Los animales de la finca: Sally

I've liked talking about the origins of the dog's names, and Sally's is nice and simple. When Sally was abandoned as a tiny puppy, Peter took him in at the time when a group from LaSalle was here, so LaSalle --> Sally. Nice and simple, and I think very fitting. I first met Sally in March when she was just barely out of the woods and everyone was sure she would survive and grow out of the tiny malnourished dog that Peter found. Coming back almost five months later, she is a completely different dog, at least in appearance. I say this because she still hasn't realized that she's no longer a tiny puppy. She is huge now! And by the looks of her humongous paws, isn't even close to done growing yet. Just like Rica, she sleeps all day to save up energy so she can protect us by barking all night at the scary cows that wonder on to the property. Sally is the only dog on the property who knows any commands (although TK and I have been working on it). She can sit, lay down, and da me cinco (high five). What should she learn next? I'm thinking stay and come in tandem. She's just now learning how to jump up on stuff like the couch (usually she can only get her front paws up there though). She loves belly rubs, and it's really easy to get her leg a kickin' in that way dogs do when you rub their belly (which is great). And of course, I love Sally, just like the other pups.

Los animales de la finca: TK

It's not a great picture of him, but it's the description that matters, right?

TK, or if you want to be formal, Teddy Keebler Davis Dunne. I have heard the origin of his name a couple times, but I'm not entirely sure I know it, so sorry if I'm wrong here. On the last day of a group's time here, we take them to basically the only tourist attraction around Luperon, the waterfalls. The waterfalls are a guided tour up and down cascades, so it's a business, and at this business, they have a dog. Now I have never met this particular dog, but I have heard it is one of the best you'll ever meet. Because of this, Paul, one of our crew advisors, wanted to adopt this dog and name him Keebler (I think, it could have been Teddy, but I think Keebler). The waterfall dog didn't work out, but shortly after the failed adoption, Mary, another one of our fantastic crew advisors, was in Luperon and saw that one of the dogs there had very recently birthed a litter of puppies. She brought this news (and perhaps a picture) back to Paul, who decided he absolutely needed one of these puppies. Mary already had the name Teddy picked out, so as a compromise, they decided to combine the names Teddy and Keebler into TK. Phew, that was a lot (and it's probably not really accurate). Now, more about TK. He is about six weeks old, so he's still a tiny puppy. I make a conscience effort as often as possible to pick him up and squeeze him till his stuffing almost comes out (haha get it, cause teddy), cause I know that in like three months he'll be huge and have the ability to bite my face off if he so chooses. Every morning when Mary goes to feed him, he jumps around, whimpers, and barks as if, as Peter says, he had never eaten before. It's fairly ridiculous, but also fairly cute because he's, as I mentioned before, a tiny puppy. Too add on to the cuteness, when he's wolfing down his food, and Victoria tries to swipe a bite, TK will growl at her, but he won't even take a second to stop eating, so he makes this hilarious muffled growling sound to keep her away while still eating as fast as a puppy possibly can. He's still too small and afraid to jump off of the couch, but we make him get down himself anyway, and after about a minute of deep contemplation, he takes the leap, and he's even starting to land on his feet now.
       Ok, onto the controversial part, TK's intelligence. I don't want to say that he's dumb, because he is a tiny puppy, but I think this is a good anecdote to illustrate his capacity for learning:
       All of the dogs here, including the cat even, love to fight each other. Basically whenever they're awake, they're fighting. The usual match ups include Rica vs. Sally (to be featured later), TK vs Victoria (the kitty, also to be pictured later), and TK vs. Susie (who will have a cameo on here as well), all fair match ups in my opinion. Now there is one dog that hangs around here who technically belongs to no one, but she follows around Melania, the cook, who comes here everyday, and as a result, so does Lassie. Lassie is the biggest dog out of the ones on the property (excluding Rex, but he spends all day tied to a tree), and while all of the other dogs love to fight playfully, Lassie does NOT. If a barking dog gets anywhere near Lassie, she straight snaps in like one second. If I were a dog, especially a tiny puppy, I would take special notice of this and make sure to avoid Lassie at all costs. TK (pause for effect), does not do this. He will go right up to Lassie, bark in her face, and as always, Lassie will snap send him running and barking and falling all over himself. One time, about a week ago, Lassie had had enough of TK's lively puppy bullshit, and bit TK right on the muzzle, hard enough to draw a good amount of blood. Now you figure that would be the last straw, and TK would finally learn his lesson and avoid Lassie, or at the very least stop barking in her face, but that is not what TK did. Later that very same day that Lassie bit TK hard enough to draw blood, I personally witnessed TK barking in Lassie's face once again. Now I will leave you, the reader, to judge this dogs intelligence.
       Ok, sorry for the lengthy post, but it's coming to a close, I promise. Despite the minor annoyances TK does cause, he is a good little pup, and I love him too. He sleeps soundly with Mary in her hammock, has the appetite of a dog ten times his size (which I respect immensely), and certainly knows how to work a room. All in all, I firmly believe that TK will grow up to become an incredible addition to do the property, and to the Village Mountain Mission.

