All posts in Photos

Thanks, Hilda

by dave on February 22, 2012 in Blog, Photos with No comments

I haven’t been posting lately about what I’ve eaten, but don’t worry! Still getting my three squares a day.

On Monday afternoon my host mom told me she wasn’t cooking lunch and I’d have to fend for myself. Being a day or so away from getting paid means things sometimes are pretty tight and subsequently I couldn’t go buy lunch at the place I usually frequent and last night’s leftovers weren’t looking too hot. So as I climbed the stairs to my apartment the smell of my neighbor Hilda’s cooking hit me and I thought to myself, “Wow, it would be great if I got brindar’d (gifted) lunch today.” I had low expectations of it actually happening though, but I kept my door open just in case she wanted to reciprocate for the banana bread I brindar’d her last week and tried to send her take David some lunch today vibes.

As I sat there studying my little green flash cards she comes out of her apartment and turns my way with two huge plates of food. Two types of salad! And then she goes back and gets another little plate of yucca! You can clearly tell by the picture that it was delicious and much appreciated also!

A short list of things with one ear

by dave on February 20, 2012 in Blog, Photos with No comments

I took this picture of a one-eared horse and its family way back in March of last year and came across it going through some old photos. I remember how proud the dad was to show off his horse; he had me take pictures from different angles and with his daughter on and off. In the Dominican Republic no matter how poor someone is or what have to offer they’re proud to show off what they have and what they can share with you.

My good friend Dory, who I’ve mentioned here, sadly lost her original dog a few months ago and recently came into possession of this more or less cute little guy and he only has one ear also.

Dory wrote a really great story about how she came to have, and eventually lose Luna here (scroll to the last story on the right):

When I moved out of my host family’s house, Luna came with me, ever the companion. At night she slept under the table while I watched movies on my laptop, and during the day she followed me everywhere– once, into the principal’s office of the El Valle elementary school, which caused a minor scandal. Children would call Luna’s name before they’d call mine.

Much like the horse above, the little guy manages to be really cute, even though they both only have one ear.

Production shot from filming

by dave on February 2, 2012 in Blog, Photos with No comments

We filmed all day Sunday in a really nice house in Janico that let a 20+ person team take over their house setting up lights, reflectors, microphones, make up and prop stations, & craft services.

Here’s a shot of the team getting a shot just right at the dining room table. We were lucky enough to bring in a sound consultant a few days before he headed off to Spain and he really helped improve our sound quality. Thanks, Jake!

Here’s to looking at you

by dave on February 1, 2012 in Blog, Photos with No comments

This past weekend we spent four long days shooting the next two episodes of Me Toca A Mi (which the Peace Corps highlighted here and the US Mission in the Dominican Republic highlighted in spanish here). After all the work organizing the nearly twenty PCVs that came to my site for almost a week I’m taking a few days of R&R and heading back to where I lived during training in the east of the country.

There’s a post in the future updating on the telenovela and some of the great things that have happened with that. For now though here’s a picture of a hawk that was the pet a family that graciously let us film in their house for an afternoon.

Way back in 2011

by dave on January 24, 2012 in Blog, Photos with No comments

I’ve neglected the blog lately, but now I’m back!

A lot has happened in the past two months – Thanksgiving, friends came to visit, I wrapped up my first English class, went home to America for almost three weeks, and came back to the DR. I’m going to break this down over the next few days so stay tuned.

Let’s start by going all the way back to Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving in Peace Corps DR is probably the one event a year where almost all the Volunteers get together at the same time. The day starts with a Turkey Trot at 7am, there are games all morning, swimming, the big Thanksgiving dinner, a talent show, and a party later in the night.

This year I was chosen as the head of a baking committee and got to stay at our Country Director and his wife’s beautiful apartment that has amazing views of the ocean and the capital, Santo Domingo. We stayed there for three days before Thanksgiving charged with making 20 apple pies and enough stuffing to feed a small (peaceful) army of PCVs.

Elisa was in charge of final pie construction.

When you emptied this bin it would just magically get refilled.

Mary Fran, myself, Elisa, Art, Aidan, and Becca - clearly the best of the baking teams.

They were extremely gracious hosts and getting to escape for a few days to hot water, wireless internet, and Mary Fran’s delicious cooking made it well worth all the chopping, peeling, and toasting loaves and loaves of bread for stuffing. Getting to talk to them and hear their stories of living and working abroad for the majority of their lives was really interesting.

Each year, Volunteers are required to fill out a survey on their experiences with Peace Corps. Suffice it to say, getting everyone to fill out the survey is a huge chore that no one really likes doing. To entice Volunteers, the first sector to get 100% completion would get a pizza party the night before Thanksgiving on the roof of the CD’s apartment. Obviously Education, my sector, won and the party was a really fun time.

The roof of the hotel where Thanksgiving dinner was held.

Andy, one of the awesome hosts of the talent show.

The bar had some interesting pillows and crowns lying around.

Before Thanksgiving dinner, we had drink specials and time to relax at the rooftop pool of the hotel where the festivities were held. It was fun to hangout with PCVs you don’t normally get a chance to see and everyone seemed to have a really good time.

The talent show was one of the highlights of the entire day and the Volunteers that hosted it did a really good job. I didn’t participate this year, but have some ideas for next year. One of the sectors choreographed and put together an entire Bollywood dance routine.

