Pictures have been added to my facebook profile. You will need to be my facebook friend in order to see the pictures. I am in the Chico State, Brighton and East Bay networks if you are looking me up. Send me an e-mail if you have problems with this. icwrockyrodriguez@Yahoo.com
Several Videos have been uploaded to youtube. Here is the link to the video where we were cleaning meat buckets: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1o3exVnOIA
Click on my username, if21 to see more of the videos.
Finally, I found out will be in the city til Wednesday. So keep on checkin out the blog. More updates soon!
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Meat Buckets and Swear In
"Oh, 4,5,6 c'mon and get your kicks
now you dont need that money
with a .....wha!???, do ya!"--Matt & CRod performing "Be my girl" by JET at Karaoke
Greetings from Suriname.
Yesterday, we cleaned meat buckets. Like 50 of 'em. Today, we are officially swearing-in as Peace Corps Volunteers. I don't think those two events are correlated. Anyways, Yes, our training period will be officially over at about 6 or 7 o'clock local time. But, we are stuck in the city for a few more days before we go out to site which is okay with me considering I have not done any shopping yet. While some people have purchased beds, tools and food, thus far my biggest purchase has been a pair of soccer cleats.
Anyways, a lot has been happenened over the past few weeks. First, after my initial three weeks of living with a family, I went to my future site; where I will be living and working for two years. Absolutely loved it. The village is south of the lake on the Suriname River. It is a very small village, I was told 60-75 people but I only met 40-50 people during my visit. Everyone was real cool. My first night at village, one of the locals pulled me aside, told me he couldn't read English and asked if I could help him set up a TV. If a village has electricity, from what I've seen so far I'd say it's fairly common for people to have old TVs with a DVD player. So, I go to this guy's house expecting some early-90's Toshiba or cheap Japanese knock off. Can you guess what kind of TV this guy wanted me to set-up!? Flat screen TV! I could go for one of those in my hut too but the Peace Corps ain't goin for it.
Speaking of my hut, it's not too shabby. Two pretty good sized rooms, 4 windows, 2 doors, with a wash house and flush toilet behind the house. I also have some kind of open work house and a pit to burn trash. I have been hanging my hammock in the middle of the house so far and if you lie there and look at the roof and walls of the house you can see some pretty funny and amazing stuff. First thing seen was a tarantula. I was a little uneasy with it at first but we made a peace accord and if he stayed to his side of the room we'd have no problems. Unfortunately, he didn't stay to his side of the room. Crossed over to my sleeping space and he was evicted. There are a lot of other interesting critters in the house too--lots of roaches. The best thing that happened to me so far was the spider that crawled down its web from the roof--about 20 feet up, into my hammock while I was reading. I almost flipped the hammock in hysteria. That would've made for a great youtube video. And the coolest thing I saw so far was a kaiman. Except it wasn't so cool when I saw it because I was fishing on the shore and it darted into the water about 15-20 feet away from me. I was pretty damn scared but the villagers were pretty amused by that.
As far as work in the village, I have a lot of different work opportunities there. First, there is a tourist camp which is already putting me to work. There is also a radio station in my village where I am hoping to DJ--play music, put together informationals on health and business. I have identified other opportunities as well, some of which the other volunteers before me started and others I may try and put together on my own. Most of these will be small group or one-on-one type projects involving education such as English lessons--which if you read the grammar of this blog I am sure you know I am totally qualified to be doing...
Anyways, time to finally go and buy some food--can't live off of Milk Powder, Soy Oil and Soccer Cleats. I will try and post about my last 2 1/2 weeks of homestay tomorrow. I've got some pretty quality stories. Also working on uploading videos/pictures so stay tuned. Te Amanya(Til tomorrow)!
now you dont need that money
with a .....wha!???, do ya!"--Matt & CRod performing "Be my girl" by JET at Karaoke
Greetings from Suriname.