Los animales de la finca: Rica

Can you tell I have a piece of human food in my hand that she really wants? I mean, just look at those eyes, and you can't even see her tail it's wagging so fast. This is Rica. She is one of four dogs that live with us here on the property. She is about 1.5 years old, making her the second oldest dog. She was originally named chocolaté, for obvious reasons, but it was decided that was too long a name so she was renamed after a chocolate drink called Rica something or other. As a puppy she was abused a lot before we rescued her and brought her to the property, so there are a bunch of weird little things about her that I think you would really have to meet her to fully understand, but I'll try. She basically never relaxes, even when she sleeps she still looks tense. Most of the time when you give a dog human food they immediately devour it as if it was the first time they had ever eaten (at least this is what happens in my experience), but about half the time you give Rica human food she calmly takes it in her mouth, digs a little hole somewhere she'll presumably remember, and buries it! The first time I saw her do it I thought it was the most hilarious thing. Despite all her weird little habits, I love Rica. She's the only dog that will sit on my lap or let me hold her pet them for more than like two seconds, AND JUST LOOK AT THOSE GINORMOUS EARS?!? How can you not love her? I also think she is the smartest of the dogs, which may not be fair to say because Sally is only five months old and TK is only like a month old, but I don't think they're going to get much smarter. Some of Rica's interests are sleeping all day cause it's so freakin hot, play fighting with Sally, and barking at nothing all night long (which I've finally gotten used to to the point where I just sleep right through it). Rica is a fantastic dog despite her rough upbringing, and you would be lucky to have one like her as a companion.

A typical Dominican day

Dominoes

Pictured is Melania (our cook), to the right of her, Alexis (he helps build), and Jaime (another staff member)

I don't know about you, but until recently, the only fashion in which I used dominoes was painstakingly lining them up with a shaky hand, for the fleeting satisfaction of watching them fall over one by one. If I had grown up in this country, that would be a completely different story. Here, people play dominoes like my family and I (and lots of families like mine) play card games in the states. There is clearly a significant amount of strategy to playing dominoes from watching and playing, but I haven't figured it out yet, which I attribute to the fact that I just started playing, and no one will teach me the rules (I think primarily cause when you play with Dominicans, they assume you know the rules already). Knowing all the rules or not (which seem to be different every time I play) it's a very fun game, and I hope to be proficient in the way of the domino by the time I leave here.  

