Successes, Failures, and Menu Options (AKA, This Post Is Overdue)

Just thought I'd give any interested parties an update on life in the tropics. Here’s what I’ve been doing since I got to this country!

May 6-June 15: I spent six weeks in the capital, Santo Domingo, where I lived a middle-class Dominican life (church, family routines, cooking, making new friends). I met a lot of great people who wanted to show me everything, and I consequently amazed them with my ability to bake (nobody here even makes box mixes, even if they’ve got a super nice oven) and my adoration of peanut butter (my host family had never tried PBJ before). Hurray for culture training!

June 15-Present: Coming back to Santiago and La Casa Grande began our summer. I’m working on newsletters, the website, and prayer cards, as well as leading worship in almost every meeting we attend. We’ve hosted four teams from the States since I got here and are expecting our next one tomorrow. Gotta confess, having teams here is my favorite. I get to be part tour guide, part interpreter, part worship leader, and just have fun integrating with the groups.

July 21-26: Spent a week away from Casa Grande in Cotuí, a more rural city of 70,000 people and very little US influence, where I worked with a local pastor and her summer reading camp for kids whose reading skills are a bit behind. I also had the opportunity to share a message in church at their Friday night youth service, as well as to attend the memorial service of a 12-year-old who had passed away, and see what a typical maternity ward looks like here. Sobering stuff—and very real.

I’d like to share some successes… and some not-so-much-es.

SUCCESS!!

• Introduced my Santiago Casa Grande family to French-press coffee. They like it!
• Can list at least seven ways to cook a plantain, which is like a less-sweet banana with a potato-like consistency  (mangu, mofongo, tostones, fried mature, in soup, boiled, in sushi)
• Have tried mango jam, mango jam with cinnamon, mango cobbler, mango slices, green mango salad, and mango salsa (this is what happens when there’s a bumper crop of mangos and fewer teams coming through than normal!)
• Made some friends with some little girls!
• Improved my Spanish—have even had the pleasure of serving as a casual interpreter for some of our groups coming through

 Not So Much!

• Tried mondongo, a national dish made from cow tripe. It’s… about as tasty as it sounds.
• Attempted to eat boiled green bananas for breakfast (this is a typical Dominican thing I’m just not getting the hang of liking)
• Contracted a stomach bug that had me down for two days with some nasty digestive symptoms
• Did not avoid getting chikungunya, the latest mosquito borne virus that causes severe arthritis-like joint pain, a high fever, and a two-day rash. I got a mild case, but… that was interesting.
• Attempted to learn to play worship songs using a non-movable solfège system (musical friends will get me on this one), which basically renames all the notes in a stationary Do-a-Deer style, meaning that “Do” is always C. It’s common to play that way down here, but I’m still not catching on!