Aqui!

Hola!

So I´ve been here for a week now and it feels like much longer. My host family is very nice, my Dona cooks for me often and my 15 year old host brother Eton is very polite and patient with my broken Spanish. My barrio is GREAT. There is always music blasting, maringue and raggaeton. And if the music doesn´t keep you awake, the chickens and dogs sure will! There´s this awesome call and response thing that the chickens have going on. They will talk to each other from across the town.

It is really great here. I have a huge group of 59 volunteers, and everyone is really cool. We have a great training center in the city with lots of trees and open space. Our spanish classes are very small. I´m in a group with only 2 other volunteers. We were tested on our spanish and rated on a scale of 1 to 10. 0 is you know how to say ´hola´ and 10 is native speaker. I´m ion the 4 group, which I´m really happy with. At the end of training, you have to test at a 5 to be sworn in, so that shouldn´t be a problem, especially considering how much spanish I get everyday.

The hospitality here is really incredible. Whenever I visit the other volunteers in my barrio, their Donas always bring out coffee, which is out of this world by the way, or jugo de limon, or a fruit salad with sugar on it! I´ve played some dominoes and some Dominican card games, and I was even invited to a birthday party this weekend. How exciting!

I´m becoming a pro at bucket showers, and even bucket showers with a headlamp, when the electricity goes out, which is often. I´m at an internet cafe on my street right now, and I´ll try to post as often as possible. Probably about once a week because we are super busy at training. Adios for now!