La Finca

This is La Finca, or the property. While I'm here this is my home. It's a sixteen acre piece of land with a staff house (where I sleep) a kitchen, two pavilions where the groups hang their hammocks while they're here, and three baños (outhouses), 140 lemon trees, 25 papaya trees, lots of mango trees, soon to be a few grapefruit trees, four dogs (you'll see them featured on here soon), one cat, the BFT, one car, one pick up, one van, three motorcycles (which I can't wait to learn how to drive), and a solar powered well (not for drinking). Maintaining the property is going to be a huge part of my job here once the summer ends, which I think I will really like doing. There are mountains surrounding the entire thing (not pictured), which are very reminiscent of the mountains that surrounded my previous home (the 'burg). I went from one mountain range to the next. I'm not really sure what else to say about the property, other than after just two weeks, it's already starting to feel like home. 

Chicken Guy

Known affectionately as, Chicken Guy

¿Juegas el béisbol?

In the summer, there is a rotation. A group comes in on either a Tuesday or a Saturday, eats the same food each day of the week, works two days then goes to the beach, works two more days then puts on a carnival for the kids of the village in which they built. This week, the group didn't really bring anything for the carnival except for some coloring pages and crayons, so we decided to hold a baseball game instead. We walked through the village telling everyone there would be a baseball game, and soon the field was filled with kids ready to play. First we let the younger ones hit a couple times each and run the bases. When their attention spans ran out, they moved to playing tag in the outfield, and then it was the older kids turn to play. I finally had my first Dominican béisbol experience (took long enough as far as I'm concerned). I didn't play, but just watching was very cool. There were certainly a couple standouts above the rest, but what I thought was the coolest part about watching them play is that they were all so smooth out in the field, like playing baseball is in their DNA. It was all very impressive. Give it 5-7 years, then look out for these kids on an MLB team near you.

Las Familias

This is Jaquelina and her daughter Kailie. They are two of the three members (dad Claudio not pictured) of the family we built a house for in Luperón. The way it is decided which family receives a house in each village we build in is not as simple as Bill choosing which family seems the most deserving. That wouldn't make sense, Bill doesn't know the families. So in each village there is an organization that goes around to everyone and asks who they believe is the most deserving of a house, so the community itself decides which family needs/deserves a house the most. And Jaquelina and her family certainly needed/deserved a house, they lived in a shack made out of rusty tin roofing that as Bill would say, you wouldn't let your dog live in, and to boot it flooded past their ankles any time it rained. On top of their house situation, Jaquelina happens to be one of the most kind, giving, and motherly people you could ever hope to meet. I remember the first day I met her she was carrying around a baby and I asked her what the baby's name was and she didn't even know it! She was taking care of someone else's baby that she didn't even know to give the mother a break. We finished building Jaquelina's house a few days ago, and started on one in the same village very close to hers. Yesterday I made the mistake of not having the group eat lunch in her brand new home, and she gave me a talking to and made me promise that today the group would eat lunch in her home. We could not have given a house to a more deserving person than Jaquelina.

BFT

This is the BFT. They tell the groups that it stands for Big Fun Truck, but I'm pretty sure it's really Big Fuckin' Truck. Either way, the most important part of the acronym is big. I have wanted an excuse to drive it since I got here, and today I got one.

Before actually arriving in the DR, I was given a job description that was all over the place, so I was expecting to be thrown into a lot of different and unexpected work situations. One job I was not expecting was to be a construction advisor (some one who takes a crew to the work site and teaches them how to build the house). A few days ago Bill told me that in March, I would be taking groups by myself to a worksite to build a house, a prospect that kind of stressed me out eight months in advance. Yesterday afternoon, Jon told me tomorrow (today now) that he was going to stay on the property with one group, and I would be taking the other group, by myself, to the worksite in Luperón, by myself, and teach them how to build the house, by myself. As I said before, I still hardly know what I'm doing in construction in general, and now after being here for 10 days I have to teach something that I don't really even know myself!

