More than just a bunch of rotton eggs

Has an entire month really passed since the last update?

Now that we're at the end of November, lots of things have happened this month! But first let me point out that today is the feast day of the patron saint San Andres. The naughty teenagers take to the streets to throw rotton eggs that they've buried a week ago and balloons of flour at passerbys. Which means my plans to take Cajuil to the vet to be fixed in the city have been thwarted yet again: I was heavily warned against entering the city today if I don't want any problems.

This month I had my first visitor from home for about 9 days: Adam, my friend from Casa Juan Diego, came down and got to see my site and a couple beautiful beaches. The most important lesson we learned while hiking in a not-so-crowded national park down in the East: always take a flashlight when hiking alone to a cave! Turns out they are not easy to navigate without light, contrary to popular belief :) While down in Bayahibe we did get the chance to go snorkeling, paying a Dominican with a little boat and snorkeling masks to take us out to some coral (not colorful coral) but full of gorgeous fish. And a jelly fish that got Adam on his stomach. We also got to do some jumping from very tall mangrove roots up in my friend's site of El Rincon, Samana, one of the most beautiful beaches I've seen and complete with the coldest river ever that is full of mangroves.

Our Thanksgiving celebration was in the capital with all the volunteers, followed the next day by the yearly all-volunteer conference. It was a great weekend, made even better by the fact that I got to go with a couple people to do a presentation to the new members the day before. And I did get to meet my blog-reader and new volunteer, Becky from Kansas. Thanksgiving was a wonderful time, that started with a 5K in one of the parks and included sports, lots of food, a pool, a dating game, and dance and domino competitions.

Now that I'm back in my campo, we're finishing up our semester of computer classes and English is going well. The priest is actually one of my students, along with people of all ages again. I think he made one of my little 11 year old boys nervous in class, because Benito broke down crying a couple classes ago. He said he was sick, so I sent him home only to discover that he was running around happily with his friends when he got home. I think I would be sick too, if a very tall and intimidating priest was sitting directly behind me in a new language class!

My animal problems continue, as well. Now that my last group of bees finally got taken away this last week (along with all the honey they'd made in their month of residence), little Cajuil is in heat. She's only just six months old, but is already having male cats come into my house, leaving their marks for me to clean up later and howling the night away. I blame this on my neighbors, who convinced me to not take her to get fixed quite yet, that everybody wants kittens, and that I can take her to get fixed after her first litter. If she makes it through this week unpregnated (although I'm sure already violated), she's going straight to the vet. I'm not going through this again!