Back to spreading world peace : /

I'm back! I could not stay away from all of my beloved fans.

Right now I'm in the capital of a certain Central American country for work. Everybody has been extremely kind (despite the viciously true rumors of having the highest murder rate in the world). Truthfully, I have only felt unsafe once during my trip. The occasion was in a small, touristy pueblo outside of the city while I was shopping for candy to bring back to the states (spoiler alert!). A few kids wearing masks like the one in the movie Scream walked down the middle of the street, holding poles in their hands, and just looking at people. I sort of awkwardly pushed people out of my way into an ice cream vendor because juvenile delinquents make me feel nervoussss. Other than that...last night the lights went out in the very nice hotel I am staying in, which was also slightly unsettling. I have clearly lost my Peace Corps bad-assness.

 Since being here I have developed a stronger interest in the Latin American drug wars. I've been reading up online, and last night (antes de que se fue la luz) I even watched the first half of a movie staring Cuba Gooding, Jr. about a cop whose family was killed due to his involvment in trying to stop drug trafficking, or something along those lines (I think that it took place in L.A., but I really don't know...it might not have been about drugs, either). What I took away from this heart wrenching piece of art is that it's not that bad to do drugs, but it's really bad to sell them. And equally bad to try to prevent people from selling them. I guess somebody needs to figure out a way to make people not want to buy drugs anymore... what if they were poisened with weird chemicals and caused undesireable side effects?! I think I'm on to something...

And you thought you'd gotten rid of me.

So I am back! But I can't guarantee it's the same me. I just skimmed the post below and became a little terrified of myself.
I plan to use this blog as motivation to write. I need a little more creative outlet than checking field reports.
I've never been able to stick to blog posting in the past. It just never works... But maybe this time it will work!

LOS BUEYES!

SO! I was blessed with an incredible site placement. And that’s an understatement. I am in Los Bueyes. It’s a really remote community of about 50 houses, mas o menos (I will be counting them all and making a map…anyday now…) It takes anywhere between 2 to 4 hours to get up the mountain, depending on which bus driver you get that day…. And alls I know is Mario drives slow…and stops a lot… But really, it is absolutely gorgeous. I am a very lucky girl. And the people are insane nice. Word on the street is that’s how all the people in the Cibao Valley are. I believe it.
SO, I am working with an NGO based in Moca, the closest city down the Montana, on an Eco-tourism project. Right now the project is building cabanas (little ranch type hotel thingies---VISITORS? Any takers? Yeahhh boi!) in this paradise that is my site, training guides (from the community and communities surrounding), and choosing 5 micro-businesses to start up, which include camping, horse back riding, kayaking, waterfall excursion, and candy (dulceria). So my focus is helping these micro-empresas start up. Now I’m just kind of feeling out my role in the community and on the project. Hope I don’t screw this one up!
The project seems kind of intense, but for the majority of my time I’m really just acostumbrandome en la comunidad. Meeting a lot of people. Drinking a lot of coffee. Compartiendo. Enjoying the beautiful trails. I’m also the English teacher at the school? It’s weird. And I want to lay the smack down on their “library” / technology center. If you find any children’s books in Spanish hold on to them! Will have more info on that in the future!
P.S. this blog is slightly…watered down. If you want to know the REAL dirt EMAIL ME! Life is wonderful! And I’m sure I have more hilarious details to share. That I don’t necessarily want the body of peace or the partners of my project reading…catch my wave?
I love you all. Especially Mac. Dios te bendiga.

MY ADDRESS!

