Sunday, December 21, 2014

Merry Christmas!

It's a hot, sunny day (like most days here), the bougainvillea is blowing in the breeze, a ripe guava fell into our yard yesterday, I took a new family to the downtown market today to buy produce--and I'm listening to some Scottish bagpipe Christmas number on Grooveshark.  We have our tree and lights up, decorations the kids made at school, and we're lighting our candle and doing advent every night.  I think I've accepted the tropical Christmas as a real Christmas at this point.  It helps that my parents come to stay with us over the holiday break.






We made gingerbread houses again this year, though technically, I guess you'd call them sesame cracker houses.  Our gingerbread houses collapsed the day we made them last year because they couldn't take the humidity.  But I spent a good long time finding sturdy crackers, so this year's are holding up much better.  My kids are so into their g
ingerbread houses that starting around Halloween they start hoarding pretty candy that looks gingerbread-house worthy.




[On a side note, the neighbor's house alarm has been going off for four straight hours this afternoon with little tiny breaks where it went off before getting triggered again.  It is currently quiet, and I am choosing to hope that the neighbors are back and that this is not another pause in the insanity.  Oh dear.  It started up again before I even finished getting that written.]





Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Roach Invasion

Roaches are a problem in this country.  I've seen some really big ones in my house since I've moved here, and the kids love to reminisce about some of the times I've screamed upon finding a roach (well, mostly they loved my reaction when I found a big one in the back of their paper-stuffed desk).  But I've found that if I use traps sold in the U.S. (brought to me by my parents when they visit--thanks, Mom!) I can keep them under control.

But lately we had a big issue with roaches.  I don't know if it was the rain, but they got bad.  And let me tell you, it sure has tested my commitment to more natural solutions.  Because part of me just wanted to call in the guy with the scary chemicals to blast them all.  (And, let's face it, at some point that's what I'd have to do.)  But thankfully I've had some days now without any sightings or early-morning roach killings.  It seems as though the traps placed everywhere, along with borax sprinkled on my counter at the back edge, along with borax and sugar water-soaked cotton balls stuffed in random places, along with trying to keep the counters very wiped, along with prayer that God would get rid of our roaches--has actually paid off.  I did not have to call in the chemical guy!

It was a very embarrassing problem to have.  I didn't ever want to be one of those houses where each dish and piece of silverware had to be washed before using (which is a common practice here), but I was becoming one.

So thankful to be not seeing roaches!

Thursday, December 4, 2014

Micah and Jesse Would Like to Share . . .

I guess Micah and Jesse have learned from watching their mother that important things make the blog.  So they both requested that the following receive a blog post:

School project: representation of Salto de Limon in the D.R. courtesy of Lego.  I liked how
Micah used all the half Legos to show that they were swimming in the water.


Jesse lost his top front tooth, and he's very proud.  It actually got very wiggly and turned gray and the dentist pulled it.
Incidentally, did you know the tooth fairy gives double for dentist-pulled teeth?  Micah gave me some dirty looks when
he found that out.  Jesse's teeth on either side of the hole are very wiggly.  He may soon have some trouble eating pizza.

Doctor Visits Can Trigger Culture Stress

I took Jesse to the doctor today and left feeling very frustrated.  It was not a unique experience.  This is how it often is when I leave the doctor here.  I think it's because what I expect as an American is not working with how things are done here.  There's something very different about how doctors talk to patients.  They do not like to be questioned, or maybe it's that they are so unfamiliar with it that they don't know how to handle it.  

In America, I now realize, we question our doctors.  If they say to use this cream and drink this medicine, we ask what it's for.  We expect them to in some sense educate us, to sell us on their diagnosis.  We realize that there is more than one way to skin a cat, and we'd like to know which method they're proposing.  And we want to make sure the skin really needs to come off, so to speak.  Dominicans don't, they just do what the doctor says.

If we are prescribed a medicine and it doesn't fully work, we expect some kind of explanation for why it didn't work or why he wanted to try it first.  We don't expect to be told that "no medicine is magic" when we say that it's not working (which is what he said to me).  

I explained that coconut oil seemed to work better and was prescribed another medicine.  I asked what the medicine would do, and the doctor said it would soften his skin.  I asked what it would do different than coconut oil, which was softening his skin, and he said it was designed for this skin condition.  This answer didn't really give any new information.  I tried again to see what it would do different than coconut oil, I asked leading questions about how coconut oil would maybe just mask symptoms instead of curing something, and he said it wouldn't cure anything, it would soften his skin.  He said he wasn't familiar with the medicinal properties of coconut oil, but that I was welcome to get a second opinion in the states.

I'm fairly sure there would be a least some medical argument for using his creams and soaps he prescribed, I just wish he would engage in a discussion about it.  If I have castille soap and coconut oil and they'll do the same thing, I'd rather go with those.  But the "less is more" attitude toward medicine has not hit the D.R.  The doctor looks at you with a quizzical look which says, "If you don't want my medicine and my diagnosis, then why did you come here?" which I must say is very effective for making me mumble my thank you's and take my leave.  Frustrated.