought. The nice marine with the machine gun says this is a smaller boat designed for about 60 people. In that thing?! It's hardly 30 feet long. My family's boat is like 27 feet long and comfortably seats about 8. Do the math. 

This boat didn't make it. When they found it washed up down the beach it was almost empty. It had nothing but some gas tanks and an outboard motor in it. The marine says they don't know if there were ever people in it but that in his year of patrolling this part of the coast they have found about a dozen boats larger than this one that have either been abandoned at sea, caught leaving full of people or confiscated before finishing. 

So when the catch people everyone gets detained for questioning, mostly to find out who runs the operation, and are then let go. The bosses never go with the boats, there is usually a guide with a plan b if they get caught. The marine tells me they've never caught a boat with a guide in it. 

Tomorrow they will burn the boat and send pictures to their superiors as confirmation and it will disappear just like those peoples dreams of illegal immigration. 

All that to go to the US. And here i was thinking I kinda like it here? 

Going to the US is something almost every Dominican talks about. Everyone has a tio or a primo who lives "alla" in nueva yol. It's some peoples lifelong goal to get their kids there (by trying to marry me off to their kids and grand kids. Nice try abuela). Men marry American women to send money to their wives and kids down here. In fact, there is a song that's called "pa mangar mi visa" or "to get my visa" and the main chorus goes a little something like this: 

I want an American girl!

What for?

To get my visa x12

I want an American girl that doesn't understand me at all

I want an American girl who gives me everything I want

I want an American girl who will get me out of here

To get, to get, to get me my visa

For those of you who don't know, there is a huge Dominican population in the Bronx and Washington heights. And I mean huge. Supposedly there are as many Dominicans there as there are on this island. I think that's a myth. I'm anxious to go when I finish my pc service. 

I have a Dominican friend living in New Jersey. He moved to the US 5 years ago and talking to him about the cultural differences has been really interesting. Not to mention fun for both of us because we live in each other's motherlands. And bilingual people are cool. It's a little perspective for both of us. Hi Melvin :) 

If you're interested in learning more about the cultural limbo (if you will) between the United States and the dr (or if you have ever dated a Dominican man or ARE a Dominican man) I encourage you to read the works of Junot Diaz. They are so spot on that they have nearly brought me to tears and I don't cry much people. 

In the meantime I wish Dominicans wanted to stay in their own country to really make it the fabulous place that is has the potential to be. 

Buuuuueno. 

Paz y Amor for your motherland, Kaley 

Coming Home

Greetings loved ones, I'm back. Annnd it's halfway through January...when did that happen???

After a snowy, cold 2 weeks in the US I've now been back in the DR for about 15 days.

There was a lot of snow. But I got to see almost allll the important people in my life and it was great.

Our annual post-Christmas Chicago trip to shop and eat. 

I brought 2 full size jam-packed suitcases back with me (mostly clothes and christmas presents and stuff for volunteers who didn't go home for the holidays). Because obviously I wouldn't travel light. Not me, ever. But I will tell you my new clothes were much needed (flow.so.hard).

I must tell you I was a bit nervous to come back. Would I hate it now that I had been back in the first world enjoying modern conveniences, hot water, driving and throwing the TP in the toilet? Luckily my dear friend Sam and I (this is her blog) arrived to the DR almost at the same time, which was a fabulous culture shock/coping mechanism. We were greeted at the airport by some familiar faces and made our way into the concrete jungle of Santo Domingo. 

The truth? It was great to be back. We eased into the new year with a hundred something other volunteers in the beach town of Cabarete on the north coast and even though the weather wasn't ideal (rains in the winter here) it was great to see everyone. 

Sam and I

Kate Sam and I

Some people I like. 

Then we headed back to site on the 4th. I spent a couple days with my host family finishing out the Christmas season (which ends January 6th here because of the King's Day) and then...........I MOVED!

Yep. Move number like 15 since I've been in Peace Corps? meh. I moved into a rooftop apartment about 5 minutes walking from my host family's house...let's just say it's pretty different from my previous living situation. 

So that's it! 2013 ended a little rough, so I have high hopes for 2014. 

More updates on my projects and "work" coming soon. 

Besos!! Kaley