Here´s the mailing address, por fin! (make sure not to send packages via fed ex and such, just use normal US post)

Magee McDonald
Cuerpo de Paz
Apartado Postal 1412
Santo Domingo
Dominican Republic

i love you.

oh hey party people!

so it seems like it´s been years since that last post! much has happened. this post might be really frazzled and vague because i don´t have much time at this internet cafe, but bare with me.
so we are in our last week of community based training right now. CED (community economic development) is training in the cibao valley in the north, outside of a town called alta mira (where i am right now using the internet). we are split up into different communities with our spanish classes, and my community is called Los Claveles (means the carnations..was named this because the women who first moved there were apparently very white and beautiful like carnations, but there isnt a single carnation in sight). i can´t wait to post pictures in a couple of weeks because the community is precious. i live in the most adorable little pink house with the most adorable little family. i have a bomb host momma, isabel, and 4 little siblings, 3 brothers, rini who is 17, kaibo who is 14, and yefri aka jeffrey who is 10 and one little sister, luzmery, who is like 8 or 9. shes the best. shes with my every step of the way. this comunity is on a little dirt road that goes up a mountain, and it has the most incredibleeeeee views. it is in the puerto plata region of the country, so we are not far at all from the beach. just went saturday with the whole community actually. that was very fun. fun fact, dominican girls and women where clothes in the water. over their bathing suits. who knew. ANYWAY, i heart this little community, we have been here for 4 weeks and we leave on sunday. i´ve had an amazing time here. my merengue, bachata, and dominoes skills are getting out of controlll. kind of haha. im going to miss my host family and campo (country..rural) life very much. hopefully i will be able to visit the family though.
so i find out my site placement in like 2 weeks, i cannot wait. getting very antsy. im sure wherever they send me will be great, but of course i have my own ideas of where i want to go...we shall see... then we get signed in as volunteers in 3 weeks. training has been insane. VERY exciting but also very stressful at times. i´m excited to get into my community!
okay sorry this is so short, hopefully later on i will have easier internet access and will be able to update with more frecuencia. long story short, life in the DR is GOOD. i miss you all though! don´t hesitate to write emails and such! and oh...ill post an address soon. i always forget to bring it with me when i get into town to use the internet. next time...next time... much love! -mageeeeeee!

gallos y dominoes

hola amigos!
much has happened in the last couple of weeks, and i´ll try to give a life recap. first, that last mailing address i posted was a big fat lie. if any letters were sent, chances are it could reach me, but i´ll post the new one soon...i´m an idiot and forgot it in my house. no recuerdo.
so! somehow the gods have blessed me with a peace corps placement in the DR. today Aaron Williams, the Country Director of the Peace Corps, came to training and talked to us. it was amazing. he served in the Dominican Republic and his wife is Dominican, so this was his first stop on his Peace Corps country tours. this sounds so dorky, but it was rather inspirational to hear him talk. he got us all so excited and really kind of reaffirmed that i´m doing exactly what i want to do. he told us PCDR is one of the best Peace Corps operations in THE WORLD! i wonder if he always says that...i really need to start bringing my camera with me places...but other volunteers have it documented.
life has been crazy. training is nuts. 8 to 5 every day learning peace corps jazz, development jazz, and language jazz. hey rachel, remember when i rated my spanish speaking ability on a scale of 1 to 10? 1 meaning i know very little spanish and 10 being i know all of spanish? well i was right. i know 7 of spanish. and cada dia es mejor, o mi Doña me dice. My Doña is my host momma. she loves me. i´m pretty sure because i have straight hair, or at least that´s what she tells me. she thinks it´s magic. Doña´s here rule the streets. meaning they run the family. they rarely tend to have a husband anymore, which is really sad. big big problem here, el machismo. but anyway, if you need anything, just find a Doña and she´ll lay down the law.i don´t know if i´m making any sense right now but im going to continue on.
i still get giddy here when i make dominican friends. they´ve all been so freaking nice. i´m kind of on a peace corps high right now... just wait a few months i´m sure i´ll be in hysteria when i realize i have to venture out on my own...vamos a ver. the other day i met a bunch of people in my neighborhood randomly and stopped and hung out on the porch with them for a couple of hours. this girl, Esmerelda, just walked up to me and started talking to me and invited me to hang out with her family. she was like 13. i kind of felt like the most popular girl at school befriended me. like molly nye in 8th grade decided i was cool. or i imagine that´s what it would feel like, anyway. shes probably the most charismatic pre teen ive ever met, but i went to her house and she and her friends taught me how to dance to the sweet4est song EVER here, Pepe. and then her mom showed me how to put a tubi in my hair. Tubis are how dominican women straighten their hair. they like wrap all of their hair around their head and pin it up so it´s like a hat of hair. and they all just walk around like that. or with huge curlers in. i looked pretty sweet. i´ve also gotten to know my next door neighbors really well. this weekend they took me to their relatives house. i have no idea how many people live in this ¨house¨ because there are so many people running around, so i´d say anywhere between 4 and 10 people live their. it was much more....slum like? i dont really know how to describe it. it was not as nice as where i live, to say the least. no paved roads, dirt floors in houses, roosters all over. my neighbor is going to take me to a cock fight, i can´t wait. i´m probably going to hate it...but it´s just something i have to do. anyway, we played dominoes for hours, i was sweating buckets sitting in the sun, but i´m getting a lot better at dominoes. the dominicans think so freaking fast though! it´s so hard. kids here must be really good at adding...my Doña and her family are all really nice to me and patient when we play. i don´t know these dominican people might know what´s up. maybe there´s never electricity or water but they´re all always together, compartiendo (sharing--sitting outside talking), playing dominoes, playing baseball, dancing. they know how to have a good time. the other night all of the volunteers went to THE CAR WASH. the car wash is an actual car wash, which over time has developed into like an outdoor night club because people would all listen to music and drink and dance while they got their cars washed. the car wash is pretty crazay. we had much fun. we also went to another volunteer´s doñas birthday party the other night which was awesome. they just blast music in the street and dance. i really need to work on my merengue skills...
on thursday this week i go to visit a volunteer on my own. i can´t wait. she lives like 4 hours or maybe further from here. i have to take a guagua (bus) and a motoconcho (motorcycle taxi) to get there. it´s going to be awesome. i´m not to worried about using the public transportation alone, peace corps has really held our hands through that. it´s been a lot easier than chile when i just kind of had to hit the ground screaming, trying not to die on the micro. the peace corps training is kind of like having an abroad program on crack. they´re really pressing fast forward on the whole assimilation process...but i can´t wait to get out on my own.

