Happy Birthday to Me!

Thanks everyone for all the Happy Birthdays! It´s nice to know I am not being forgotten:) I just spent the second week in my site and I think I am getting accostumed to it. It was a little rough at first, I wont lie. For my birthday my family cooked me a birthday cake of sorts. It was a mix of corn meal, sugar, milk (that we just milked from the cow), and butter. We boiled it over an open fire and then covered it and put burning embers on the top. That is apparently an old fashioned oven. It was nice of them to show that they cared about me. And then at the town meeting everyone sang me happy birthday:) All in all it was the best I could have asked for down here. And it just got even better once I saw all the emails:)

What else have I done this week...a lot of nothing. I have started playing cards with the kids at night time. They are all fascinated by my shuffling capabilites. Although trying to explain tot them how to do it is a little tricky but I´m working on it.

The rest of the day, I go for walks and visit people. I go to town meetings and I went to a talk about self esteem. It was for the parents and howt ehy shouldnt call their kids or students stupid or ugly or bad. since the kids internalize it. After all that, it was time for questions and a mom asked, ¨ but what if my kid really is bad¨ I think the point was lost on her.

For the week ahead, I have a meeting with the kids tomorrow. We are trying to see how many high schoolers live in the area so we can petition the government for a school bus. The high school is about a half hour away and costs the kids a lot to get there right now on motorcycle taxis and buses. hopefully we can get a bus donated to the town.

Better run now, dont have a lot of time left on the internet! Dont forget to write!

Well tomorrow I move into my site permanently, so I am a little nervous! No more Americans or staff to spend time with. To celebrate this we all got in our last bits of Americanism yesterday. We went to the Embassy and ate in their restaurant and then swam in the pool. Where I had my first ever, hot running shower in this country. I think I might need to visit the embassy more often! And the food was pretty good too. For dinner we went to the Hard Rock Cafe and had appetizers, drinks and desserts. I think the Piña Colada's I had here was the best I have ever had:)

Today I am just getting ready. Trying to pack all my stuff into my bags and then considering whether or not I will be able to take my motoconcho ride with the driver, myself and my rolling duffel, and my back pack. Think I can do it? I am hoping so! But the motoconcho driver might just laugh at me when he says it all.

Well, as I said before I have no cell phone service and no internet in my site. So I am going to try and go into town at least every other week for mail, internet and phones. If I dont get back to you quickly dont worry(and dont forget to write!). It will come eventually.

Wish me Happy Birthday and talk to you all soon!

Photos!

These are the jovenes that show me around town all the time. As you can see they are very into posing for cameras:)
My house in my site.
My family from Los Cocos, Santiago
Me, Jen and Judy on the hike to Pico Diego O'Campo

Jen, Me and Kelsi playing Dominos at a local Colmado(Don't worry I was kicking butt:)
Josette, David and Me at graduation.
Kevin, Alicia, Judy, Jen, Me, David, Colleen, Zoe and Joe. All the enviornmental Ed group at our graduation.

Moving Again

I moved back to Santo Domingo today. Every time I move it gets harder since I am slowly accumulating more stuff. My family from Santiago gave me a mug, some bowls and other kitchen items for me to take so that I have things to start my own house with and I can remember who gave them to me. It was really sweet. I woke up early this morning to make them a special pancake breakfast. They really loved that. Then with my little procession of neices, sister, and cousin we all walked down the street carrying my bags of stuff to my stop. This whole having 3 families here is rough. I hope I like the next family just as much since I will be living with them for the next three months!

When I got back to my house here I found that the rats invaded my stuff. That was a little disturbing. They ate through one of my shirts...how does a shirt even taste good? It was one of my two tank tops too. Ahhh! Rats are not something I think I am going to come to terms with. I am getting used to the cockroaches but rats are just too much. The other week in Spanish class we actually learned the words to La Cucharacha. I never knew, but it is about a cockroach in a trash can who can't walk because the ants ate his legs.

My spanish is getting a lot better. Although I still find the slang tricky. My dona the other day said to me, ya ta. I was like what??? That is slang for ya, esta....already done? They also say como tu ta for comos estas. They really cant drop letters and expect me to understand what they are saying right now.

La Semana Santa

This past weekend was a holy weekend so we all got Thursday afternoon through Sunday off. It was great:) Very relaxing. I went swimming in the river, took a hike, ate sweet beans which I actually liked, went to the monument in Santiago, and best of all...we went to McDondalds, ate ice cream and cake for my niece's birthday. That was a great day. I know McDonalds is not that great, but I associate it with the United States and American food, which any American food has become a delicacy here. Since most days all I get is beans and rice and we all know how much I love that. And actually the McDonalds here wasnt bad, they even toasted the bun:) This week is my last week in Los Coco's, and after that I move back to Santo Domingo for a few days and then off to my site. Which I find out where that is this coming Monday! Very exciting!

Stupid Internet :)

Sorry I have not written in so long, it has taken me a week just to figure out the internet in my new town and I am still having some troubles. I cant even access my blog here...I think it might be because the computers are so slow? So I am sending it to Greg for him to post it. When I first got to Los Coco´s we went to a retreat center in the mountains to learn about Eco-tourism. It was a cool experience -in more ways than one. It was freezing cold and raining a lot and then it had amazing views. We hiked to the top of Pico Diego and from there you could see the whole city of Santiago as well as a few mountain villages. One night while we were there we had a bonfire with s´mores. That was a good night.

Last Sunday I met my new family here. I now have a Don, Doña, the Don´s sister, a grandmother, a 16 year old sister and a 15 year old brother as well as a neice who is about 4. All in one house that has three bedrooms. (Don´t worry, I have my own). They are all really great, and I can usually understand what everyone says except the Grandmother, she seems a little crazy. The Doña thinks that I need to be fattened up, so I get yelled at if I dont eat enough. I have had to start working out in my room just to combat her efforts. I havn´t tried running yet because I heard from other volunteers that when you first start either you have dogs(and these are stray dogs) or kids running after you. I thought I might wait until I get to my site before I try to lose the dogs and kids. Yesterday my Spanish class went into Santiago to a mall - a really nice mall too, and we got stuff to make an American meal. Mac and cheese, guacamole and chocolate chip cookies. Making it turned out to be an adventure because they dont have measuring cups or anything here so everything is really a guess. The mac and cheese was pretty good, but the cookies that I was in charge of were a little iffy. They still tasted great they just didnt ever look pretty. Oops, I guess I will have to practice a little more with that!!!

And another bites the dust

We lost another trainee today to an unfortunate accident. Jon, one of our two retired trainees, was climbing a fence while he was visiting his volunteer and somehow fell and hurt his leg. The medical office doesn´t think he can adequately recover in order to continue his service. I feel really bad for him, but they say that he is okay with the decision to return to the United States. I am a big believer in fate and what is meant to be will be, there most have been a reason why he shouldn´t be here. Good luck to you Jon, hope your leg recovers and that you enjoyed the time that you did have here.