I birthed another 13 people, including four adults. In other words, I helped them get their birth certificates, as they were previously unregistered as Dominican citizens. This is such satisfying work as the benefits to having their documentation are incalculable - they basically can't do anything without it. We have now declared 20 people to date, and have more paperwork in the works! Here are some "new" citizens to my community and a neighboring community further down the highway:
We've also continued with the "Servir y Jugar" (Serve and Play) program, and have had great success! Thank you very much to all who donated sporting equipment. The kids have carried out 15 community service activities to date, and through their service have "earned" lots of sports equipment! They completed 8 clean-ups of the beach, which we are following up with a small research project so that they will learn how the trash they are picking up harms the environment.
Most recently, I came up with the ingenious idea of having the kids complete their community service hours by raising money for the Sala de Tarea (after school program). This way, we are helping two of my projects at the same time - the Sala de Tarea raises funding, and the Serve and Play group earns their community service hours! Oh, I'm good. One day was spent going door to door, asking for one peso from every house. Many people gave more - we raised over $1,000 pesos in one easy day! (Half of a teacher's monthly salary.) We followed it up by making more "Mistolin" (the household cleaning product), which was our summer fundraising activity for the Sala de Tarea. I still had left-over ingredients from before, so I put the kids to work. We made and sold the product in two working days, and raised another $1,500! Here are some photos of making the Mistolin, and handing the money over to the Sala de Tarea:
The first part of October was spent getting my editing shoes back on and preparing the next issue of the Gringo Grita, Peace Corps DRs official magazine. Its a lot of hard work, with lots of 12-hour days in the tiny PC library, but a lot of fun as well. In the end, we turned out a great issue with lots of fun articles. Its a funny, sarcastic, inspiring magazine with specific American-Volunteer-in-the-DR humor, and is a great outlet for the Volunteers. To the right is my staff photo for the last issue, some of the guys went crazy with Photoshop...
Four days later came...my trip home! I can't say enough about it. Seeing all of my family and friends, enyoying great food and beautiful New England autumn weather, hanging out at cafe's, viewing peak foliage, celebrating Mom's 50th birthday, experiencing the Red Sox win the World Series...it couldn't have been better! 
On top of all that, I saw IN CONCERT the Dominican Republic's FAVORITE (modern) Bachata group, AVENTURA (yes, in Massachusetts!):
Arriving back here in November, I arrived into the middle of Tropical Storm Noel, which left lots of destruction in its path. I was in the capital for five more days until I could return to my site. I spent the rest of November in and out of the capital and my site, trying to rent and get settled into a new house before heading to Santo Domingo for another Peace Corps-related event. We had a big Thanksgiving celebration, which was a ton of fun, at a country club with sports, games, and lots of fun activities. I won a Merengue contest! Our youth training group also performed a choreographed dance routine for the second consecutive year with our dance troup called "Sparkle Motion." Here's the video:
(...to be posted later...)
We then had the annual All-Volunteer Conference. As soon as December arrived I was out again for my 1-year In-service training. Just as I got back and was getting my new house ready for my family's visit in December, another Tropical Storm hit and we were ordered out of our sites again and to a "safety" checkpoint. Its been hard being away for so long, but come January I'll really get back to work again, I promise!
That's right, I said another Tropical Storm. Olga, they called her. Hurricane seasone supposedly ended November 30th, but here we are in the middle of December with more natural disasters. Don't try to tell me that global warming isn't real!!!!! I was "consolidated" with other Volunteers in the north to the big city of Santiago, which saw lots of flooding and damage. Here are some pictures:
Conveniently, my family is arriving into Santiago tomorrow for their 10-day Christmas visit! I'll head to the airport to meet them tomorrow then we'll spend a week in a hotel on the north coast before heading to my site for four more days and Christmas. It will be an exciting holiday for all of us!
Sorry for the overly-general description of events. I hope everyone has a great holiday season!
Joan
