Rain

A lot of people have asked if we've received any damage from all the recent hurricanes- Fay, Gustavo, Hanna, Ike...

Basically we've had about a month of off-and-on rain. Most days it is sunny and hot in the morning, but we usually get a thunder storm in the afternoon and then some more rain in the evening. Usually this time of year is dry, but it's feeling a lot like how typical rainy season would feel, except that it's hotter.

The picture above shows some girls playing in a ditch in Los Higos. They were trying to form little dams out of clay, but I saw that they were washed out by the next day.

And my garden is out of control with weeds, but it's too muddy to do much about it.

Casa de Elvis

Elvis' family's house is basically finished and has been for a while. It just took me a few weeks to finally walk up to take the picture. The floor is red concrete. They still don't have the interior divided into seperate rooms, so the house feels really big inside. And, I guess, they still need some other type of window covering.

maiz

Since coming to the DR, I've tried to grow corn three times. The first time I was so disappointed. Having grown up with hybrids and chemical fertilizer, I'm used to stunning corn. The open polllinated stuff here just doesn't measure up. But this third harvest looked somewhat like what I'm used to (thanks to some granular fertilizer and timely rains). So, we shelled the corn out today, and I harvested a total of 35 pounds, grown on about 1/20 of an acre (I'm guessing). that adds up to 12.5 bushels/ acre. So, although I felt more proud of this corn (and everyone told me it was beautiful), my yield was still quite embarassing. I guess I could account for the fact that I know some of the corn was stolen out of the field before it dented (people here eat field corn), and I didn't shell the 10 biggest ears, because I am going to save that back as seed. However, even with that in account my yield wasn't too impressive.

I sold the 35 pounds for 200 pesos (about $US 5.80). So that comes out to $US 9.28/ bushel. I know that any farmer back home would be thrilled to get that price. (Actually, imported American corn is actually selling for more than that here). However, even with that price, I don't know if a farmer could make much money, because yields are so low. I'm learning how tough it would be for a Dominican farmer to make enough money to live.

lorena

Dulce, the lady I lived with for most of the summer, has wanted a Lorena stove, but wasn't sure if she could afford the cement and block which we ask the women to provide before we'll build it. So, she built her own! She made the base with wood and got her own clay from where they opened a new road near Los Higos. Jose Quezada helped her to dig out the holes. The chimney is not real tight, so smoke still gets into the kitchen, but it still works a lot better than an open fire. She hopes to rig up something different for the chimney soon. This is the kind of thing I really love to see-- people taking initiative based on an idea that we introduced.

Boda

Andre and Yohana got married on Saturday, August 16. The wedding was held near La Romana (where Yohana is from) at a beautiful Christian retreat center. The ceremony started at 9 p.m. and was very short. It was followed by a dinner and picture taking near the pool.

Andre and Yohana will be living in La Medina, a neighborhood close to the downtown of Jarabacoa. Andre is expecting to be back to work in September.

party

I had an agreement with the club that if they picked up and put away all their tools for six consecutive weeks they'd win a party at my house (Nate and Maggie's house, really) in town. it took about four months, but they eventually did pick up their tools for six week straight.

They came over on Thursday. We had games planned, which most of the kids thought were dumb and refused to play. But they did go nuts when I brought out my huge blue exercise ball and when I let Cloe (the dog) out. And we had lots of good food- hot water cake, grilled hotdogs, potato salad, yellow rice, popcorn.

And at the end we had a door prize, a fig tree, which Elvis won.

It turns out that I only got pictures of food related things- the top picture is Daury eating a whole potato that accidently didn't get cut up in the potato salad (and which we decorated like a pig using toothpicks and sprinkles). The bottom picture is Cristian grilling the hotdogs. He eagerly wore that apron.

turnips

Some kids planted turnips in the garden, believing that they were radish seeds. So, they dug them out the other day and were asking me what to do with them. (I have no idea what to do with turnips). They asked me what they are called, but I don't know the Spanish name, so I told them in English. Randy ran and told the other kids, "They are tour-neep."