Hunting Schema

Hello Readers

Once again I am turning to you, as I did in the very first blog, from my home in Minnesota's Lake Country. Sometimes a dream gets deferred, forgotten, misplaced, vaguely remembered, and then, when tragedy strikes, it comes back to us clear and bright. And bit by bit, we find a way to make that dream come true.

This is a journey. My life is a journey. I am sitting quietly, peddling my written word as my wares, and preparing to take the greatest leap towards my oldest dream.

I remember when I was a kid, I knew I was going to be a writer. It was one of those things that we just *know* when we are little. Then I grew up, still thought, oh hey, I could be a writer, then gradually it became, well maybe, and then, I don't know, and then I was going to do this, or that, or anything else with my life, except I really did not know what I wanted to do with my life, so I was just going to go into the Peace Corps for a couple of years...maybe afterwards I'll have an idea...etc.

As you all know, Peace Corps did not last a couple of years. It lasted four months. Then I was forced to make up my mind, quickly, of what my next plan would be. A two year process ended up being solved in a couple of hours, and over the course of nearly two months, became a workable plan.

First step, which I am on now, is to earn money writing and selling written things to whatever will pay me for them. This has included transcriptions, articles, paid forum work, and Search Engine Optimization work. Nothing grand, but nothing too shabby either.

Step two, I am taking a vacation in the Dominican Republic. Just going to do it. Have fun. Enjoy what I should have enjoyed for two years in a few weeks. Do it with the freedom of a tourist and the friendships and connections of a Peace Corps volunteer. I figure after everything, I owe myself that much kindness. So I am taking the first, long-term, international vacation purely for fun in my life. No doubt that will produce plenty of blog material and I will resume my journals.

Step three is where I throw myself into the current of my fate and hope for the best. More specifically, I am moving to Puerto Rico. Details still TBD, but I may either select a pleasant looking town on the west coast of Puerto Rico I've had an eye on or a suburb of San Juan. There, I will find a job, an apartment, a vehicle, etc. I'll work to pay my bills during and write what I can and what pleases me by night and on weekends. I intend to do this as long as Puerto Rico pleases me. If it really pleases me I might not leave. If my writing work really takes off and I can support myself on it alone, I may consider other moves, but for now I am keeping my sights low and attainable. I haven't the heart for a second failure so soon after the first.

So, if all goes well, in two months I will be a Dominican Wolf again for a bit, and then a Puerto Rican wolf. Or should I give up the wolf act altogether and say I've become a chameleon?

Lobolius
The Minnesotan Wolf

Shifting Ground

Dear Readers

Yes, I am writing to you from this fabled platform once more. No, I am not in the dear Dominican Republic, a country which has quite brazenly stolen my heart and captured my dreams...as all those who read my facebook should know! I am in Minnesota, my travels on hiatus, and my brain spinning like tires in the mud, while my life struggles to find purchase and move forward.

I won't quit. One thing I've learned in life is that a person quits first in their mind, then in their behavior. I won't let my mind quit. I'm going abroad again as soon as I get the pieces in order. To decide anything else is, simply put, quitting.

I choose not to discuss here what happened to me, and that is a deliberate decision. It was dumb, it was thoughtless, it was cruel, it was a chain of mistakes which I couldn't see until they blew up in my face and sent me out of the country. Or maybe I saw them and chose to look away. Hindsight is 20/20, but the past is the very quagmire I am trying to escape from. See paragraph 1.

How do I plan on going abroad? Well, it dawned on me at the Miami airport that all I'd ever wanted was to write and travel, and I still have my hands, I still have my ambition to travel, and I still have as much writing skill as I have ever possessed, which only needs work to hone it into something money earning. Why not, I asked myself, just put the pieces together and patch a new life for myself out of what I have wanted most all along?

There was no reason not to. The funny thing about a dream being broken before your eyes is that if the despair doesn't break you, the anger makes you stronger. It is as if I can think clearly about what I need to do in order to achieve my dream of becoming a travel writer for the very first time. It's always been one of those dreams, floating at the back of my head, but I never was totally serious...oh wouldn't that be lovely, I thought.

Then came Los Patos. There were days there when I almost saw myself living there, writing, soaking in the sun, looking at the beautiful Caribbean sea. Then Los Patos was torn away from me, and I didn't know what to do. Two years of my life, pre-planned, worked towards, which I had been so eagerly embracing--GONE. Dead. Vanished. Stolen. Call it whatever word you like, that dream was no more.

