A Little Something Sweeney: Family. Friends. Fiction. Food.

You and me and the Devil do NOT make three. I am not a witchy woman. What is with the people this week? Answer: They are no longer people. They have turned into a hideous sub-species of perpetual drunkards. I don´t know if the people who are telling me I´m a blond American devil are drunk or just crazy. Yesterday, Sunday, the supposed day of the Lord (go figure), is when people started freaking out on me. One bearded gentleman (why do most of them have beards?) started chasing us with his big metal pole telling me I´m the devil, so I ignored him and entered in my apartment complex. He left me alone. As Hna. Paus and I, later that day, were walking up to the craziest street in this entire country, the Dr. Defillo, when I lady with Medusa-like hair and milk streaming from her mouth yelled for us to cross to the other side of the road, because, you guessed it, I´m a giant devil. I think she had me confused for someone else... but anyway, I couldn´t help but think how lucky I am not to h...

Remember that time when everything is different than how it used to be? Yeah.... But sometimes that´s good and sometimes that´s bad. How profound. But, as Jesus was know to do now and then, he gave some good insight into the human condition when he observed that no one who has old wine will automatically want new wine because they will claim the old is better. He was referring to the new, higher, better law he had brought to the people to replace the Law of Moses. But it can be applied to any other life change as well. We seem to either want to cling to past traditions/habits, even if there is obviously a better way presented to us, or sometimes we take the opposite stratagem and try to abandon everything, hoping that going to a new place, starting over, whatever, will make everything from a shattered past become a forgotten memory. However, I think the real trick is, unshockingly, finding a happy balance between the two. Forgiving, forgetting, and moving forward, but remembering that...

Howdy Partners. This is your capitán speaking. Well, capitána. But the feminist in me refuses to acknowledge the genderizing of nouns and verbs. Which means I may be doomed to have terrible grammar, but at least I´ll be getting my point across, even if I´m the only one who knows it. Anyway, as some of you may already know/taken for granted, this week was the great big day of thanks. And I feel quite ashamed of how I have been mistreating my American roots this week. I just realized that for 6 months, o sea, half a year, I have been living with pure Latins. What? How? So this week has been quite an adjustment for me, because I now have another American in the house, Hermana Dawe. Which means i´ve been speaking a whole pile of English. I can´t even stop it. It is English-rrhea, which is a lot better than the real thing. And because she only has a couple transfers in the field, she´s been able to catch me up on some of the stuff I´ve been missing over the last, oh you know, 16 MONTHS...

And it never is. I know that I never guess the transfers right. I know this, and yet, I´m still always so surprised when I´m way off (Sampsonite). Anyway, I´ll tell it in brief, so I don´t depress myself with the craziness of my unknown future. I´m staying in Quisqueya AGAIN, and so in Rodriguez. But not as companions. I´m getting the much-coveted Hna. Paus, (everyone says she´s cool) and my companion is getting a girl named Hna. Dawe. She, like myself, was trained in the Yuca, and thought after her two training transfers where over that she´d be staying there. I know this, because her zone and my zone had an activity, and she told me so. Instead, she´s coming here, with my old comp, and we´re dividing an area that I´ve already been in for four transfers and that is not very big to begin with. I feel like this should make me despair, but there are some advantages: 1). I don´t have to pack 2). I don´t have to pack ANYTHING. Ok, I am going to switch rooms. But that doesn´t cou...

Muhahahahahahahha! They come at me with swords, with spears, and with onions, and yet... I live. As long as it´s not Britney Spears, that is. Anyway, I feel like a good many people are familiar with the movie Monty Python and The Holy Grail. One of those movies that´s too stupid and good to be true. But one of the parts that really tickles my fancy is when there is a guy passing by with a giant wagon, calling for the people of olden times to "bring out your dead." The film treats the theme of the Dark Ages, so of course, there would have to be a shout-out to the black plague in there. The area the wagon is passing through is filled with dead bodies, ravaged by the plague. But one overanxious survivor is bringing to the wagon a body to dispose of, a body that, well, isn´t yet dead. The person being dragged tries to protest his state of existence, insisting "I´m not yet dead!" But his companion proclaims just as vehemently that he is, indeed dead. Considering the...

This may be the best advice I´ve ever given myself on the mission. It´s a great big part of being fearless. I´ve seen a lot, I´ve tried a lot, and I´ve tasted a lot. And it´s not always pleasant, as I may have expressed in the past. Well, whether the challenge be great or small, sometimes you just gotta toughen up, try not to look, and shove it on down. This was my case this last week. We visited a member and we went into her kitchen to shoot the breeze and help her straighten up. On the table was a big, transparent jug, through which I could see a brown liquid, atop which was floating something (a lot of somethings), that looked suspiciously like yellow spongy foam. I thought, "man, what the crap is that!?" I guess I thought somehow I would get away without having to know anything more about it. Not so. We were cordially invited by the Hermana to partake. It´s a juice called Jagua (ha-gwa), and I may or may not have been forced to re-taste it on and off for the rest of the ...