Yesterday, we cleaned meat buckets. Like 50 of 'em. Today, we are officially swearing-in as Peace Corps Volunteers. I don't think those two events are correlated. Anyways, Yes, our training period will be officially over at about 6 or 7 o'clock local time. But, we are stuck in the city for a few more days before we go out to site which is okay with me considering I have not done any shopping yet. While some people have purchased beds, tools and food, thus far my biggest purchase has been a pair of soccer cleats.
Anyways, a lot has been happenened over the past few weeks. First, after my initial three weeks of living with a family, I went to my future site; where I will be living and working for two years. Absolutely loved it. The village is south of the lake on the Suriname River. It is a very small village, I was told 60-75 people but I only met 40-50 people during my visit. Everyone was real cool. My first night at village, one of the locals pulled me aside, told me he couldn't read English and asked if I could help him set up a TV. If a village has electricity, from what I've seen so far I'd say it's fairly common for people to have old TVs with a DVD player. So, I go to this guy's house expecting some early-90's Toshiba or cheap Japanese knock off. Can you guess what kind of TV this guy wanted me to set-up!? Flat screen TV! I could go for one of those in my hut too but the Peace Corps ain't goin for it.
Speaking of my hut, it's not too shabby. Two pretty good sized rooms, 4 windows, 2 doors, with a wash house and flush toilet behind the house. I also have some kind of open work house and a pit to burn trash. I have been hanging my hammock in the middle of the house so far and if you lie there and look at the roof and walls of the house you can see some pretty funny and amazing stuff. First thing seen was a tarantula. I was a little uneasy with it at first but we made a peace accord and if he stayed to his side of the room we'd have no problems. Unfortunately, he didn't stay to his side of the room. Crossed over to my sleeping space and he was evicted. There are a lot of other interesting critters in the house too--lots of roaches. The best thing that happened to me so far was the spider that crawled down its web from the roof--about 20 feet up, into my hammock while I was reading. I almost flipped the hammock in hysteria. That would've made for a great youtube video. And the coolest thing I saw so far was a kaiman. Except it wasn't so cool when I saw it because I was fishing on the shore and it darted into the water about 15-20 feet away from me. I was pretty damn scared but the villagers were pretty amused by that.
As far as work in the village, I have a lot of different work opportunities there. First, there is a tourist camp which is already putting me to work. There is also a radio station in my village where I am hoping to DJ--play music, put together informationals on health and business. I have identified other opportunities as well, some of which the other volunteers before me started and others I may try and put together on my own. Most of these will be small group or one-on-one type projects involving education such as English lessons--which if you read the grammar of this blog I am sure you know I am totally qualified to be doing...
Anyways, time to finally go and buy some food--can't live off of Milk Powder, Soy Oil and Soccer Cleats. I will try and post about my last 2 1/2 weeks of homestay tomorrow. I've got some pretty quality stories. Also working on uploading videos/pictures so stay tuned. Te Amanya(Til tomorrow)!
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Hard rain's a-gonna fall
Greetings from Suriname. I am feeling pretty well today but there have been some ups and downs since the last blog. To start, the title of the post is named for what has happened over the past few weeks. First, for my mandolin wheelin', Bob Dylan lovin' friend who had to go back to America. He was going to be a two hour walk north of my village and was a quality guy. Mike, you are already missed bro.
"This man wasn’t as fast as a speeding bullet and he couldn’t leap tall buildings in a single bound. This Superman came with braces on his legs and sticks in his hands. I am sure people who didn’t know him might have seen him as handicapped. I never saw him this way. When he walked I always thought he was the strongest and proudest man I had ever met. He wasn’t just a man’s man, he was a Superman."--Jim Rodriguez
The hardest news over the past two weeks was the death of my Grandfather. One of my inspirations for joining the Peace Corps because of his service to the United States, it was pretty difficult news to swallow. Thankfully, I was able to talk with him twice the week before he died, once during his 60th wedding anniversary.
And there-in lies the hardest part of the Peace Corps, a total lack of communication with the state side. I found out about a week after the fact, a few days after he had been buried already. It was a very strange and awkward feeling to be so disconnected from such an important family event.
