Semana Santa

Well it's Holy Week all around the world and in most places it is a time of austerity and reflection. But not in the DR. This is the one week (well, one of the weeks) of the year where everyone goes wild, gets drunk, and goes to the beach. I'm spending it shut up in my house cleaning and working on the Somos Mujeres manual which is almost done. I'm terrified of getting hit by a drunk person on a motorcycle and since everyone is wasted by about noon, I'm making sure to get everything done in the morning and then watching Criminal Minds in the afternoon.

My friend Paola came up today and we dyed eggs, but since this was a last minute decision we had to use all natural dyes. We used onion skins, red cabbage, dill seeds, mustard powder, and beets. I also had a little neon pink food coloring so we had that so spice up the earth tones. They didn't turn out half bad.

(Family pic!)

I also did a little decorating to make my new couch somewhat less of an eyesore. The fans are the extras from the wedding and even though I deviated from my typical decor of 70 year old cat lady the room is just a whole lot brighter.

El Dengue

Two weeks ago I made the plan to be in Santo Domingo to help my good friend Kirsten move into her new apartment. My plan was to go on Monday and come back on either Thursday or Friday. On Sunday night Kelvin and I tried out a new pizza restaurant in Samana that was delish, but I could hardly enjoy it because my back hurt so bad. I almost couldn't stand to sit in the chair. Weird huh? I told Kelvin, "It feels like that time when I had dengue." Well I just shrugged it off, went to bed, and traveled to Santo Domingo the next day to help Kirsten.

Monday i felt so tired and achy but was still running around with Kir doing errands; by that night I was flat on my back with a fever of 102.5 under a comforter in Santo Domingo's balmy 90 degree weather. It was the "gue" and all the lovelies that go with it (fever, severe headache, vomiting, abdominal cramps, chills, pain). Now, I have no idea what I had before, but it certainly wasn't dengue. They call it the breakbone fever because you feel like all of your bones are breaking. Thurday night my fever finally broke and on Friday morning I woke up with this lovely rash that has now spread to all parts of my body. 

Rash-smash right? WRONG! It itches so bad I want to jump out of my skin. The rash is said to last about five days but shouldn't itch the whole time. Here's hoping! The WHO estimates that there are between 50-100 million dengue infections annually worldwide, and that a vaccine may be available as early as 2015. That's not soon enough for me or my fellow volunteers, many of whom have had dengue in the past 6 months. I hadn't heard of any cases of dengue here in Samana, but then I got it, and a woman from my old town of Arroyo Barril was taken to the hospital yesterday with the same symptoms. I'm so grateful that none of my family or friends got it while they were here because I honestly wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy.

On the up side, while I was running around Santo Domingo with Kirsten I finally bought a couch and my wonderful husband delivered it to the house while I was convalescing. Now I just have to make a slip cover for it when I'm feeling better.

Marriage Certificate FINALLY

We've been married for almost a month and after numerous phone calls, visits to the courthouse, begging, and crying, We finally got a legal copy of our marriage certificate. I had to call in the guns (i.e. Donina) to make a few phone calls and pay some shady guy a bribe of $50 but it was all worth it in the end. Now we're jumping off into the great unknown of visa applications. Woo hoo!!

This is us at the courthouse the morning of the wedding. I was sweating by butt off in that ugly sweater but here they don't let you in the courthouse unless you have sleeves so I had to borrow this from a lady outside so we could get married.

Vainas

Over two years ago I unsuccessfully started a blog in the hopes that my beloved family and friends could keep in touch with me while I left on my grand Peace Corps adventure. The hope was that I would be able to post on the blog and not have to personally send everyone e-mail updates about that various vainas in my life. The reality is that I posted 4 times and never e-mailed anyone. So that plan failed...

Sometimes things get in the way; things like, womens groups, campo gossip, rice and beans, playing with my dog, falling in love, killing tarantulas, going to the beach, community meetings, making friends, traveling, fighting with a motorcycle taxi over the price (ok, that just happened today. Too soon), etc. These are the vainas (things) of everyday life here that stop me from posting on my blog, but I'm willing to try again.

The name of the blog comes from one of my favorite all-purpose words in Dominicano (let's face it there's nothing Spanish about it), vaina. Basically the word means "thing," but is so versatile that it can actually be the only noun in an entire sentence. Example: Hand me that vaina, no the other vaina, the one that's on top of the vaina that you use to cut vainas. Another clever use is in a phrase such as "Que vaina mi vida;" Very similar to the English phrase FML (if you know, you know).

I want to use this to keep everyone informed about what and how Kelvin, Lula, Baby and I are doing. I know that inquiring minds want to know. So in summary, I will continue not e-mailing anyone, but hopefully my new turned-over leaf and new highspeed internet will motivate me to post here.

Here's a picture from Gramma Ginny in the Colonial Zone in Santo Domingo a few days before the wedding.