So, as I picked up the pieces of that dream, nearly crying from the agony of my loss, I made up my mind. One, I was not going to let the loss overwhelm me. Two, I was not going to give up my dreams of travel, I would just have to rewrite them a bit. And three, I was going to throw myself headfirst into the current and become a travel writer. Even if first I have to do whatever form of work gets me paid. Ha. Not quite whatever, but I would sell my writing skills and keep food in the mouth and shelter over the head.

That's what I'm at right now. For the sake of the whole shelter and food thing, I am also planning on peddling my skills as an English teacher, possibly in Ecuador, but that is only a stepping stone on the broader road, which now I seek. It will be mine, if I have the courage to claim it.

Lobolius
Worldwide Wolf

Quotes of the End

Not like this is the end. This blog is about my journey, and even though my journey through the Peace Corps will end prematurely, it is not the end of my road. Like all adventures where one does not see the end, the ending came unexpectedly, but I still am more than I was when i went into this, and I will be more after my next one and so on and so forth.

Failures are made only by those who fail to dare, not by those who dare to fail.Lester B. Pearson

The Highest Ambition

To do something, however small, to make others happier and better, is the highest ambition, the most elevating hope, which can inspire a human being.
John Lubbock

When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person realize his dream.  Paulo Coelho

I bought the alchemist in Spanish yesterday. Of all the things I wished to take away, it was that book.

Do more than belong: participate. Do more than care: help. Do more than believe: practice. Do more than be fair: be kind. Do more than forgive: forget. Do more than dream: work. William Arthur Ward

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. Anais Nin

Don't wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful. Mark Victor Hansen

and most importantly

Courage is as often the outcome of despair as hope; in the one case we have nothing to lose, in the other, all to gain. Diane DePoiters

I will not despair, but I will admit, at this moment, I am at the edge of the known, the edge of my dreams, and I do not know what my next will be. I had not anticipated this, but sometimes the most difficult decisions are also the right ones, and I made the right decision. I shall not say more. I have said more, perhaps, than I should, because despair is a dark feeling, and I have battled it like Gandolf and the Balrog. It shall not pass. I shall continue with my story.

At this point, I will pause in my journey, recooperate, and emerge stronger and more determined than ever to do what I must do. I just don't know what that will be yet. Part of my heart will always linger in Los Patos, but the past is the past, the future is the future, and I will prevail.

Thank you to everyone for your support through this difficult time. 

Dominican Wolf

Questions, Camps, and Rocks--A Volunteer's Diagnostic Activities

Hello Readers

Miss me? I've been so busy I've practically missed myself. Today I have a meeting at 10:30 with some teenage girls who are going to help me run my questionnaire and map making projects this week. Very important work, because this is the sort of information on which projects are formed. I'll be sure to buy them cookies. The colmado store down the street is going to love me by the time I finish two years.

When it comes to my project all the people assigned to me as my project partners are very hands off, which means I have turned to my teenage host sister for help rounding up her classmates to aid me in my project, and when it comes down to it, maybe I don't mind so much. It gives me a chance to be independent and formulate my own project, even if it also means that the story of what they want me to do changes almost as soon as I finish speaking with one person and begin speaking with another. Still have to find a way to coordinate this better.

I may not get a literacy program this summer after all, but I have a green light to form a camp. A camp would be fun. I could do that for like a week or a few days or something and really gauge which kids would be most interested in some of the side activity projects Peace Corps has. And I'd have an excuse to get together and meet more families and parents, which can only be helpful in my long term work.

And I'll be hanging out in the library working with community members all summer for three days a week. I've mentioned to a few people interested in English classes that I would be willing to do a little bit of that, informally, during those days.

The diagnostic phase has been a lot of things, but I cannot call it boring, not now anyway. I get up, I get working, and then in the afternoon I walk and visit and play in the river and talk and visit and sit on the beach and talk and visit and then I come home and eat at my two houses and really have a great time. I've also found a new pastime while sitting on the beach. You dig a little hole in the rocks, and then you take a larger rock and you throw it into the hole to watch the smaller rocks go flying. Or you can build a pile of rocks and try to see how many big rocks you can stack on top of the rock pile before they slide off. Very popular games here.