But the strangest thing happened two nights later. I was feeling bummed out throughout the day and was getting ready to go to bed at night, probably around 10 o'clock. I remember when I opened the back door I saw this blinding light in the sky. I am assuming it was Venus but I am not sure. Anyways, it was the brightest light I had ever seen in the sky and I just kind of sat there and stared at it for several minutes and felt more at ease. I have been outside to look for that light again but I have never seen it shine that brightly again. I am sure someone has some logical reasoning why that light shone the way it did at that particular time but I'd like to think it was there for some higher purpose, possibly just for me. It eased my mind in that one moment. And, when I have asked other people if they have seen that light, no one has. Maybe someone or something was shining that light just for me.
--RIP Grandpa George Kilzer
"This man wasn’t as fast as a speeding bullet and he couldn’t leap tall buildings in a single bound. This Superman came with braces on his legs and sticks in his hands. I am sure people who didn’t know him might have seen him as handicapped. I never saw him this way. When he walked I always thought he was the strongest and proudest man I had ever met. He wasn’t just a man’s man, he was a Superman."--Jim Rodriguez
The hardest news over the past two weeks was the death of my Grandfather. One of my inspirations for joining the Peace Corps because of his service to the United States, it was pretty difficult news to swallow. Thankfully, I was able to talk with him twice the week before he died, once during his 60th wedding anniversary.
And there-in lies the hardest part of the Peace Corps, a total lack of communication with the state side. I found out about a week after the fact, a few days after he had been buried already. It was a very strange and awkward feeling to be so disconnected from such an important family event.
But the strangest thing happened two nights later. I was feeling bummed out throughout the day and was getting ready to go to bed at night, probably around 10 o'clock. I remember when I opened the back door I saw this blinding light in the sky. I am assuming it was Venus but I am not sure. Anyways, it was the brightest light I had ever seen in the sky and I just kind of sat there and stared at it for several minutes and felt more at ease. I have been outside to look for that light again but I have never seen it shine that brightly again. I am sure someone has some logical reasoning why that light shone the way it did at that particular time but I'd like to think it was there for some higher purpose, possibly just for me. It eased my mind in that one moment. And, when I have asked other people if they have seen that light, no one has. Maybe someone or something was shining that light just for me.
--RIP Grandpa George Kilzer
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Home Stay/Training
Overheard in garden and farming training:
"How long til it comes?"
"That's what she said."--Anonymous
Greetings from Suriname! All has been going well since my last blog--the skin problem cleared up after a couple of days. Since my last post, a lot has transpired. First, I spent three weeks living with a Suriname family--an older man and woman with 17 kids! Luckily, all their kids are older and only one comes around the house occasionally. This past week, I spent at my future site. I will be taking over for one of the volunteers who is ending service. My site is located on the Suriname River at a tourist camp! Right now, I am back in the city, waiting to go back to my Suriname family.
Home stay with a Suriname family has been real interesting. I ended up in a great situation since there are no kids regularly living in my house. Some other volunteers are living in houses with at least 10 kids. So, in the room I am staying, I am back to sleeping in a bunk bed which I assume was left over from earlier days. It is quite ironic because I can not get away from the bunk bed scene(I had a bunk bed with my bro for 10 years, but at least I get bottom bunk this time) but it beats sleeping in a hammock. Anyways, I have also been fortunate to have only one late night visitor so far. One night, at 3:30 in the morning, I was awoken by a rat. A rat! I could hear it crawling around on the opposite side of the room across from my bed. My solution: headlamp and a machete! At 3:30 in the morning, with a headlamp and a machete, I am moving boxes trying to find this rat. Unfortunately I did not find the rodent because he was actually in the vacant room next to mine. So the pest lived and made a ruckus all night.
