More Pictures

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!! Hello all! I know I´ve been horrible about writing on this thing for quite a long time now so I´m trying to make up for it. Here´s some older pictures to share. I´m doing well, I´ve been a little homesick over the last couple weeks, after Mom and Dad´s visit and then realizing that this is the first Christmas in my 30 years of life that I haven´t spent with Mom, Dad, and Nate. However, things are going well, I´m enjoying a chance to relax in my site since it´s the holidays and nobody´s in school or doing a whole ton of work either. So I´ve been catching up on visits to people, reading a lot of cheesy historical romance novels, watching movies, sleeping a lot, and generally just relaxing for a few. Come January things are going to get busy again so I´m enjoying the down time while I can. All right, time to head out. But best wishes to all!! I´m thinking about all of you and miss you and hoping for some more visitors whenever anyone has some time and doesn´t mind roughing it for a few days.


Here I am!! I know you guys have missed seeing my lovely face so I thought I´d put up a picture, although this is a couple months old, but I think I look roughly the same.


Taking corn of the cob. This is part of the harvest that my friend Thony´s dad, Chelo, brought down from the loma. It´s used to make chen chen (which is grits), and to feed animals, mainly chickens and pigs.


A cool looking little green snake over on a tree in La Peña at Tima´s house. Tima is the president of the women´s group I´ve been working with and just a really cool lady in general. Speaking of my women´s group I finally got vegetable seeds for them to plant. Although, I´m still waiting for the grant approval and for it to get posted on-line.


We have these celebrations all the time in my community that are called Noche Vela. There´s always a procession from the church to the house where the Noche Vela is going to be. Everyone comes by chanting and singing and playing palos (big bongo type drums), carrying flags, pictures of saints, statues of saints, and in their church dresses. There´s a specific type of dress here that pretty much all the Catholic women in my site have and some men too. It´s usually bright colored and has some sort of cross sewn into it.


This is Nino, who is 97, born in 1912 he told me and has lived his whole life in El Batey. I see him walking all over the community, which is spread out over 10 kilometers so it´s not exactly short distances he´s going. He is one of my favorite old men here!


Efrein is one of the community leaders here in El Batey. He lives in the part of the community called Los Cerros.


Two handsome gentlemen hanging out in La Javilla, the center of town. It´s called La Javilla for the big (huge) trees that are there that are known as Javilla trees. Not sure what they are called in English.


This is my friend Thony and his niece, or is it his second cousin, or maybe his third cousin once removed. Man, I don´t know how people down here keep it straight. Pretty much they just call everyone primo or prima. And it seems at this point that most of the people in town are somehow or other related. If there first cousins then they call each other primo hermano or prima hermana and immediate aunts and uncles and godparents are tio and tia. Either way, this is one of the prettiest little bundles of joy I´ve seen!