April, 2011

It’s hard to believe we’re already in May. This month we’re getting ready to celebrate the completion of one year of Peace Corps service. And that makes it one year to go. April was quite busy for us. We managed to get started on our latrine projects with the grants we’ve received. I also took two teenagers from my community to a weekend-long Brigada Verde conference where Peace Corps volunteers presented a lot of environment workshops to the youth. The third week in April is Semana Santa and in the DR nothing much, besides a big party, happens. Dozens of cars and trucks rolled by our house all week long as city people headed to visit their rural relatives and friends where they hung out by the river and chattered and drank and swam. We spent the week relaxing at home, catching up on reading, and working in the garden. I also applied more roof pitch to the numerous holes in our would-be leaky roof.

May promises to be very busy as well as we plan to start stove projects and we have a mid-service Peace Corps conference where we get together with other volunteers to talk about what worked (or didn’t work) in the past year and plan projects for the coming year. I’ll keep you updated. Meanwhile here are a few pictures from April.