Strange dreams

Well its been awhile since I have been able to sit down and write out a nice long blog for all of you guys back home. First of all, I can´t believe I have already been gone for over a month. I miss you all dearly! Unfortunately since my last post we have had 4 volunteers in our training class ET.aka.Early Terminate. It is sad to see them go but I think they all made the right decision for them. Things have been hectic here in Community Based Training aka CBT. Our director of the Community Economic Development sector, Tim, is great! He is a lot of fun and we are all learning a lot from him and each other as we are plowing through some of the basic business skills and community diagnostic skills for when we are sent to our own sites. Hopefully it will all come in handy. I live in a small community called Arroyo Blanco, in English that is White Stream basically. My family is great! At first everyone was very quiet around me, quite possibly because I was only the second American that they had ever seen. The first being a PCV that had worked on a water project and got running water going for most members of the community. Strange to think that only 5 years ago this small community did not have running water. The food is great here in the country side, so great that I broke a zipper on a pair of jeans today. Anyway, although there are 15 of us in the CED program, we are all divided into different communities based on our language skills and we have a language instructor that also lives in the community with us for Spanish class each day. I am the only PCV girl in my community, with 3 other guy trainees so that always makes things interesting. I must admit, I feel a little silly when I am the only girl playing soccer-baseball with the Dominicans and 3 other PCV´s but you gotta live a little right? The other volunteers are all pretty far away but at least I get to see them when we have technical classes. It will be interesting to see how things will be when I am ALL ALONE in a community!

Besides all of this, my Spanish has improved from a 6 to a 7.5 out of 10 on the ACTFL scale which I am pretty happy with! I feel more confident with my Spanish now than when we first arrived in the capital, although the campo accent is tough getting used to I am understanding more each day. Bucket baths are actually not as bad as one would imagine either...and I´ve stopped wearing makeup. Besides that, all of us volunteers are having the most wild vivid dreams because of these darn anti malaria pills...I wake up every morning and its always something new. Its kind of like I have two lives.

Today was amazing. We went to 27 charcos and climbed the rocks-cliffs and jumped off of them into the refreshing blue turquoise water. I felt a little silly in the life jacket and helmet but it was still SO refreshing!! Especially after a long week of Spanish class and tech training, it was a well deserved trip.

Tonight I will spend the evening dancing merengue and bachata in the living room of my barn like new home celebrating my host dad and brothers birthdays. It should be an eventful evening, with our without electricity. Most likely without. Again, just like the bucket baths, not nearly as bad as you would imagine. Stay tuned, Peace and Love!

Visit to Los Cocoas

I just returned from a 4 day visit to a volunteer site in Los Cocoas, San Cristobal. Each trainee was assigned a different site in their specific sector (Health, Community Economic Development, Youth or Water Sanitation) so that we could see what the life of a volunteer is like. After taking a bus to San Cristobal, I had to take another bus to the Los Cocoas. I knew as soon as I took off in this bus I was headed for an adventure! The scenery on the ride up to the site was breathtaking. I felt like I was in a tropical jungle winding up to the top of a thousand beautiful mountains. When I pictured being a volunteer on the tropical island of Dominican Republic, I never could have dreamt of such a beautiful place. I mean I thought beaches and palm trees but I had not thought as much about the countryside. By the time I got to the site, I was exhausted from traveling because it took me about 6 hours to get there because the buses here do not leave at specific times, they just leave whenever they fill up. I learned a lot while I was there. The volunteer I visited was living by herself in a small simple shed like house with a tin roof. It was not anything glamorous. I am now an expert at bucket baths with ice cold water, so if anyone needs any pointers back home, let me know. The volunteer I visited is working with a coffee company called "Cafe Esperanza", which is a DELICIOUS coffee that should probably start exporting to the U.S.A. RIGHT NOW so that I can drink it all day everyday. I was able to see the how they process the coffee beans through the different stages until packaging. It was quite interesting and way more complicated than I ever thought it could be. She also was working with a hospital that was pretty much dormant before she got there. She has gotten several doctors to come work there and her mom donated and sent a bunch of hospital supplies to the community from the U.S. The government here makes med students do a year of free service after graduating, so she was able to get in contact with the right people for that. She also teaches English classes and does a workout group on the side 6 days a week.

Another volunteer that works as an environmental volunteer lived 20 minutes from her site, so we went to an inauguration of a stove project. It was really interesting to see how much Peace Corps volunteers mean to small communities because several important members of the community were there to give speeches and several Donas cooked for everyone. Basically her stove project was that she was able to get people in the community together to help them construct 40 stoves that do not use the wood and are bad for the environment and cause damage to lungs and so on.

Well, this week I have my first test for training thus far and will be heading out of Santo Domingo for CBT (Community Based Training) for CED (Community Economic Development) in Altamira in the north. I am super excited because our CED director, Tim, is going to plan an outing for us to visit 27 charcos (waterfalls) which is super beautiful, and you can watch a video of it on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwS6FTdtJOs

Well thats all I got for now, stay tuned for more :) Peace!