Tanuki being rude.

Let’s just say that this post is a collection of photos from the last few months, since I pretty much abandoned Project 365 a while back. I’m going to get back to posting more frequently. Oh, and this is a photo of my dog, who, as you can clearly see, enjoys being lifted high into the air.

The pets are so cute.

And here is Max and Tanuki, sleeping.

The Hibiscus trees outside my yard.

Pink and red Hibiscus bushes/trees outside. They’re about 8 feet tall now and always blooming.

View from a resort we snuck into in Samana.

Chicken and the cat

New York, New York! Er... I mean, Santo Domingo! Santo Domingo!

The very nice and new Metro system in Santo Domingo.

Fifa (big dog), Max (little cat), random pig, and Mama (chicken, on the right)

The animals (minus my dog, Tanuki) in the backyard. They all get along rather well.

A GIGANTIC update of some things that have happened to me in the last few months. Now with internet more available at my site, hopefully I’ll be able to post more often!

~~~~~

Everything’s free in America!
…for a small fee in America!

Visited the states for the first time in a little over a year and four months. A number of people in my cohort went back in December for family things, but I was like GO HOME WHEN IT’S EVEN COLDER AND RAINIER THAN USUAL? NO WAY. So instead I decided to go back during July/August for 3 weeks, the hottest time of the year in the states.

We land in Miami after our early flight and have to go through customs and immigration. On my customs form I list that I’m a U.S. citizen with residence in the Dominican Republic, and the customs guy looks at me and goes “What the fuck? You’re a resident of the Dominican Republic?” and I go “Yeah, I’m doing Peace Corps there?” in sort of a question voice because WHY IS THIS A BIG DEAL THAT I PUT IT DOWN?! Why would I lie about that? “Oh yes, I was just in the DR to hang out on the beach and drink out of coconuts but I thought it’d be fun to list my place of residence as the DR.” He says “OK, go ahead” and so I pass through. Then we’re in the Miami airport for a few hours waiting for a flight to Dallas and then to Portland so of course we try and find some lunch. We settle on Wendy’s, and I stare intently at something called “The Baconator” which appeals to my inner sense of gluttony. Anything that roughly works out to mean “The Baconer” seems like a heaping pile of DELICIOUS to me, so I order it. It’s basically meat, cheese, bacon, sauce. No veggies. Welcome back to America, make sure to undue your belt at least a notch.

For the record, it was DELICIOUS.

Then we fly to Dallas, and since we have a few hour layover there we grab some more food. This time I get a Taco Bell XXL Grilled Stufft Burrito (notice the delicious spelling of “Stuffed”). It is also delicious and too much but I love it.

Waiting for the flight to Portland was amusing because as time wore on more and more white people showed up who looked like they were from Portland – families looking pale and wearing shorts reading books, people on iPhones, cute hipsters, lesbians with bad haircuts… basically the Portland that I know and love and missed so much. Then we get on the flight and I realize that I AM THE BROWNEST PERSON ON THE PLANE. Where are all the darker-skinned people?! (To note: I know where they are. Not in Oregon, thanks to sundown laws and the presence of the KKK up until the 50′s).

Ah Oregon in summer! We landed in Portland it was cloudy, slightly rainy, and cold. And by “cold” I mean 60 degrees, which in Dominican translates as “COLDER THAN MY FRIDGE CAN GET AND ALMOST AS COLD AS A BEER.” It was loveellyyyy to be under many layers of comforters and sheets at night and not worry that I was about to give myself HEAT STROKE. Also the lack of mosquitos was a nice change as I am used to slapping my arms and legs frequently and also smelling and tasting bug spray all day long, as the mosquitos seem to love my blood for some reason, probably because I look like I would just have the MOST FUN being infected by Dengue, like “Oh Masa’s just loving the bone aches! Look at him dance!” sort of a party.

Things that surprised me about America:
- Everyone’s house looked like a resort hotel
- …except for my former roommates house in Corvallis, which looked like a workshop (which it is)
- Other names for the west coast: “The Cold Coast,” “The Pretty Coast,” “The Green Northwest,” “Land of Hipsters and Wine,” “Ironyland”
- California is mainly a desert – which I guess I knew, but forget since I’ve never really stayed in the valley until this trip
- America has everything. Seriously. Everything. And lots of it.
- EVERYTHING (generally) WORKS

So in summation I was cold for pretty much the entire trip, was amazed at how pretty and trash-free everything was, ate too much, drank too much, and was busy seeing people and hanging out pretty much non-stop.

Getting back was fun and also depressing because Aidan and I flew out of SFO the last night and so hung out in downtown San Francisco. It was like some sort of alternate reality where there was fog, it was cold (so cold!), and everyone was gay or gay friendly. Then in the morning we had to hop onto a flight and come back to muggy hot Santo Domingo, where the gayest thing you can find are tiny gay clubs and a gay park at night. Sigh. But it’s good to be back and see my Peace Corps people, and my dog, and my town.

ALSO, when did those gigantic flatscreen TV’s become the standard that everyone has? Every house I walked into seemed to have a very similar style of gigantic display. That was definitely not the way I remembered it.