My home stay family themselves are pretty hilarious. My homestay mom and dad are older--I'd assume 50's. When my host father first met me, he started laughing and yelling "Yonkupai! Yonkupai!" Now, the whole village where I stay calls me 'Yonkupai', which means young boy. My host father is primarily a hunter and so is his neighbor. So, I have had some interesting cuisine over the past few weeks. The low light has been one of the big rodents he catches which looks like a giant rat. Here, it is called kokoni. In America, I'd assume it is called big rat. It's more tasty than the baboon meat though. The highlight of things caught has been a turtle. Turtle meat is freakin delicious. On the other hand, turtle eggs might take some time getting used to. My host father is a pretty funny guy, he speaks pretty good English and we like to sit around and watch TV--at my homestay I have electricity 24 hours so using the headlamp to try and catch the rat was unnecessary but more fun. I have been able to see almost all of the USA soccer games here and I actually got the locals to root for USA against Spain which was an amazing game. My host father is a big Brazil fan though so I am sure he is waiting for me to come back to site to bust my chops about last weeks game since I was in the interior when it took place. For those of you who are out of the loop on the soccer scene, Brazil beat USA 3-2 in a championship game. The other show of choice has been some crap Wayne Brady show about don't forget the lyrics. Are people actually watching this crap in America too!? The funniest thing about the TV is that there are only two channels so everyone is watching the same thing. One afternoon, the first X-Men movie came on and I watched it. All the kids thought that that the movie was real and actually happened in America. That afternoon, every Peace Corps volunteer in our village was questioned about whether or not we had a mutant problem in America.
Anywho, my host mother is also a hoot. She cooks for me, makes me tea every morning and does my laundry--I freakin' love this lady. My favorite thing about my host mother is her rule with the microwave. No matter what is put in the microwave, it has to stay in for exactly one minute. When I tried to put a piece of bread in the microwave for 20 seconds she stopped me and made me set the timer to one minute--I had to let the bread cool for like 10 minutes. One time, someone else set the microwave to 1:30 and she did not understand what the heck had happened. She started calling me for help and pointing at the microwave. We had to call a neighbor over because she was so flabbergasted and because I could not understand what the heck was going on. But once I figured out that all she wanted me to do was hit the clear button, all was well in the World, again.
While staying with this family I am also in training several hours a day. For training, I have been in language and technical training while staying with my Suriname family. On the typical day, I have language school at 8 am and it is 4 hours. In the afternoon, I usually have a 3+ hour technical training session. In these technical sessions I have learned many different things from construction to gardening to methods for teaching business and life skills in Suriname.
The most memorable training experience has been the construction training. In my neighboring village, I built what the locals call a kaka wosu. Literally translated: "shit house". This was the first project we, 5 of us Peace Corps Volunteers in the village, completed. When I arrived with my fellow trainees, all I could tell people was "My name is Yonkupai and I am here to build a shit house". So, the youth in the village was completely enamored with us and when I climbed through the shit box I think I instantly made friends with every kid under 10 in town. For the whole week while we were building this kaka wosu every kid in the village would follow us yelling "yonkupai! kaka wosu! kaka wosu!" It took a group of 3 of us and 1 Peace Corps staff member about 3 days to build the kaka wosu, then we assisted in finishing a second on the other side of town with the other group. After this, myself and the other volunteers decided to build a wash house without any assistance from staff. We laid some cement and when it had dried two days later, we constructed a wash house in only 5 hours or so. And so, we have been saving the World one kaka wosu/wash house at a time.
"How long til it comes?"
"That's what she said."--Anonymous
Greetings from Suriname! All has been going well since my last blog--the skin problem cleared up after a couple of days. Since my last post, a lot has transpired. First, I spent three weeks living with a Suriname family--an older man and woman with 17 kids! Luckily, all their kids are older and only one comes around the house occasionally. This past week, I spent at my future site. I will be taking over for one of the volunteers who is ending service. My site is located on the Suriname River at a tourist camp! Right now, I am back in the city, waiting to go back to my Suriname family.