After taking the afternoon to relax, the Volunteers went to a bar they rented out and continued enjoying the party all night. Suffice it to say, stories from the party aren’t going to make it to the blog. But when Volunteers living around the country get to come together and relax with other Americans it’s really fun.

This year, by some stroke of luck, the Chairs of the event got to stay, and even eat dinner, with the Ambassador and his family in the US Embassy. One even got to stay in the same bedroom Secretary of State Hillary Clinton slept in when she visited recently. Next year I’ll be one of the Chairs of the Committee and I’m excited to see what Thanksgiving has in store.

Visiting Banica

by dave on December 10, 2011 in Blog, Photos with No comments

This past week I visited my friend Keeton at her site in Banica, located on the Dominican / Haitian border. She has a great site, except it takes over five hours to get there. I went to her childhood literacy classes and the following day we left at seven in the morning to go out to the campo and work with kids at schools there.

At the first school we visited, Keeton and her youth group from Banica facilitated a bunch of dinamicas (ice-breaker like games) and then had a sports day with the girls playing kickball and the boys playing baseball in the field in front of the school. Afterwards, we went to another much poorer school where kids from the morning and afternoon were waiting for us. I ended up with the littlest kids teaching them what crayons were and how to use them.

Keeton’s Project Partner is an American priest at the church in her site and so we had sheets of paper with the nativity scene that the kids could color. The little kids didn’t know it was the nativity and a girl asked me, “Ella es una bruja?” pointing to Mary holding baby Jesus. She asked, “Is she a witch?” One of Keeton’s youth was working with me and the little kids and she looked pretty worried, probably for the little girl’s soul not knowing it was Mary and all, but I thought it was pretty funny.

The visit was really fun getting to see the successful projects of another volunteer and I’m just glad that I wasn’t the PCV who got thrown up on in the back of a truck at 7:15!

*Click on one of the photos to watch them in a slide show*

Keeton, the rock star volunteer I went to visit

One of the little girls I spent time with at the second school

I was surprised these kids had never played with crayons before, but they took to it and had a lot of fun even though they don't look like it in this picture.

Showing little kids that you should play with crayons and not just be scared of them!

Keeton with one of her reading groups playing a game.

It was this little girl's birthday and the teachers wanted to make sure I got a picture of her.

Bugs!

by dave on November 22, 2011 in Blog, Photos with 2 Comments

One thing you have to get used to about living on a tropical island is the bugs. There are cockroaches, huge moths, small spiders with giant legs, beetles, tiny ants with big bites, big ants with tiny bites, of course mosquitoes in a variety of shapes and sizes, and so many other varieties in between. Many of the bugs I’ve seen before are similar to what’re in the states, but they can get way bigger! This (not so little) guy I found sitting on the sidewalk at the highschool in my town flailing his legs around trying to get back upright.

Before I flipped him over and sent him on his way though I took a picture with my cell phone for scale. He’s half the size of my phone! Cool to find on the sidewalk, would not want to open a cabinet and have him fly out though.

Me Toca A Mi update

by dave on November 17, 2011 in Blog, Photos with No comments

You can read about the history behind my project here in part 1!

I recently sent out an update on my project to PC Washington after our first successful filming weekend. Here’s what I had to say (and thanks to Jean for helping me with the edits):

Thanks again for your continued interest in the telenovela project! We recently wrapped production of the first three episodes of Me Toca A Mi. A total of 16 volunteers and over 25 youth participated in the filming over the course of four days.

While the majority of the youth and crewmembers had limited production experience prior to this shoot, all grew considerably throughout the course of the long weekend. In the attached video interview, PCV Tim Durrigan said that in a matter of hours he saw the participants transform from inexperienced youth into real actors. Our Dominican director, Javier, offered the opinion that the youth discovered something within themselves that they didn’t know they possessed. Our team of Peace Corps Volunteers also adapted quickly to their roles and learned how to make things work on a formal production set.

We inevitably experienced several minor setbacks filming; we were forced to shoot through a torrential rainstorm and to consistently reevaluate our shooting schedule. A power outage threatened to set us back considerably, but community members went out of their way to help us locate a generator and get back on track. Overall, creative problem-solving, patience, and teamwork allowed us not only to capture each intended take, but also to maintain the artistic integrity we hoped to achieve.

We are currently in the process of editing together the first three episodes of the series with the footage from the first production weekend. Additionally, we are planning the second production weekend for January 26-29. We hope to film three more episodes on those dates.

The project came together as well as it did because of the tremendous effort that the HCNs and PCVs invested in it. While many people played valuable roles, I want to extend a special thanks to PCV Elisa Paltenghe, our Director of Photography. She has extensive video production experience and without her this project would not be what it is. She created the schedule, led a dedicated shooting crew, and is editing the footage.

It was great having CD Art Flannigan, his wife, Mary Fran, and Jennifer Mayo come visit us on our last shooting afternoon for the big quinceañera scene. We hope they enjoyed themselves and gained a greater sense of the effort being invested in this project. Seeing representatives from Santo Domingo and Washington was certainly a terrific motivator for the youth and crew.

I sent production photos back with Jennifer Mayo and am including a few select shots below. You can watch and download a short video of interviews with PCVs during downtime on the set here (http://vimeo.com/32169719) and I believe Diane is also putting the video on the PC intranet for you to access. Thanks again to everyone in DC for your support of the project; we are excited to move forward, and are happy to answer any additional questions you might have!

Have a great day and take care,
Dave Richie