Fast forward to right now, it actually went better than expected. We didn't make as much progress as we would have if Jon had been there, and we had to do somethings over again two or three times, but we at least made progress on the house, so what more could I have asked for really? At the end of the day, Bill came and picked us up in the BFT. We had everything and everyone packed up in the back of the truck, and Bill asked me if I wanted to drive. I felt a nervous twinge in my stomach that lasted all of one second, and then I took the keys. Driving it was pretty awesome, you're way high up above everyone else, and everyone gives you the right of way. The most difficult part about driving it is that there is no rearview mirror and you have to take the turns extremely wide on relatively narrow streets. So far I've driven the 4 runner, the pick up, and now the BFT. Next up, the motorcycles, which I am extremely excited for.

Manejando

In all the developing countries I have been to (just China, Vietnam, and now the DR) one constant between the three countries has been how ridiculous it is to drive there. Apparently having a large enough police force to monitor traffic is exclusively a first world privilege *sarcasm* *sarcasm*. So next time you get pulled over for speeding make sure you snap a selfie with the cop and throw up a #firstworldproblems when you put it on instagram, because it truly is one (at least from my experience). Today I went on an impromptu trip to the airport about an hour and a half away, and got my first really good experience of highway driving (I wasn't driving, just in the front seat). The highway to the airport has these crazy long hills, and these giant 18-wheelers (such as the one in today's picture) basically crawl up them so normal cars are constantly passing them, and double yellow lines mean absolutely nothing. They basically just wasted money on paint for the lines and paying the people to paint them. As ridiculous as it is, there was some order to the chaos. Everyone waited until it was their turn to pass the slow moving truck, and did so a quickly as possible. Other outrageous driving antics seen today include a minivan driving down the road with both sliding doors open, a truck stacked with cinderblocks stopped perpendicular in the middle of the highway, and a man straight hanging out the side of a moving bus for no discernible reason. I think it makes driving a more fun experience. Let's start a petition to eliminate highway patrol in the US and use the money saved to cure cancer or something like that, who's with me?  

La oficina

Cambiaso

The first day I arrived in the DR, I accompanied Lexi, the in country medical coordinator here, while she checked on patients way up in the mountains. The second day I was here, I went with Jon, who is a construction genius, to this place. On this day, this was my office. You drive seven miles down this crazy bumpy windy dirt road, so bumpy and windy that those seven miles take over forty minutes to drive (we timed it), and eventually you arrive in the beach village of Cambiaso. And when I say beach village, I mean it. No one in the entire village wears shoes, not because they live in extreme poverty (which they do) but because their houses (if you can call them that) are built right on the sand, so there is no need for shoes. Previous crews of the mission built two houses there, but they made a bunch of mistakes, and we were there to fix them, well... "fix" them. I still basically have no idea what I'm doing in construction, but lucky for me Jon gives really really REALLY good instructions so he tells me to do something once, and I'm able to pretend like I know what's going on without missing too many beats or asking too many questions. I like doing the work, but like I said, I'm not great at it, and on this day alone I cut myself five separate times, usually with a saw, and twice I bled kind of a lot. In fact, I think I've hurt myself doing construction everyday so far, whether it's falling off something or hitting my thumb with a hammer (did that today). Like I said the work is good, but by far the best part about it is where I get to do it, illustrated in the photo above. It's not always on a beach like this, but it is always sunny and hot (you should see my tan lines already), which is pretty awesome. I got to go back to Cambiaso a few days after I took this photo to finish fixing the rest of the mistakes, which only took a couple hours, then I got to spend the rest of the day on the beach. We walked through the village, over this ridiculous foot bridge, and came out into a Rocket Power-secret-spot-esque type of beach. It was freakin awesome to get to spend a bunch of hours there. I was sure I would never find another beach as incredible as the one I was on in Vietnam last summer, but this one certainly rivaled it, and even reminded me a lot of it. Needless to say that was the best day I've had since arriving here, which says a lot because life has been pretty damn good here. I'm hoping to spend as much time as possible in these types of places while I'm in the Dominican Republic.