So an update without photos

No photos cause the internetz right now are slowz, but here’s a summary of what’s been happening with me lately:

So the other morning after I had just got back from language training and had one day in my site before I had to leave again I decided to make oatmeal for breakfast which is a healthy thing to do, no? So then it’s finished cooking and I add in some sugar, and since I throw a dash of cocoa into my coffee in the morning and the cocoa is out as well, might as well throw in a bit of that. And then I had my jar of peanut butter lying out from snacktime yesterday, so I threw in a spoonful of that too.

BASICALLY, I made a peanut butter chocolate chip oatmeal cookie for breakfast. But the base ingredient was oatmeal, so I think it was healthy, but since I’m not a doctor I’m going to say DIAGNOSIS: DELICIOUS! and eat away while staring at the “Heart-Friendly Food” label on the bag of oatmeal. Then I was looking at pictures of me just before I left for the DR on facebook and thought “huh, I look bigger in those photos” and then finally weighed myself for the first time in country the other day when trying to weigh Tanuki (she was 3 pounds at the time) and I realized that I have lost 15 pounds since being here, fifteen freaking pounds, I haven’t been this low since early college. I guess walking the 4 kilometers every day back and forth to my center really does do a lot for me, although I wish that instead I had gained weight in the form of oh you know any sort of discernible muscle mass so that the doñas would stop telling me that I’m going to die of being too thin or that they’re stronger than me.

So the other day I had my second x-ray in country, the first was when I had pneumonia and had a chest x-ray done and this time it’s because I’m an idiot and fell down during the post-Thanksgiving celebrations and hurt my shin pretty bad, sometimes it hurts to walk and there’s this weird bump and other weird things with it so I got a tibia x-ray for it to see if it’s just an inflammation of the tissue or bone trauma or an honest-to-goodness bone fracture, clearly not that bad since I can still walk on it. So the x-ray tech asked me to change into one of those gowns because I was wearing jeans and shoes at the time so as I’m changing back into my clothes I step out and there’s this nearly topless woman changing into a gown in front of me, I guess no one told the next tech that I was still in the bathroom changing, so I quietly moved behind her handed my gown to the new tech and slinked out of the x-ray room. Oh Dominican medicine practice, always keeping me on my toes, I never tire of you and your bizarreness.

Tanuki is doing swell, she’s getting big enough that she can climb on things easier and now has no problems harassing me at night while I’m sleeping. If she continues her trend of attempting to use my head and neck for a pillow I fear Peace Corps is going to find me suffocated underneath a rather large street dog that will probably be in the middle of eating me (still a street dog after all). She has this continual worm problem which nothing seems to be able to fix, it’s like she’s partially made of worms and she’s just pooping out her larvae which is sorta like the plot from Aliens 3 so if I’m found dead with a scar that looks like it was an alien chest burster, SHE’S THE ALIEN QUEEN AND REMEMBER SHE CAN RUN UP WALLS!

Other then that there’s nothing really going on in my site, my English classes are winding down and the Center basically closes for a month because of the holiday season. Le sigh. I’d say it’s a good time to go visit the beach but it’s so freaking cold now, I sleep underneath a sheet and inside a sleeping bag, and I just know that if I ever visit Oregon in the winter during my time here you’ll be able to recognize me as the person wearing seventeen sweaters and six pairs of pants with a portable space heater while everyone else is wandering around in shorts and sweating. I now consider 80 degrees to be rather cool, and anything less than 75 is sweater-worthy cold.

So a few days ago I was in Cabarete to go use the ATM and also to do a bit of Christmas shopping and realized that I was not being catcalled by the moto guys or the people who sell things on the beach or most other people which is strange because that’s what always happens when I go there right? Well then I realize that I’m in a JACKET and jeans and shoes and wearing a black tiguere (read: young person’s) shirt, and no other gringos around are even wearing jeans let alone a jacket. So basically I am Dominican now, or at least immune to touristy things should I choose, or maybe they can just tell that I’m cheap, vamos a ver.

Figured since I was in Cabarete I’d have a mini-America day, met a woman who sells jewelry and is a Japanophile and writes manga novels on the side, and a funny Canadian woman who sells these amazing iced coffees and bakes delicious things, I may or may not have spent my last few pesos on iced coffee and a cookie (well worth it). It’s weird that I can be so close to a place where most shops have SOMEONE who speaks English working at them and then I hear Russian or German or French on the street and I think that I must not be in the DR but then I see the street dogs and trash and YEP, still here, just in a zone of unbelievability where Spanish is not the common language and there’s power and water 24/7 and you can get Chinese food or Sushi or nachos or freshly baked french bread or rice noodles or miso yes even refrigerated bags of miso from the supermarket.

On the guagua there and back I sat beside these two folks one of whom was CLEARLY gay and the other whom was (I think) a transgender woman, which everyone in the guagua picked up on and sorta stared at her for a bit but no one said or did anything and I was like “WHAT IN GAY HELL IS GOING ON” and then the pair started looking on their camera at some sort of World AIDS Day celebration and I was thinking “COMO SE DICE ‘Where does your club meet’ EN ESPAÑOL?,” but alas the guagua is not the best place to initiate these conversations.

In a few days I’ll be 27 years old AH TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS OLD and officially that much closer to gay death, single at 30 years old, which I don’t actually believe but am compelled to say thank-you-very-much Queer as Folk. A fellow volunteer and I joked that we’re just going to end up old queers on the front porch of a gay old-folks home with our afghans, cats, and rocking chairs, being able to tell the weather with our arthritic joints or maybe we’ll be able to tell fashion trends like “oh my knee is acting up, you know what that means, velour is coming back into style” or “my shuffleboard elbow is inflamed, I guess chartreuse is the new black,” I think that would be an awesome power. Except most days I don’t think that I’m 27 because I hang out with Peace Corps volunteers who were still fetuses when I was learning to do double-integrals in calculus plus I look younger than I am even with the sun damage being part Japanese and all. I swear age 21-onward has just sort of blurred together, like if my post-21 life of awkward moments were made of cheese it’d be cheap imitation American melted together between two buttered pieces of bread. Mmmmmmmmmm, awkward moments sandwich nom nom nom nom.

Attended the annual “Encargados del Futuro” conference outside of Santiago a few days ago, this is the big youth Information Technology conference that Peace Corps folks organize for interested youth. It was a blast except that no one in my town wanted to go so I showed up sin jovenes just like when I showed up to my 3-month In Service Training without a project partner, oops my bad. The conference had lots of interesting sessions, and I even gave a charla (chitchat) with Jessica about teaching and learning to the youth, which was great except it was rushed and we didn’t have enough time to practice so it was rough just like my Spanish.

So the other day I did the calculation of what I could have potentially earned had I chosen to stick with chemical engineering instead of going to graduate school and doing Peace Corps and I think by the time I leave here I could have earned (presuming I was good enough to get a stable engineering job at average salary) something in excess of 300k over the 6.5 years since I will have finished my Chem Eng degree, instead I am for all intents and purposes penniless with student debt a dog to take care of and pretty much homeless when I’m done. “But I’ll speak Spanish semi-fluently!” I keep telling myself. It’s not something I ever really dwell on, my soul is a small price to pay for not being in a mindless engineering job, but it’s an interesting calculation no less. Apples to oranges, I say.

Speaking of being penniless I’m still taking offers of contributions to the “Keep Tanuki and Masa Alive and Not Underweight” Fund, or you could come down here and hang out with me. Only a little less than 18 months less here, Act Now Before It’s Too Late!

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