~~~~~

I basically live on a farm with a dog, a cat, three+ chickens (depending on if other chickens stop by) as well as the pigs that root through the backyard on the search for this disgusting-smelling fruit called NONI (Dominican for “WHO NEEDS A SENSE OF SMELL?”). Except for the skittish pigs ALL the animals have become adept at sneaking into the house and catching me unawares, the other day I heard birds chirping near my window but then realized it was just CHICKENS STUCK IN MY MOSQUITO NET so I had to extricate them and chase them around and out of the house with a broom. I’ve taken to putting a bell on my little dog because she’s some sort of dog ninja who just WHOOSH appears out of nowhere and the next thing you see is everything but her head sticking out of the trash can and then I’m yelling “HEY! STOP THAT! GET OUT! GET OUT GET OUT!” and shooing my dog out the back. She’s also small enough that she can get through the 3″ space between the iron bars by turning her hips SIDEWAYS like some sort of cockroach or mouse and then she’s off being a street dog somewhere. I’ve received reports that she’s followed my project partner back to her house and hung out there for a while, went over to another Peace Corps volunteers house for a day or two, and REGULARLY SHOWS UP AT A NEIGHBORS HOUSE FOR LUNCH cause she can. Ay yi yi, my dog is basically a street rat with long legs and a pretty collar that has a bell.

One day in the morning she went out and we didn’t see her for a few hours, not to worry, I thought, I’ll probably just see her in the main street on my way to work. Sure enough there she is walking the opposite direction I am, back toward the house, and she sees me and runs toward me. I guess she makes it to the other side of town, stopping to say hi to everyone on her way. I think more people know who Tanuki is than they know who I am, especially because they get me mixed up with the Cuban American volunteer in town, and the Mexican American volunteer who lives in the hills around our town. I am “generally brown” anywhere I go!

Oh oh, the cat only eats dog food, the chickens prefer dog food to chicken feed, and the dog prefers a mixture of chicken feed and used diapers (hence her nickname: DIAPER LIPS). Figuring out who’s food goes where is a nightmare, I basically fill up the big dog dish several times a day and occasionally add chicken feed and old food because all the animals gather around it like some of Serengeti watering hole. My dog is clearly a vulture – if it’s rotting, she’ll eat it!

On the plus side I guess this means she’s pretty independent and self-sufficient which I guess is all we can hope for out of our kids right? MOM – I SYMPATHIZE NOW!

The cat is tiny and basically sleeps all the time which is great because that means he’s pretty independent but TERRIBLE because it means he is an incredibly heavy sleeper. Add to this the fact that he’s also skinny and barely breathes when he’s sleeping and you have these two situations happen:

1) Me and another Peace Corps volunteer have enjoyed ourselves a few beers at the end of a long hot week, and the power’s out, and it’s late, and bedtime is approaching. I’m in the kitchen when I hear a sheepish “Masa…. Masa, I think Max (the cat) has died…” I go in to investigate with my flashlight and he’s upside down and his paws look like they’re frozen mid-run. He’s not moving. I poke him. Nothing. He feels stiff. “Oh my GOD! I think he’s dead!” I say, and back away. We’re both shocked. We wait and he still doesn’t move at all. Then I decide to do another test: I shake the chair and clap next to his face. He wakes up, stretches, and looks at me like “WHY DID YOU INTERRUPT MY NAP!?!”