Maybe there's some truth to the Peace Corps insistence that the diagnostic is the time when you make or break your feelings towards your site. Every day I feel a bit more connected to the people here, meet new folks, discuss my projects, and build up my future little by little. Give me until August, and I'll be as well-known and popular as the beloved previous volunteer, and I can steal his legacy.

Coincidentally, I also heard that he might be coming for a visit in August. haha.

Dominican Wolf

La Patosa

Hello Readers

Patosa: a woman from Los Patos.

Once more I find myself without power and a dying laptop battery. I've got 9% to type with before it goes so I will just type what I can and if I don't get it posted I'll post this when I have energy again. Haha.

What have I been doing? Oh, nothing much. Played some Dominoes yesterday and learned a bunch of names and houses and interconnections between people, because this community, like small towns the world over, has about five or six degrees of connection between every person. Classy, hm? And now I'm one of them. Even classier.

This afternoon I'll be meandering to the river to help out with some girl's clubs that the other volunteers are bringing to my site to play in the river. As always, should be quite entertaining.

It's been raining a lot. Especially at night. Last night there was tons of rain. And lightning and thunder and wind. I just hang out in the dark house, listening to people speak in rapid and blurred Spanish, and laugh when I barely understand them but am highly amused by their hand gestures, which accompany stories I can sort of understand but not really. Especially when those gestures are made by the light of flashlights and candles. Sometimes I wish I knew how to tell ghost stories in Spanish because that would be really appropriate.

I am also a product of vivere power now. Or so they tell me. Those are the very potent vegetables and plaintains and bananas which constitute the entirety of my diet. I also walk a lot every day, so all the nutrients are going to fuel muscles. I've got very muscular legs and arms. People like to comment on them. They tell me I am very skinny and in good shape because I walk a lot, and it amuses me because in training we were always told that we'd be told we're fat for a compliment, but I've only been called fat once. Usually I'm just told I have strong legs.

And I am also very tanned. The other day I had my arm on a counter near a friend of mine here, and her skin and mine were the same color. She is a paler skinned Dominican, but still, it was quite funny. She told me I was a Dominican now, not an American. I just laughed. Of course, my hair is yellower than ever, and will just keep getting bleached by the sun, but if it were black, I suppose I'd be a true Dominican beauty.

Instead, my blonde hair and nice muscular legs make me an attractive figure on the guaguas. The other day I took a trip up to Barahona and on the ride there and the ride back I had guys practically salivating for me. They were very nice about it, unlike guys in the capital, but I'm not blind. I know what it means when a young man stares desperately at a woman and tries to engage her in conversation. Especially when they start asking if I have a boyfriend. Or a husband. It's quite amusing.

Believe that's all I wanted to share with you guys. Cuidate. (take care)

Dominican Wolf

Mud on the Shoes

Dear Readers--

There is one high praise I will give for Dominicans--this is a culture of extreme cleanliness. The more you bathe the better. And that goes for Peace Corps volunteers too.

So, here's the story.

We'll begin yesterday, when I was visiting House 2. I have two houses because I live with one and sleep in that one and officially live in it, and I have House 2, where I am the adopted daughter of the Dona. In House 2 I spend a lot of time, eat some meals, and sit in a hammock.

As I said, this is a fastidious culture. So, I've become very conscious of whether or not I am clean or dirty, I clean my fingernails several times a day and am always checking my body for mud because it rains a lot and I often get muddy. I was sitting on the front stoop of House 2, when I noticed that my arm was dirty. The Dona was washing some clothes nearby and there was still water running from the hose into the ponchero, which is the large bucket used for washing clothes.

There were no clothes in the ponchero, and as I said, my arm was dirty, so I took the hose and washed my arm, and then I washed the other arm for good measure. I thought I was being covert but naturally, her keen Dona eyes spotted that I was trying to wash myself with a hose. I was then taken into the house, handed a towel and soap, and she told me it was okay, I could use their bathroom to wash up.

It ended up being a great experience. My first glance was for their bucket, but there wasn't one, so I looked up and they actually had a pipe sticking out of the wall! Running water! I took the soap I'd been given and scrubbed and scrubbed and let the running water hit all the parts that I just can't reach well with the bucket baths. I felt so gloriously clean. It was wonderful.

