Greenlover's Unite!

Ray of sunlight in the lagoon!

Ariel and Cat in front of our rockin' digs for the weekend. 

At Expo Cibao with my mom, grandma, and sisters.  It is basically the equivalent of a state fair, Dominican Republic style. 

I was looking at some pictures of Mac XC this week and I can’t believe it’s already spandex and underarmour weather in the great state of MN! However, I can report some not-nearly-so-drastic temperature changes here as well. I say this mainly because I am no longer constantly aware of how much I’m sweating and because Antonia, the woman who works in our house, made me some fffffiiiinnnneee hot chocolate the other morning. Granted, it was still probably 75 degrees while I was drinking it, but this did not detract from how delicious it was.
School is going pretty well, although I'm struggling with my independent study project. I was hoping to investigate the quality of sexual education for adolescent girls in rural and urban areas, but from the research I’ve done, it doesn’t seem like there’s much of a sexual education program anywhere. The government doesn’t seem to have implemented a standard program in schools, parents avoid talking about it, and when I went to the most well-known non-profit health organization in the country, they told me that they cut their youth sexual education program last year because of a lack of funding. So I’m going to go to Santo Domingo on Friday and hopefully get some leads about where to start looking. It’s definitely a reality check in a lot of ways and is indicative, in my opinion of the ever-present forces of the Catholic church and machismo. It also helps explain why 36% of all pregnancies here are women under the age of 18.
This past weekend I actually did not end up going to Dajabon and Montecristy (PSYCH!) and instead went to an environmental-themed music festival on the Northern coast. Although it was called “Greenlover’s festival” (I don’t know why it was in English) I didn’t really notice any environmentally-conscious behavior, unless you count the paper saved by not providing toilet paper and water conserved by turning off the flushing toilets. I wasn't expecting bathrooms, it was after all,a camping trip, but it was by far the trendiest camping trip I’ve ever seen. Our tent-mate for example, brought only mini-skirts and D&G sunglasses, but nevertheless was a really good sport, especially considering it rained literally the entire time we were there. The campsite was gorgeous and had a Fern Gully feel to it—I wish I would have taken more pictures, but they wouldn’t have turned out with the rain. There was a cave you could walk around in and a cave to swim in. We got to swim in the lagoons as well and the water was incredibly clear. And cold. Clear and cold. There was a great rope swing that we used to jump into the water and there were also some rocks to jump off of. I also got to see my first Dominican hippies this weekend, which was exciting.
When it got dark we had cena, or dinner, and listened to some bands play music, but couldn’t stay awake until they all finished (around 4 AM) so we headed back to our very wet tent. The next morning we did some yoga, read, swam in the other lagoon, snorkeled a little, (it was harder than I remembered--just against all intuition to breathe open-mouth underwater) and talked with people. It was interesting and kind of refreshing to meet a different crowd of people, although I still have trouble participating in stimulating conversations in Spanish.
One last thing—internet in my house is apparently out again, so I’m going to be a little slow in responding to e-mails, but please continue to keep me updated on everything!