2) Again with a Peace Corps volunteer, I’m in the kitchen and Max is on a pile of clothes. “Masa… I think the cat’s dead… again.” I go “AGAIN? REALLY?” and go to investigate. Same dead-looking pose, no movement, although the lights are on this time. I poke him… nothing. I sort of shove him. Nothing. Looks like he’s kicked the bucket this time – AND ON SOME CLOTHES, NO LESS. Then I get down low and start clapping wildly and stomping my feet. AGAIN, he wakes up, stretches, and looks at me like I’m being rude. Dead cat crisis: averted.

He’s basically part possum.

~~~~~

THE ODYSSEY OF GETTING MY KINDLE! (DUN DUN DUN!)

A while back I made a financial calculation between getting a 3G internet card down here using one of the cell providers in town or getting a Kindle with free 3G internet access shipped from the U.S. Well I did the calculation and the Kindle was only a smidge more expensive than the internet card (over the course of the next year or so I’m here), but I would be able to keep it after my service so being a book lover and technology enthusiast (read: techwhore), I OF COURSE opted for the Kindle. Aidan received one here in country from Amazon.com with no problem, so I figured WHAT THE HELL it’ll probably get here fine, right?

OH BIG WRONG. It arrived in country really fast (I think 3 days), but then was held up in customs because you know apparently any package with a declared value over $200 means OF COURSE you should pay an import duty equivalent to something like 50% of the cost, which OF COURSE is automatically added to your shipping costs from good ol’ DHL Shipping. My package was $203 because I had it shipped with a cover for the Kindle. A COVER. I call and oh look DHL has an English option on the phone which is great because I don’t speak CUSTOMS or GOVERNMENTESE so I beeeeeep I press that one and of course the person answering says “Gracias por su llamada, coma le ayudo hoy?” and I’m like WELL HERE GOES NOTHING. After navigating for several minutes in Spanish about what exactly I was supposed to do to get my stuff out of customs I hang up thinking that everything was going to be okay, they would simply ship it to the office, where the front desk person would pay the customs cost and I would pay them when I picked it up.

WRONG WRONG WRONG.

I get a call a week or two later reminding me to pay things, and I’m like “BUT YOU SAID YOU’D TAKE CARE OF IT?” and they just go on and on repeating the same thing whenever I ask a question about it, which is so frustrating. Eventually we finish and I restate that I’d like them to send my package to my office and figure that’s the end of it.

WRONG.

I get an email shortly afterward and it turns out I have to somehow get them the money before they’ll even consider moving my stuff out of customs, which is a chore because the warehouse is at the airport. AT. THE. AIRPORT. In Santo Domingo, which is 7+ hours from my site.

SIGH.

So, I’m finally in the capital and decide to spend an extra day just to go to the airport and figure out 1) where on Earth my package is, and 2) how the hell I can get it out of customs purgatory. I get to the airport and then wander over to the customs building, and am immediately accosted by several Dominicans who offer to “help me through the process for a small fee” which is Dominican for “WE ADVOCATE TO KEEP THIS PROCESS DIFFICULT SO YOU’LL REGRET NOT USING US TO HELP YOU.” I, of course, decline their services, thinking to myself, “how hard can it be? It’s just customs,” which I’m sure are famous last words of people who’ve tried to retrieve their packages and years later we find their skeletons somewhere in the building since they died of WAITING and MENTAL ANGUISH.

Get up to the customs window and well, customs might have my kindle, but DHL actually has all the duty papers, so now I have to go through a protected customs area to get the papers from them and then come back. SIGH. So I wander through the warehouses and find DHL. I get the papers from them, and they look at me like I’m insane for even being there – like, no gringo should ever try and do this – where the hell is your Dominican helper? But being a naive and ruthless American, I persevere. I go BACK to customs and pay the import fees, and then come back to the DHL warehouse. Apparently you can’t do this online, I had to physically transfer papers between customs and DHL, and the file system at customs was insane – TWO PEOPLE in a small room rummaging through folders with numbers on them, looking for your customs receipt. It takes 10 minutes to find my file.