Well, the holiday of genius has finally arrived, one of my very favorites. It´s time to whip out the overpriced candy bars and dress like something you´re not. Halloween combines my two favorite things: Junk food and pretend (I didn´t minor in theater for nothing). But even though this special day is not really celebrated in the D.R. (hey, people already have their Christmas lights up), I have still found many ways to celebrate, because, well, I´m surrounded by the horror, THE HORROR! Scary Scenario 1 - The timeless debate of Rocky vs. Más Más. I had no idea that said debate even existed until one day I told someone how much I like Más Más candy bars. This person then told me that they prefer Rocky's. Now, being a fairly intelligent individual, I assumed all people knew that Más Más bars are superior. What is the difference between the two? Well, a Más Más bar contains a delicious combination of salty peanuts and sweetened raisins. It´s like 2 candy bars for the price of one (...

So don´t get me wrong, I like a good literary device just as much as the next sister missionary. But biblical parables have never been a one of the few of my favorite things. Well, some yes some no. One that I´ve never been fond of was the parable of the Shepard and the lost sheep. It´s nice in theory- a Shepard has 100 sheep, one gets lost, and he goes to find it. And has success. Simple. Sensical. Not too much suspense. But the part that rubbed my fleece wrong was how at the end of the parable, it says that this Shepard has more joy in that one sheep than in the other ninety-nine. To me, that makes oh-so-little sense. Talk about giving someone jealous sibling syndrome. I can just imagine those other sheep conversing amongst themselves saying, "wait, so if we get lost too, will we suddenly become more noticed, more loved, will our sales value increase? It almost seems like an incentive for being bad to the bone. But if we remember that the Shepard is Jesus and that we are the sh...

Possibility: "If only I hadn´t" as one of the most used phrases known to humankind. Fact: Said by everyone who has ever lived more than once in their lifetime. I (like everyone else in the world) have had many of these experiences. It ain´t called hindsight for nothing. It´s because, like Pumba used to tell me, "you gotta put your past in your behind." But you can´t do that until you´ve moved on and have somewhere behind you to put the past. Anyway, the only good thing about this experience is that I can relate it to a gospel principle. Score! Topic:repentance Emotion: annoyance So, in the apartment I now live in, I find myself without a blender and without a working oven. Pain in the butt, I tell you what. But in my first transfer here, I thought, "eh, well, I´ll get it fixed soon enough." And then I just worked around not having an oven. Pretty ingenious. And I guess I didn´t figure on spending much time in this area (joke on me) for some re...

And how. Now, I know this goes against all reason, but hear me out. Let´s imagine there´s a place called Pizza Hut . It´s pretty good pizza, but I´m easy to please. Anyway, Pizza Hut exists here, and it´s still tasty. But if you want to sit and eat in the dining room with the air conditioning, you have to pay extra. The wonders never cease. Anyway, for those of us not rich enough to pay for pizza AND A.C. (a.k.a. EVERY missionary out here), sometimes you have to look for... alternatives. One such available to us here in the D.R. is an establishment called Pizza House. "Well, that sounds o.k.," you might reason with yourself. Sometimes intuition is stronger than reason. Just looking at the place, I couldn´t help but think "I think gross and cheap have to be at least two of the ingredients in this pizza." This place had no shame. They keep their already made crusts in the fridge with the drinks. With the drinks! Pizza House has no shame, and you can taste it. When it...

Well, because Taco Bell has a half off deal on all their burritos, Chalupas, and tacos, my companion and I have taken advantage of this special offer for the last two weeks. When your 50 peso taco becomes a 25 peso taco, there is cause for much rejoicing. But Hna. Rodriguez wasn´t completely content. "What is this?" she asked, pointing to the paper that covers the brown food trays used for those who want to stay and eat inside (with air conditioning and the occasional 80´s tune). She pointed specifically to a rather beautiful picture of a crunchy taco. I know what a taco is, and I know she does, so using my college degree to look below the surface of her question, I knew she was referring to the presentation of said taco. "Well," I told her, "there´s a saying in English- 'you get what you pay for.'" "Uh, this IS what I paid for," she insisted, pointing again to the falsely advertised taco. I wasn´t so disturbed, perhaps because to me, it´...

Well, it´s true. We all have our moments, and right now, my life is one. Long. Moment. I guess it happens to the best of us. But my companion said it best while walking stiffly with pus oozing from her hideous leg: "this is my life right now." They always say the things that are true are funniest. Add to that the fact that she actually said it in English and you have wet-your-pants hilarea. But my life right now is an extension of last week, when I didn´t get a change to write. Why didn´t I? Well, at the risk of repeating myself, "THIS IS MY LIFE RIGHT NOW!" We came into the Internet center, sat down, got down to business, and five minutes later... bye bye sweet electricity of mine. So we played that game where you keep sitting at your computer, hoping the power will come back. It doesn´t but you keep a-sitting and a-hoping. And then you´ve found you´ve sat for so much time that it seems silly to leave because we all know as soon as we do, who will come back? Why, t...

I would like to know if there is an easy way to inform someone of a potentially embarrassing situation. We all know that if we say, "hey, your fly is down," or "there´s an enormous bogey in your left nostril," that these casual observations can quickly convert into feeling of shame and sadness on the part of the offending party, especially if said observations are reported after a manner of announcing them in a rather public way. But what do you do if shouting is your only option, and even when you do it, know one can here you? So as usual, I have no idea if I mentioned previously how house contacting, street contacting, or communication in general works out here in the D.R. To talk on the phone, you have to buy cards from the colmados or phone stores with a set amount of minutes on them. Actually, I have no idea how many minutes are on them, because it only tells you how many pesos you paid for the card. So I know I have a hundred pesos worth of minutes, and I stil...