Return to the Capital

The return to the capital wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. It was very much tempered by pizza for lunch the first day back and McDonalds the second, plus a visit to US soil and a swimming pool at the embassy. And to my delight, I haven’t heard a single rooster since I’ve been back. The only thing that would make this better is if I weren’t sick in bed. It’s just a cold, una gripe, but its zapped me of all motivation to do anything and makes the heat just that much more difficult to bear. I’m blaming Becca for giving me her illness! No, not really – I’m chalking this up to another lesson my body’s trying to teach me: don’t let yourself get stressed out over small things (like a kid’s documentary) cuz your immune system will plummet and you’ll like that even less.

The farewell bash wasn’t nearly as packed as our facilitator had anticipated, but I think it went well nonetheless. It was pretty exciting to see how the other two groups’ projects came out. I was really impressed by the company logos Sabrina’s graphic design team came up with, how they gave a presentation going over, in detail, how they developed each one. The newspaper team said they faced a lot of adversity in the way of kids not showing up or not doing the work, but they had a nicely laid out two 4 page paper to present to everyone at the fiesta. The documentary was well received, especially by the students who created it. I was somewhat disappointed, however, that none of their families had come to support them for various reasons. But the kids were beaming. Everyone wanted to take photos and to exchange emails, so we did and that was nice.

After the premier of our little film, our fluent Spanish speaker of the group, in his ever brightly shining positivity and support, introduced me to the audience as the directora whose passion and something else I didn’t quite catch made this happen. I was of course, thrilled to be recognized in this way and wish I could have spoken with the passion he spoke of, but my damn language barrier got in the way. All I was able to do was read off of a post-it note, but he said it came out well, which is good enough for me J. I said in our groups’ closing speech that their families and their community should be proud and that I was sure they’d be successful in whatever they went on to do with their lives. I’m not sure if it registered with them, but I hope it did, because they never hear that kind of thing from anyone.

Even though our documentary was essentially just a simple collection of interview clips with a few visuals of the factories in between, I guess it was enough to catch the eye of one of the men working for a local television station. To be quite honest, that’s about all I understood when he introduced himself to me afterwards. I’m not exactly sure what he wanted, other than my email, but it was really nice to be asked for my contact information instead of the usual other way around.

Before the party, my doña took me to a small tienda on our block to look for shoes. She knew I didn’t have any that fit the semi-formal dress code requirements of the party and the swearing-in-ceremony. To my complete surprise, she bought the shoes. She said it was something to remember her by, because “te amo mucho.” I wanted to print out all of my favorite family photos from the five weeks I spent with them and give that as a gift, since they don’t have very many photos. But when I found out that to print actual photos costs 20 pesos per photo, my brilliant idea was shot down. Fortunately, a veteran volunteer helped me through the process of “thinking around things” here in the DR and I eventually decided to print a card, on regular printer paper, that included all the photos. It wasn’t ideal, for my perfectionistic standards anyway, but she loved it, and I hope to visit again someday during my service and bring back with me the real photographs I originally planed to give. I miss little Jose already, too, always wanting to paint (scribble) or play cards (throw them down on the table). The little kids here do nothing but cry.

We find out our site placements on Monday, though they knew yesterday during our meeting and still wouldn’t tell us. I know I’m going to be working in a school, which is great, but that’s the extent of my knowledge as of now. During our meeting they basically told the eight of us working in schools that we were chosen to do so because we demonstrated an ability to work without any structure or support, neither of which we’ll be getting from the Ministry of Education. For this role, they say, we’ll need to be headstrong and self-motivated, good with fundraising, and willing to role with the punches. That last one will probably be my biggest challenge.

There is a supposed structure of the committees that we’ll be working with once we get to our site, but that’s assuming everyone shows up to the meeting and is on task, which is almost never going to happen. So they gave us some starting out techniques that might help in our initial meetings and ways to capitalize on the excitement of the town to have us there during our first few months.

I’ve worked a little on my project vision – my teacher training classes that will eventually lead to the development and production of teacher training videos. One of the others working in schools has helped me to translate my vision statement into Spanish and we will be sitting down to discuss an rough curriculum for the training sessions. He was a substitute teacher for a while before coming to the Peace Corps and I’ve seen how great he is up in front of a class, so I’m really looking forward to collaborating with him on this project. We even aspire to bring our most motivated teachers together to film the videos as an incentive for the to meet like minded individuals as well as a little travel. We’re not aloud to apply for Peace Corps grants during the first three months, but I don’t imagine we’ll be shooting before then anyway. When we’ve sketched out our class outline, I’ll post it up along with my vision statement. I’d really appreciate if those of you with teaching experience could comment, critique, or offer suggestions.

Until then, I await with great anticipation the announcement of our project sites and the five days we get to visit them before swearing in.