The absolute hilarity of being sent to work in a country to help teach IT skills to it’s people, when the government customs office has no electronic way to file documents that are all printed up on computers anyway, almost sends me into a burst of giggles right on the spot, as the two employees rifle through folders upon folders. It was only my growing sense of ABSOLUTE DREAD that held my laughter at bay.

I finally get back to DHL with my receipts and paperwork to prove that I’ve paid my customs duty. He says to take the papers to the back warehouse and let them know that I’m waiting for my package. I do, and they say they don’t have it at the moment – customs has to release it. Okay, well, I guess I’ll just… sit… over here. An hour later, nothing has happened. At this point I’ve been at customs/DHL for 3 HOURS basically shuffling paper across a parking lot and making sure to make a spectacle of myself as the disgustingly sweaty non-Dominican who looks too young to be involved with customs work. I continue waiting. It’s approaching 5pm – quitting time. So I go back to the front office and ask them why I still don’t have my package. They say that customs STILL hasn’t released it, so they don’t have it. And that they’re about to coos up – “what are you still doing here?”

I take a deep breath and SIGH – one of those DMV/Post Office-type sighs – and say okay, well then it WILL be shipped to my office tomorrow, right? Right, he nervously says after checking the address on the paperwork.

WRONG.

It’s not at the office the next day. I come back almost a week later and discover that they’ve decided to ship it to the US Embassy down the street. Why, I don’t know. To retrieve my package now involves soliciting the help of one of the Peace Corps drivers, but only one of the two of them, because only one has the magical badge that allows him access to the mailroom at the Embassy.

It was at this exact moment that I began to feel like I was trapped in some sort of grotesque Harry Potter story, whereby I have to find the hidden key to open the magical door and defeat evil before I can retrieve the sacred artifact. And of course the driver is off doing something for at least another day, so I still can’t retrieve it. At this point it has been a MONTH since the Kindle arrived in country – A MONTH – and finally – finally finally finally finally! – it arrives. I almost cried and kissed the ground and prayed to God/the gods/kami-sama for fulfilling my dreams after my adventure.

Thank you, DHL Worldwide Shipping, and especially your Dominican Republic branch, for really teaching me an important lesson about international shipping: DON’T DO IT. JUST DON’T.

Yes, this is where I live.

Well. So this is a photo of where I live now. Sort of. I live in a place called Los Rios, “The Rivers,” so it’s a little bit different than what is pictured here. We have canals everywhere, lots of fruit trees, and water that appears to be running 24/7 now. But this is pretty much what it looks like everywhere else around the lake, Lago Enriquillo, which is a giant saltwater lake, the lowest point on the island (it’s below 129 below sea level) and the lowest in the Caribbean. Neat, huh? And it’s now where I call home.

More to come. I love it down here though, even if it does feel about 5 inches from hell most days.

Yes, a site change. I asked to change sites when I realized that the work was not materializing in my site, and that there probably wouldn’t be any work materializing anytime soon. So I requested a change, and at the same time I was trying to figure out where I could move to my good friend Sarah mentioned how her community was looking for an ICT/Edu volunteer to work in a few neglected computer labs. And that a volunteer looking for a site change might be best.

Sounds like a miracle, right? Except (thank you John Waters) I know that only ultra-suede is a miracle; this was merely good timing.

I spent some time down there toward the end of January and met people. An amazing community, very friendly, very excited for the possibility of me working there, very interested in community development. I even started poking around the lab and repairing computers as I could. Things seemed to be lining up nicely. At one point we go up into the loma and I can see the entire Lago Enriquillo and even into Haiti, because we are so close and so high up.

Then I was robbed and had all my stuff stolen (at knifepoint? spoonpoint? I still don’t know) while I was waiting for a bus in the morning. Well, most of my stuff. Camera, clothes, shoes, etc. Dealing with that was a chore, but luckily I have amazing friends who are visiting and have collected things to replace some of the stuff I lost.