alright i´m off! besos abrazos les quiero mucho! i hope i didn´t say anything bad in this cause i´m not going to re read it over.

Look at me go!

I´m here! So i named this blog perfectly because the first thing people say when i introduce myself is ¨Maggi! Como la sopita!¨ There are commercials and signs for Maggi soup all over the place. anyway...I´m sitting in this sketchy little internet cafe by my house. And by internet cafe i mean small room with computers that you can pay to use. i live with a host mom, who is 70, and her host daughter who is 28. so far so good. somehow i accidentally agreed to go to a 3 and a half hour evangelical mass this morning...it was weird... i really wish i had kids in my family. i live in a fairly nice neighborhood for the area. i just went to another neighborhood where a bunch of peace corps volunteers live and it´s way more lively. they all have roosters and puppies and naked babies running around on dirt floors! we played baseball with a bunch of the kids and teenagers from the neighborhood in a field that was really muddy and flooded from the storms today. it was really fun :) i´ve found everything i read about dominican culture to ACTUALLY be true so far. when you walk down the street merengue or bachata is blasting and people are all sitting in their galerias (covered porches) in rocking chairs or at tables playing dominoes. and they loveeee baseball. all the guys wear baseball jersies and hats and you see baseball games in the streets everywhere. they play with sticks. no shoes necessary. this culture is very rich. i can´t wait to get into it more. the peace corps has kid of locked us up in training the last couple of days. lots of rules, safety procedures, medical information, and language assessment stuff. it´s been pretty frustrating because i just want to get out into the city and see what it´s like but i know we´re going to be able to this week. the other volunteers i´m training with are amazing, i think that´s going to be huge the next 2 years. i can´t believe we´ve only known each other a couple of days. weather here has been nuts. its so humid and it will be so sunny and hot one second and then thunder storming the next. it´s sweet i really like it. alright! sorry this post is so frazzled. i feel like i´ve done a jumbled catch up and from now on i can just tell stories about my day. oh p.s. i shower out of a bucket, which has been a tad difficult with long hair. i also sleep under a mosquito net, but still my legs are covered in bites...i take malaria meds though so i´m not too worried. okay. i´m going to run away from this computer now i love you guys bye!!!