Home stay with a Suriname family has been real interesting. I ended up in a great situation since there are no kids regularly living in my house. Some other volunteers are living in houses with at least 10 kids. So, in the room I am staying, I am back to sleeping in a bunk bed which I assume was left over from earlier days. It is quite ironic because I can not get away from the bunk bed scene(I had a bunk bed with my bro for 10 years, but at least I get bottom bunk this time) but it beats sleeping in a hammock. Anyways, I have also been fortunate to have only one late night visitor so far. One night, at 3:30 in the morning, I was awoken by a rat. A rat! I could hear it crawling around on the opposite side of the room across from my bed. My solution: headlamp and a machete! At 3:30 in the morning, with a headlamp and a machete, I am moving boxes trying to find this rat. Unfortunately I did not find the rodent because he was actually in the vacant room next to mine. So the pest lived and made a ruckus all night.
My home stay family themselves are pretty hilarious. My homestay mom and dad are older--I'd assume 50's. When my host father first met me, he started laughing and yelling "Yonkupai! Yonkupai!" Now, the whole village where I stay calls me 'Yonkupai', which means young boy. My host father is primarily a hunter and so is his neighbor. So, I have had some interesting cuisine over the past few weeks. The low light has been one of the big rodents he catches which looks like a giant rat. Here, it is called kokoni. In America, I'd assume it is called big rat. It's more tasty than the baboon meat though. The highlight of things caught has been a turtle. Turtle meat is freakin delicious. On the other hand, turtle eggs might take some time getting used to. My host father is a pretty funny guy, he speaks pretty good English and we like to sit around and watch TV--at my homestay I have electricity 24 hours so using the headlamp to try and catch the rat was unnecessary but more fun. I have been able to see almost all of the USA soccer games here and I actually got the locals to root for USA against Spain which was an amazing game. My host father is a big Brazil fan though so I am sure he is waiting for me to come back to site to bust my chops about last weeks game since I was in the interior when it took place. For those of you who are out of the loop on the soccer scene, Brazil beat USA 3-2 in a championship game. The other show of choice has been some crap Wayne Brady show about don't forget the lyrics. Are people actually watching this crap in America too!? The funniest thing about the TV is that there are only two channels so everyone is watching the same thing. One afternoon, the first X-Men movie came on and I watched it. All the kids thought that that the movie was real and actually happened in America. That afternoon, every Peace Corps volunteer in our village was questioned about whether or not we had a mutant problem in America.
Anywho, my host mother is also a hoot. She cooks for me, makes me tea every morning and does my laundry--I freakin' love this lady. My favorite thing about my host mother is her rule with the microwave. No matter what is put in the microwave, it has to stay in for exactly one minute. When I tried to put a piece of bread in the microwave for 20 seconds she stopped me and made me set the timer to one minute--I had to let the bread cool for like 10 minutes. One time, someone else set the microwave to 1:30 and she did not understand what the heck had happened. She started calling me for help and pointing at the microwave. We had to call a neighbor over because she was so flabbergasted and because I could not understand what the heck was going on. But once I figured out that all she wanted me to do was hit the clear button, all was well in the World, again.
While staying with this family I am also in training several hours a day. For training, I have been in language and technical training while staying with my Suriname family. On the typical day, I have language school at 8 am and it is 4 hours. In the afternoon, I usually have a 3+ hour technical training session. In these technical sessions I have learned many different things from construction to gardening to methods for teaching business and life skills in Suriname.
The most memorable training experience has been the construction training. In my neighboring village, I built what the locals call a kaka wosu. Literally translated: "shit house". This was the first project we, 5 of us Peace Corps Volunteers in the village, completed. When I arrived with my fellow trainees, all I could tell people was "My name is Yonkupai and I am here to build a shit house". So, the youth in the village was completely enamored with us and when I climbed through the shit box I think I instantly made friends with every kid under 10 in town. For the whole week while we were building this kaka wosu every kid in the village would follow us yelling "yonkupai! kaka wosu! kaka wosu!" It took a group of 3 of us and 1 Peace Corps staff member about 3 days to build the kaka wosu, then we assisted in finishing a second on the other side of town with the other group. After this, myself and the other volunteers decided to build a wash house without any assistance from staff. We laid some cement and when it had dried two days later, we constructed a wash house in only 5 hours or so. And so, we have been saving the World one kaka wosu/wash house at a time.
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