Celebrando las Chicas!

Hello again! Long time, no see. I swear I'm going to get better at this updating thing if it kills me.

As most of you know, last week marked my 1 year anniversary in the Dominican Republic. I can't believe I've been here over a year! I've had my ups and downs, good Dominican days and bad ones, language difficulties (and a few successes here and there), skin infections, injuries, amazing adventures, new appreciation for regaton and bachata music, new love for coffee and salami, new friends that I couldn't survive without, old friends that show me that our friendships will never change, a birthday, a dog for a day, 5 visitors, 1 mugging, 0 Dominican boyfriends, tons of sunburns, 1 case of bed bugs, lots of alone time, about 500 hours of dancing time, and more emotions than I can count.

And I'm still loving it.

Thanks for your prayers and your encouragement through it all. I have no doubt that the next year and 3 months will provide me with more vaina for which to be thankful and, of course, to blog about. Vamos a ver :o)

For now, here are some pictures from an event Sabrina and I planned this past weekend. We won a grant for International Women's Day, so we were able to host a free event for girls in our communities. We meant for the event to be for our 2 girls groups (YES! I started it 2 weeks ago and I'm loving it. The girls are great and haven't even hinted about giving me a makeover yet. Gracias a Dios.) and we had planned on inviting about 15 girls each for a total of 30. We started getting nervous that nobody was going to come and we'd be stuck with tons of snacks, pizza, and art supplies for the 2 of us to take care of; entonces, we started telling a few more girls that we knew about the event.

There ended up being over 65 girls at the event! It was so much fun. Other volunteers that live nearby, Lindsey and Joe, came to help out, too...which saved our lives. It was a great time, and I think the girls had fun and (hopefully) learned a little about self esteem, gender equality, HIV/AIDS, and famous women throughout history. If nothing else, they got out of their houses for an afternoon and got a free t-shirt out of the deal. I'll take it.













Have a good week! And happy (early) Women's Day!