Rainy blog

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any hotter… it starts to rain. My answer, my relief, my favorite part of any day. A few weeks ago, I told the family I eat most lunches with here that where I live in “Nueva York,” gets maybe 9 inches of rain a year (and as my dad told me, even that’s an overstatement). And the rain here is the most rain I’ve ever seen in my life. They couldn’t believe it. Actually, to be honest, I don’t think they did believe it. Today, as the thunder was literally rolling in from the north, they brought up Nevada’s dry climate again.

How do people get water?

Well, we have a river, but it’s small. The water is treated and reused.

With chemicals?

Yeah, but it’s clean and safe to drink. You can drink it right out of the sink.

We drink the rain water here, not chemicals.

I know, but really, I’m not lying, we don’t get enough rain to do that.

Do they grow anything where you live?

No, no, not where I live (in my head I said hipsters, but you try translating that into Spanish).

But they grow stuff over there? (another aside: there is so much US influence in the DR, that most times people either refer to the entire country as “over there,” or Nueva York- as most Dominican immigrants live in NYC)

Oh yeah, of course. I just live in one city of the entire country. Where I live is dry with little rain, but there are other parts of the country that get a lot of rain and grow all kinds of things.

Like how they grow coffee on the other side of the hill but not here?

Yeah, kind of like that.

An update from my last blog: I did in fact have my radio show last Saturday. I sounded awful, my Spanish was pretty laughable, but I did it. I consider it to be successful because 1)it happened 2)it happened without the director of the radio even being there 3)a kid in my community who just graduated from a sort-of technical school in Radio DJ-ology “produced,” it, which paves the way for him to have more say and more work at the radio station from here on out. All in all, even despite sounding slightly like an idiot with my elementary Spanish, I was pleased with the outcome and am excited to do more shows.

Classes are up and running. Last week I kicked a student out of my class (who coincidentally, but not intentionally is the radio director’s son). I was trying to teach a lesson on maximizing, minimizing, restoring and closing programs, and he was being disruptive and rude so I told him to leave. He didn’t believe me at first, but then I picked up his notebook and started walking out the door, he followed. I felt kinda bad at first, but the truth is, I have to be strict here, especially because I don’t have complete command of the language. I want people to have fun in my classes, but I’m also not going to waste two hours of everyone’s time trying to plead with people to pay attention to me in Spanish. After I kicked him out, he came around to the windows and started chanting something with my name in it. I had no idea what he was saying, moreover what the chant was saying about me- but the rest of my class (all two other students) finished the lesson with no problems.

A word about my computer class: the class I’m teaching is basic. I’m talking, “today we are going to learn how to properly turn on and off the computer.” Even though the subject material is very basic, it is pretty amazing to watch these few students learn how to use a computer. Simple things, like the first time they got the timing of double clicking the mouse and successfully opened a program. Or today’s lesson was about the keyboard. We opened word and I had them write their names, and even though it took about 15 minutes because inconveniently, the letters on the keyboard are not in alphabetical order, once they had their names written on the screen and could see they did it themselves... well, it was a very satisfying feeling for me to see them so satisfied.

It reminds me of why I joined the Peace Corps in the first place. For the simple things, like a student successfully using a computer to write their names.

I have spent a lot of this summer trying to adjust. Adjust to the culture, the language, the food, being away from America, my family, my friends, Remi. During all this adjusting, it’s easy for me to forget about why I wanted to do this in the first place. It’s much easier to daydream about home and think about all I’m missing out there and how I didn’t have to leave my own country to make a difference. America needs help too. Which is the truth, and I plan to help as much as I can for the rest of my life, once I finish this little endeavor.

My point is, I think sometimes we all need reminders of why we are where we are, no matter where we find ourselves. Whether we have put ourselves in our current situations, fate has taken us there, or a combination of both- the test is to not spend your time dreaming about the other side. Life is here and now. It gives us opportunities everyday to be successful, happy, to help those around us, to fail and then pick ourselves backup. So do it. Everyday is yours. It’s your life, it’s my life. I’m here, you’re there, but in the end we are all trying to accomplish something bigger than ourselves.

Today, the thing that was bigger than me was having three people in the Dominican Republic use a computer to write their names. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less. Did I need to leave the country to understand this and feel as satisfied with my life’s work as I do now? Maybe not. But I did need to leave the country to see the most rain I’ve ever seen in my life. I did need to leave the country to tell one family in the DR that there are places in the world where the rain doesn’t fall, where crops aren’t grown, but where people are happy.