internet cafe...hooray!

Beaches. Check (kinda). Beans. Check. Bucket showers. Double check. Internet café…finally! I have actually been coming to this internet place for the past 2 days; however, as soon as I am about to update my blog, the electricity has gone out. That actually happens a lot here, and people just seem to go with the flow. I am trying. For example, I know the electricity is going to go out at my house around 7 every morning, so I just get up a little earlier to make sure I am not trying to stumble around in the dark to get ready for training. That is going with the flow, right? Anyways, now on to the actual updating portion of this blog…here is what I wrote a little over a week ago…

Ok! So I feel like it has been forever since I have communicated with ANYONE outside of Santo Domingo…one expensive, hurried call to my family and a quick Facebook status update does not seem good enough. I would like to say HI to anyone who is reading this…hopefully things are going well wherever you are and with whatever you are doing. :o) We just have limited internet access at our training site, and I have yet to find a good internet café [how quickly things change]. So for now, this blog must suffice. I am actually typing this at my host family’s house (on my bed, under my mosquito net, everyone else is asleep), and I will try to upload it on the web whenever I get a chance. With all of that said, I AM HERE!!!!! In the DR. It’s still hard to believe.

Today is Monday, so our group has been in Santo Domingo for a grand total of 5 days [13 days now]. It seems like I have been here forever, and, at the same time, I am not sure if it is ever going to feel “normal.” If that makes sense. Our days are long and the culture is a lot to take in…especially for me since I do not know Spanish. More stories about that in a second. We landed in Santo Domingo on Thursday, and the two groups (IT and Environment) took buses to a place about an hour away where we stayed the first night. This is where we first had lessons about the dangers in the DR: mosquitoes, unsanitary water, AIDS, etc. We got our first Rabies shot, and we had to start taking malaria pills…which we were warned could possibly give us hallucinations and “techni-colored dreams.” Haven’t experienced those yet, but I’m still holding out hope that I will at least have one. We were also given mosquito net training and told that we have to sleep with them above our beds every night. So that’s the run-down of Day 1 in the DR. ..Day 2 of my experience if I am going to keep up with it that way. Who knows.

Day 3: We took the buses to our actual training site where we will have our classes for the first 2 months or so. It is BEAUTIFUL. Hopefully I can include pictures tomorrow. We will have training there about 6 days a week, and it’s not a bad place to be stuck for 9 hours a day. After our first day of lessons, it was time to meet our host family. I am going to start off by saying that my family is wonderful; however, the only problem is that I don’t know what they are saying half (aka all) the time. My Dona (mom- not sure yet how to make a ~ over the n :o) )is Mama Sol. The other houseguests include: her mother (mi Abuela), her son, Eduard, and “una inquilina llamada” (houseguest?) aka a random military girl. We can call her MG. After Mama Sol got over her initial shock and possible disappointment that I am a chica not a chico (like she kept muttering throughout the entire first awkward walk home), I think she started to warm up to me. I have already met a bunch of people who I think are neighbors, friends, relatives, and possibly more randoms, and it took me a while to figure out who actually lives in the house. My first HUGE mistake was completely idiotic and highlights the fact that I desperately need to learn the language fast...

BACKGROUND: I took Spanish at a different college because I was scared it would hurt my GPA and I figured I would never really need it. Joke’s on me. Let’s just say, playing Spanish Bingo 3 times a week for a few semesters does not constitute language training. For example, day numero uno of meeting my host family, I completely panicked. The few Spanish words and phrases that I know went right out the window and the only thing that came to mind was the Taco Bell commercial. In my head, “Yo Quiero Taco Bell” translated to “I like Taco Bell.” So I decided to use that expression for everything once we arrived back at their house. Yo quiero tu casa, yo quiero in the garden, yo quiero about Mama Sol’s shirt. Mama Sol ended up giving me the pet turtles after I said that I liked them. She put them in a bowl and had me take them into my room. I was sooo excited and though this was the kindest gesture I had ever seen and I gave her a huge hug. I mean, how generous is that? She also gave me plantains right away, as well. It wasn’t until later when we were sitting in the living room watching Spanish soap operas that it hit me…Yo quiero Taco Bell means I WANT Taco Bell. Here I came waltzing into their house saying “I want” about everything. that. I. saw. I about died when I realized that was why she fixed me something from the garden and gave me their freakin pets?! Thank goodness she didn’t have small children running around whom I would have thought that I was just saying that I liked. For crying out loud. Definitely my first lesson learned. Excerpt from my journal from that night:

