working the earth

Our new place has a humongous back (and side and front) yard ready and waiting to be transformed into paradise garden. we got this place because it was finally the compromise we could live with - amalio's huge backyard and me not living in a tin-roof hut. (the house is pretty nice, too, but the yard is the crowning glory).

the day after we moved, amalio already had our potted plants in the ground, watered and was running to the nursery to get more. i was, less happily, surrounded by a hundred boxes wondering when in the world i'd ever even make a dent in the unpacking.

in an attempt to actually contribute to the backyard, i bought a bag of soil and had the kids plant tomato and pepper seeds. i forgot that we have chickens. 

no tomatoes and no peppers, but the kids had fun. 

(amalio has since partitioned off a part of the yard for vegetable plants where chicken-chicken, henry and mickey can't get to them)

we also let susan spray paint. i'm sorry if she turns into a delinquent.

the yard is taking shape - it needs a lot of work still, but once it's "see-able" i'll post some before and after pictures here!

Hello, Chicken

people ask me fairly frequently what we eat in our house. it's more than common curiosity - it's the opportunity to confirm that the american diet consists of nothing more than pizza, mcdonalds and coca-cola. 

when i tell them we eat rice and beans almost every day, it's like i've killed their childhood dream. i assure them, however, that just because we don't eat pizza every night and my kids don't have every single happy meal toy ever made, doesn't mean that i actually cook.

during the week, i can't cook. the heaviest meal of the day here is the mid-day meal and i'm not in the house to prepare that. our babysitter takes care of it. she cooks much better than i do.

and by the weekend, i'm not in any kind of mood to cook. and when i teach on saturday mornings, forget about it. 

i refuse to frequent the american chains, but that doesn't mean i'm immune to some "fast food." our favorite place is ola pollo - walking distance from our house and super cheap. not really that fast, but quicker than me cooking.

they specialize in rotisserie chicken - you can get a whole bird with fried plantains and a bottle of soda for less than 10 dollars. 

on saturdays they pump these chickens out like nobodies business. and for good reason - DELICIOUS.

i'm always kind of reluctant to smash "nueva york dreams" - (your kids can go to college for free, free-housing is a dream, dominicans are treated with much more pride and dignity than haitian immigrants here, etc...) and even this one kind of kills me. i see their faces drop when i say no, i don't know the last time we ate mcdonalds. 

but at least i can cheer people up with out constant consumption of fast food .

Check Us Out. (pretty please?

if you follow this blog, you'll have noticed that 2012 has been a year of transitions and changes.

amalio completed his masters (in applied linguistics) - he actually graduates the 19th of this month. while i'm super proud of him, any grad-school wife will agree, i'm extremely happy we're past this.

i began teaching pre-natal classes and became more interested in women's health and just women's situation in general. the dominican republic has an intense rate of "feminicide" - women being killed by men - usually husbands or boyfriends, but often fathers. my heart was changed and i needed to do something to help.

and lastly, i was offered my dream job - working in a mission school that offers quality education to children who otherwise have little possibility to study. of our 92 students, 30 are undocumented - which means they wouldn't be able to study in a formal school.

i'm tired. really. but it's that good kind of tired of doing something that you love and really trying to make it work.

 our school, futuro lleno de espeanza, is located in cienfuegos, santiago. we have 90+ students from 3years to second grade. it's been a rocky start for sure, but we're working hard to make it work. you can check us out on facebook to see more about our foundation (in general) and our school (in particular).

and! poderosa mujer- powerful woman.
during the fall semester i worked with a wonderful woman named rebecca. she and her family are here in the dominican republic as representatives of their bahai'i faith (you can read more about that on her blog). together we came up with the idea to equip women with some skills, sell their handiwork and use the profits to a) pay the women and b) offer services of necessity to their communities. 

from here on, the pre-natal and community health classes will be under the name of poderosa mujer along with crafting workshops, literacy classes and more!

check us out on facebook. we have some "start up" jewelry in the states right now waiting to be purchased and shipped. 

monumental museum... and amely.

the tourism-factor is low in santiago. we've got a cultural museum... and a monument.
i'm always at a loss for what to do with visitors. there are some rivers to swim in and some of the scenery outside of the city is gorgeous, but the museum gets old. i've been there ten times since may. and the exhibits haven't changed. and it takes about 30 minutes to see all there is to see.

