Pero yo soy muy serio...

Back from my volunteer visit. Great time. Awesome food (cereal, quesadillas, empanadas, pancakes, pizza). Took a shower. Two a day, in fact. Amazing what a little spewing tube of water can do—like get out the 2-week shampoo buildup in your hair. The visit made me very excited for my own future project site. Hopefully it will be in a school—that seems to be where the excitement is. Loved the campo feel. I like my barrio and all, but the campos and pueblos have a much homier feel. It was my first time out of the Santo Domingo area. The mountainy areas in the DR are awesome. Getting there and back was a total gringa experience, but I succeeded.
Back to training for a few days, then on Thursday the ICT volunteers go to El Seibo for technical training. It’s the UN model city for the UN Millenium Goals, so it’s got 24-hr luz (!) and enough computer labs for all of us to split up into smaller sections and do some hands-on project management of our own. I’m excited. Means a new host family, though. I’d rather take the one I have with me. We’ll be stationed there for 4 weeks. Will hopefully have decent Internet access. Supposedly we take a day-trip to the beach at some point. I’m pretty excited about that.

"This place is kind of like...Jersey"

Things are going well. Although my little little sister has been sick with el gripe so no one sleeps at night. And we are running out of water and our new shipment is almost a week late. No water = no shower, so hopefully it comes soon. Borrowing Harry Potter in Spanish--hopefully that will go smoothly. Language is going slowly but surely. Started running around the barrio, which I was informed the other day is the "hood" of all the barrios. I go to visit a PCV volunteer this Thursday. First time traveling outside of Santo Domingo area and first time traveling alone! Going up near La Vega. Crossed fingers. All for now.

Made it!!

Made it to the DR. Have Internet at the training center but not much free time to use it. Loooove my host family. Two sisters--one 15, one 6. Realizing I'm awful at Spanish (they speak so fast!) but getting better every day. Exhausting but awesome. No running water, so I take bucket baths every morning. Very cold but efficient. I do jumping jacks beforehand to get ready. Not too much electricity but it never fails to come on for the evening tv. The colmado (general store that turns into a bar at night) plays extremely loud music from up the street 24/7 en mi barrio. I go to sleep to the sweet sounds of reggaetone. Found chocolate milk yesterday!!! Going into the center of the city (Santo Domingo)tomorrow to find the Peace Corps office. Fellow volunteers are awesome. Lucky to have great vecinos (neighbors) in my barrio (neighborhood). So much to say!

So this is it...

So this is the "blog" I'll be using while I'm in the DR. Under my profile is a link to my pictures website. I'll try to keep both updated, but just know I was never good at keeping a journal.