Goal #1.Gotta gotta gotta learn the language pronto.
Goal #2. Must figure out how to get their pet turtles back to them without looking ungrateful or indecisive/ out of my mind.

Since the mishap on the first meeting day, things have been fine. There is just a lot of silence in my house accompanied by a lot of smiles. You can never go wrong with a smile, right? Mi abuela will just come up and hold my face in her hands and squeeze my cheeks and walk away. Hugs have become a big thing with her. MG didn’t talk to me for the first few days, but I think she likes me now and she even let me feel her biceps. Let’s just say it was impressive/intimidating all at the same time. If I understand correctly, she is a professional weightlifter too. This could be completely wrong, but it helps me sleep at night because I feel protected with her in the next room, so I will keep thinking that. Hopefully soon I will be able to actually converse with my family! Baby steps.

Hmmm….other than the language barrier, everything is going so much better than I could have imagined! I really like all of the other volunteers, and Santo Domingo is such a neat place. I am constantly learning about their culture, and I can’t take everything in fast enough. The Peace Corps training process has been great so far, too. The instructors are all open and willing to answer any questions that we might have, and they bring in current volunteers (apparently I am merely a trainee at this point) to give us a better idea of what we are going to be doing and what we should expect over the next 2 years. Oh- and bucket showers aren’t bad and I like the food. Not a bad start.

One huuuuge blessing was that I met some of the neighbor boys that know a little English. They are great and seem so excited to help me learn Spanish. Their names are Manuel (15), Frank (17), and Victor (21). Frank has probably become my one and only Dominican friend who is excited to show me the ins and outs of the city…”even Burger King,” he said. Can’t wait :o) They live right next door, so for the past 2 nights, we have been standing at the gate that separates the 2 houses and talking through the fence. Manuel is determined to teach me to dance like a Dominican. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I can’t even dance like an American, but I have a feeling he’s going to find out soon enough.Anyways, last night I hung out at Victor’s empanada stand with all of the neighborhood kids. I am going to try and go to church with them on Saturday because a few of them are in the church band, so that should be fun!

Flash forward to present day: in the pitch black internet café…squinting and pecking to update this little part, finished training for the day, about to go home and probably watch the soap opera “Decisiones” (maybe one of these days I will figure out who is having affairs with whom) or possibly see what’s going on at the empanada stand. A lot has changed since I first tried to blog…I have made some more neighbor friends, I have been learning more about what I am going to be doing, I have been to a few social events in the community (like church and a discoteca), MG is now Cristina (she even asked me to go running with her sometime…not sure if I can handle that, but if it means being accepted into the culture/my home a little more, I might just have to set aside my hatred for running and my physical incapability and take one for the team). I feel like there are so many more updates that I could mention here, but I guess I should keep this entry shorter than a novel, so there ya go. All in all, things are great, and I feel so lucky so far. We have been able to explore the city some, and tomorrow I am going to travel to Santiago to visit a volunteer and see what her day-to-day life is like. I will stay with her until Sunday, and then head back to my barrio for more soap operas and turtles. Wish me luck…the directions included the following: take a bus for approximately 2 hours and get off at Santiago, take a motoconcho (ride on the back of a motorcycle) until you see a green sign, turn left, ride about 20 minutes, you should be able to see a small stream in the gully if you look below, then ask people that you see where to find the volunteer. Perfect. I get lost using my GPS in the states, so this should be interesting. More updates to come!

Mama Sol and mi abuela (in the necklace that I gave her)
My host family´s house!


the dang turtles. Mickey and ¨Mimmie¨



THE EMPANADA STAND!