and the monument used to be fun,but now it's not. the craziness was taken away when the city government decided to spruce the place up and get rid of the riff-raff. the fun nights of merengue dancing in the streets are over, but don't fret! it's been replaced by a museum documenting the restoration of the republic. 

what's that? you ask. i have no idea. really. there are some two or three independence days and i get them confused. this one has something to do with haiti. or france. or spain.

the museum is filled with old-school dioramas and confusing explanations. the stairway to get to the top of the monument is worse than the spiral case in the statue of liberty.  but on the top floor, there are statue-replicas of carnival figures. each character of carnaval tells a cultural story - from the robalagallina woman with children hidden under her skirt to the lechones meant to scare evil away.

amely loves it. and since we don't do carnaval, this is a safe place for her to see her characters.

this woman is marchante or a market-woman. she strolls through the streets selling fruits and vegetables from the basket atop her head, flowers from her basket and beans from her apron. amely thinks that's too much work. 

the lechon wears a different mask in every region of the country. he carries a dried pigs bladder to beat people up with, and a rope whip to make a lot of noise. of course, he's amely's favorite.

the robalagallina is a man, dressed as a woman, with lots of little-ones hidden under the skirt. when they enter the colmados the children steal things - like hens (roba: steal, la gallina: hen). amely thinks it's funny.

in stitches....

let me just be completely honest from the start of this post.

i have never bought clothes for my childrens. i purchase very little of my own clothing.

that said. 

i am thankful to my mom and aunts and a plethora of other people who maintain us covered up. 

clothes here are just plain overpriced and under-quality. when samil was a baby, i stressed over it, got angry and then just gave up. i would got to "boutiques" and find just one year (carter's walmart brand of baby) clothes for astronomical prices - and i knew just how much they really cost. 

and then i don't wear small sizes- and anything over a size 12 is triple the price of normal.

if you can find anything over a size 8 to begin with. (which explains the sausage-roll phenomenon)

alas.

sometimes we needs clothes. or we need something fixed. or are just interested in how people make money here.

amalio had a suit made a few years ago for about 200 dollars - it is a gorgeous, tailored masterpiece. i had dresses made for amely and my niece. excellent.

like i mentioned - i don't buy my children's clothes. my mom took care of all of the children's school pants this year and they needed to be hemmed. being sewing-machine-less, i cried to amalio in an effort to avoid hand-stitching 12 pairs of pants.

why do you cry, wife? there is a tailor just three houses down!

this guy is amazing - he hemmed up 7 pairs of pants and tightened the waist of one of amely's skirts - for 200 pesos! that's under 6 dollars. he has a machine and all of the fixins' on his barred-in porch. 

i passed by the other day to see if he makes clothes. well, duh, of course he does. he's going to make me a dress based on the pattern of one i already have. amazing. without a pattern. astonishing.

he's got this sign parked in the doorway to his porch - there is no real sidewalk to speak of to get into his house - but he's proud of his work and tells me he'd like to move out of the house someday.

if you're in santiago and interested - he does great work. email me and i'll let you knw where he is

in the midst of death..

our school year began with a death. just days after our staff reconvened after summer vacations, the father of our dear teacher doris passed away. he was old and suffered from high blood pressure, but his death was unexpected and he left behind his wife of nearly fifty years. it was a hard time for all of us, and due to familiar concerns, dear doris resigned her position. what a blow.

on the first day of class, a mother approached me to see if i knew anything about fetal demise, and "is it normal what happened to my newborn?" i don't know, mama, i'm sorry. she had carried that baby for nine months in her womb and he lived for seven hours outside of her. 

the baby-school teacher's brother then passed away from diabetes-related illnesses and left a hole in his family. we traveled out to their campo and paid our respects. even after eight years, i'm still unsure what to do at this make-shift wakes, bodies laid out in living rooms for everyone to see and touch. 

death is such a natural process, yet it's so foreign, so unwanted. and while children often deal with lost lives a little bit easier than us adults, today my heart was broken by our sweet little 3 year olds understanding of death.

two brothers, juan and jose, recently lost their 15 month old brother. when they arrived to school - three weeks after our start date - their mother explained to me that neither really understood what had happened because the family hadn't actually talked about it. it was evident from the first day, both boys crying and needing to see each other. there was no verbalization, no words that told us that these brothers did, in fact, understand that baby brother wasn't coming home, but their actions showed us that their little hearts were filled with grief. 

two weeks later, and bigger brother has since calmed down. he can sit in his seat and pay attention and only occasionally asks to see his little brother. however.

i was making copies this morning, talking to our SPED teacher about her class for the day and in walks our baby-school teacher with little brother. "show the principal what you've made, sweet boy". "it's a dead guy."  

heart breaks. just this morning i had spoken to the grandmother about getting this child some more emotional support. 