Mikey is here now, I am writing this on the laptop that he gave me. Which is beyond awesome. So now I have a laptop. So now I can write. So now I can watch a movie occasionally. And do computer work. While the last two months have been refreshingly computer-and-internet free (for the most part), I think it’s time for me to hunker down and get back to doing productive computer things.

Okay, that’s enough for now. Have to ease myself back into computer madness. Oh, but a goal list for the next few months!

1) Quit smoking (yeah, I can hear everyone back home laughing)
2) Start yoga with Sarah at my site, and start running again, so that I can…
3) Run the Lowenbrau half-marathon in June
4) Get the computer center that is my primary project up and running
5) Start giving basic computer classes
6) Help the youth leaders with a conversational English class
7) Finish my community diagnostic at my new site so I have an idea of what other projects are available
Explore the beauty of the southern parts of this island

That should be good for now. When I find a camera I will snap some pics.

1) I’ve almost been here for an entire year – whoa.
2) I’m in the process of requesting a site change.
3) Tanuki is doing great, I just wish she would eat her dog food instead of her preferred food: anything she finds on the street and/or chicken bones.
4) A friend of mine is sending me his old macbook, so I have something to use.
5) THAT IS SO AWESOME!
6) In the last two months I have learned a ton about my own priorities, the things I value, the people I love, and what I need to be happy.

That’s probably good enough for now. Hopefully the pictures and posts will return soon. Miss y’all a lot – I only have a little less than 16 months left, so come visit!

So there’s that. Not exactly a good situation for me to be in, since I’m theoretically supposed be an IT volunteer, and a lot of my tools were on that computer and I’m not sure if they were backed up, but… there it is. And I’m too broke to send myself a netbook or anything like that. So if you happen to have an older laptop lying around that you’re not using, let me know and I could cover shipping if you wanted to part with it.

The part I like the least about all this, is I lost a bunch of Tanuki puppy photos.

I got an email from wordpress that was like “Your Year in Blogging!” and had all sorts of neat things about my blog like how I’ve had enough passenger traffic to fit 24 jumbo jets of people, except that I know it is really only the same 20 people reading this over and over so it’d really be just a Lear Jet or a smaller jet, but it’d be a fun party with y’all nonetheless. And that I had 155 posts in a year, roughly 5 a week, which I guess is a lot, hah, and apparently I have posted many photos. Who knew!

So yeah, the blog is sort of in suspension mode until I get my stuff resolved. Love y’all and miss y’all, remember there is only 17 months left to visit me! Oh and I already have my first visitor lined up, in March! Yay!

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!

Carly and Chloe, givin FACE: 01/12/2010

So here I am in Pantoja again for language training, which is AWESOME because unlike last time I was here I can actually hold a conversation with people and make jokes and like the food and talk and OH RIGHT not make the same absolutely ridiculous Spanish mistakes like basically asking if my host neighbor had a hole, like last time.

And this time they have an inversor which means that I can plug in my computer and phone and not worry about it dying and tambien they have SINKS now which makes me giggle… WITH JOY. What a difference half a year makes, no?

Language training is going great in that I’m learning more things like subjunctive and imperative and imperfect and preterit and future! Which is great because while English has 6 tenses (past, present, future, and the perfect tenses of those) Spanish has 14! 14! AHHH!

More on this later.

It's a beautiful day in Pantoja!: 30/11/2010

Back in Pantoja for language training! This time they have an inversor!

Lots of Peace Corps people!: 24/11/2010 - 29/11/2010

So I’ve been bad about taking photos lately so I’m shoving a bunch of Thanksgiving ones into this one and pretending that it counts for 5 days. Because you know. Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving friends!: 24/11/2010 - 29/11/2010

FRIENDDDSSS!!

More friends! And Arya.: 24/11/2010 - 29/11/2010

MORE FRIENDDDSSSS!!!

More friends! And Joe: 24/11/2010 - 29/11/2010

SO MANY FRIENDDSSS!

Here's your photo, Cassidy: 24/11/2010 - 29/11/2010

And here is Cassidy and a friend. He wanted me to take this photo.