Fast forward to the evening. Have I mentioned that there's been a lot of rain and mud? Well, that means my tennis shoes have gone through a lot of rain and mud. I've also hiked up mountains, through beaches, and along dirt paths in them for three months. You can imagine the state those poor things were in.

Ah, this too is a problem! I've watched people scrub their shoes clean, and have admired the experience, but had never done it myself.

Yesterday, people started dropping hints. Sarah, your shoes are really dirty. Sarah, your shoes are really dirty. Sarah, your shoes are really dirty. I felt embarrassed. My shoes were dirty! Muddy! I was a horrid person because I let my shoes become dirty. There was only one solution.

"Yes, I know my shoes are dirty. I really do need to wash them. What do I do?" (ie: the helpless gringa defense. Save me Dominicans, for I know not what you do.)

Enter Grandma Dona of House 1. She just came back from Santiago last week and she is a marvel of Dona power. Since her arrival, clothes have reappeared from the dirty laundry, rice tastes delicious again, and things get clean.

Together, we scrubbed, bleached, washed and rinsed those tennis shoes until they were a brand spanking new white color. Then the shoe laces received the same treatment. Problem solved. I've seldom felt so proud of a pair of shoes in my life. Now they are hanging on the clothes line, and I can again be a proud human being with clean shoes.

Maybe these stories bored you. Too bad. I am in the Peace Corps and cultural exchanges is what I do.

Dominican Wolf

Missing my Site... =(

Dear Readers

Took a trip up to the capital today. Tomorrow I have to get my green card. This means I've spent a cheerful day passing the hours in the Peace Corps headquarters. Bought some ice cream and checked my mailbox--no letters. Sad day. But, happy day, visited with a bunch of volunteer friends from training!

Eventually I may swing up to Pantoja again, to visit my host family there, but I am giving it time. Sounds like the guy I dumped is feeling like shit and miserable, so he needs lots of time to forget me. I could feel bad about this but in a way I am just letting it slide. Time will heal him far more than I could at this point. Things happen. I've changed and my heart changed with me.

This is a mistake I regret, and one I will not make again. I know my facebook posts have been cryptic and a little schitzo, but really, things are very smooth going in the site with the guy. I'm just frustrated with myself because I know I need time, but there are moments when I am ready to start up with the one person right now, even if I shouldn't and even though I WILL NOT. So yeah. That's that. He is unbelievably patient, or unbelievably in love, or a little of both. He's willing to wait for me. In the meantime, I spent time with him as a friend. It makes me very happy, and I teach him English and he explains as much as I need explained in Spanish, multiple times if necessary, so all is well.

I've been in the capital not even half a day and I already miss my site. I miss the quiet, broken by the occasional roar of a motor.  I miss knowing people as I walk down the streets and calling salutations to the Doñas. I miss visiting the river and talking with the restaurant owners. I miss the roar of the waves crashing into the beach, over and over again, so loud I can even hear it during quiet moments at the house. I miss the wind which blows off the sea and the heavy greenery in the forests and the mountains. I think it is fair to say that even if I am holding back my heart from men, I am unreservedly giving it to the land around me. I can only think of one place in the world I love more, and that is my home in the pine forests of northern Minnesota.

At this rate, I hardly know how I will leave in two years. My friend has told me that when the last volunteer left, the entire town threw a party for him and he sobbed all night. I could believe it. I've never met him, nothing more than stories and a single photo from the volunteer magazine last spring, but he sounds like the sort of volunteer every volunteer dreams of being. He knew everyone, he built cool things, he had the total respect of an entire pueblo, and he gave his all to his work. I cannot even imagine what it will be like to build a life for myself over the course of two years, and then have to say goodbye.

For right now, I am constructing that life. There is no time to imagine deconstructing it. I'll be starting up week after next, when the school exams are finished. Need to get the Center up and clean, remove all the dead bugs and lizards and cobwebs and dust, and then start up the literacy program with the high school students. We'll be teaching kids who are about to repeat third grade. It's good work, and I am pleased to be doing something constructive. I feel once I begin working I can start to have a more steady grasp of my life in my site. And I have to run the diagnostic. That will be an activity all its own. I'll need to talk to my co-teachers about it. They can help, or know people who can help.

This is the Dominican Republic. There is always time, just as there is always space on a guagua, or more rice, or another mango. Sometimes I forget and become impatient, but in time, I may become less American and more Dominican about time. Who knows. That's for the future to know.

Dominican Wolf