"is this dead guy someone you know?" "yes, it's my chichi.*" 
"what happened to your chichi?" "he's in heaven with papa dios. he went to the hospital and never came home, but i still have my big brother, right, directora?"

breaks again.

"yes, and you know, he's not going anywhere, right? and he loves you very much." "i loved my chichi so much, directora."

"i know you did, buddy, and he knew it too." "can i go now?"

"yes, sweet child, go to class."

we cried.
then wiped our eyes and kept on. life keeps going. let's take time to nurture relationships and love each other. hug your kids a little tighter tonight. 

*chichi (chee-chee) is a term used for the youngest baby in a family. papa dios is the familiar term for "father god" and directora is my title - principal, most children and parents called school staff by their titles as a sign of respect.

call u-haul

this summer we moved. it's the second large move i've had here in the dominican republic - and hopefully the last for a long time. when we moved into our first apartment, we relocated in a mini-pick-up - all we had was a bed, a couch, some plastic bookshelves and our clothes. while i cleaned the new place, amalio and his brother ran around town buying a dining room table (hideous - but we still have it), a stove (since replaced), a refrigerator (in need of replacement), a dominican style washer (sitting outside collecting dust) and an iron (since replaced at least 4 times). 

by the time we moved into our second place, we had two babies and three years of life under our belts and needed something bigger than a pickup to move. luckily amalio's students and some other strapping young men were willing to move us for the promise of lunch. it's not easy to move from one third floor to the next.

this move, however, was easier. we were moving from a third floor to a house. on ground level. and i had purged a ton of unnecessaries from our lives not too long before - so we had less boxes of junk (still, the boys will point out, the same number or more of heavy, heavy books).

luckily we were able to practice the patience needed for a move in this country when my dear friends rebecca and josh moved to san francisco de macoris just days before our big move. somehow, i avoided their packing chaos and made it just in time to witness the most incompetent truck packing i've ever experienced. 

You can read more about this moving hilarity here

see that big piece of furniture going on the roof of that truck? well, the basic consensus amongst the movers was that the big, bulky furniture needed to go in the truck last - despite the fact that it isn't a big space taker - tons of things could have been nested into its open spaces. alas, it took a 1.5 hour drive to san fran and didn't kill anyone.

once it got there however... it didn't fit up the stairs to the new place - so it was cut apart, carried up the stairs and then put back together.

since all of that moving nonsense wasn't enough for us we decided to move into our house without our water connected and without the permission of the owner. i know this sounds sneaky, but we had signed our contract one month prior and were still waiting for this fool to get his act together. ridiculously, he gave amalio the keys to let the alarm guy in one day - we took advantage and called the strapping young men and amalio's students to help us move in the next day. we would have moved in that very very day except i had just helped rebecca move out and was pretty tired. besides, our cistern was empty and i refused to move in to a house with no water at all.

i paid this kid 1,000 pesos (about 25 dollars) to fill up our 2500 gallon water tank so we could survive until the water company resolved their problem.

the following day we were ready. all the boxes were packed (mostly) and the boys were ready to carry heavy things. one of amalio's ex-students had access to a flatbed, and since that would be cheaper than hiring a truck, we loaded things up

of course, it made perfect sense to start loading from the back to the front, right? hence the logical packing in the back and haphazard packing in the little bit of space left to them near the front. it took two trips, and each time 10 boys rode around on the back like kings.

we've acquired furniture over the years - we have way more than a bed and some shelves nowadays. not too long ago we got this beautiful tv cabinet from a coworker for a really great price. it took a lot of work to get it into the apartment. i even promised the guys who carried it that i wouldn't move for a long time. alas, two months later, we were trying to get the thing out again!

we've been settled in for about two months now - the house still feels like a wreck and the backyard is finally starting to take shape. it's a beautiful place, and a complete blessing that just fell into our laps unexpectedly. i'll be taking some pictures soon of the yard and the house - but of course, friends are always welcome to come see it for themselves!