Today my day started early, around 2am I needed to call a cab so that Keith, Rich’s friend could head back to the airport. Calling a taxi here is a full chore in itself, phone operators speak very fast and you have to be able to communicate fast in a short amount of time and the caller has to be able to understand which unit they are sending and what color is the car to make sure that the service is safe. After this small task, I went back to bed and in the morning the three of us, Rich, Sapun and I headed out early to our meeting. This was our first interview day without Mike in the team, but this was a different set up as well. We were all meeting one of the main policy makers in the country together, instead of splitting up like we did in the areas the week before. Tito was happy to see us this morning. He was actually kind of chatty. We arrived to our meeting site early for our 9:00 a.m. meeting. We met the main policy maker as well as a couple of technicians. We were very excited about completing these meetings.
Next we went back to PAI and ate from “La Livia”, a nearby local food restaurant. We had rice, some meat and our much loved tostones. Our next meeting of the day required some preparation as well. So after a brainstorming session, we had a meeting with our main collaborator. Our half an hour meeting turned into a 2 1/2 half hours, but we learned lot. We felt like we had accumulated enough knowledge for the day. Something interesting that I had noticed in this particular day is that blackouts occur so often throughout the day, that people don’t blink or stop when they happen, they just keep going on with their meetings. This happened twice during the day. This is part of the D.R. life. This night we had a mellow dinner, ate delivered pizza and begin to wrap up.
-Azucena
Caption: An order of “Tostones” (fried plantains), part of our current diet… tasty
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