One month down, 26 to go

I have now been in the Dominican Republic for one month and a day! Sometimes it feels like it has been much longer than a month, but given how much I have yet to learn it feels like I just got here. I have comfortably settled into Constanza much quicker than in Santo Domingo. There are about 90,000 people in this city but I work and live in the same barrio so it feels much smaller. My host mom has 14 siblings, 9 of which live in Constanza, so we spend much of our time visiting family. Each sibling has openly welcomed me into the community (just like every other Dominican).


Hanging out with my host family has been a lot of fun, though I have to admit that this past week has been jam packed with work and thus provided minimal time to socialize. We have technical training from 8 until noon and Spanish from 2 until 5, and then we meet with our youth groups/work on community diagnostics. Today we had our community diagnostic presentation, one of three presentations required to become a volunteer, so hopefully now things will calm down a bit. To prepare for the presentation we had to organize a focus group, informal interviews, community mapping and more to understand how our youth group functions and what we can to do to help them grow stronger. I am working with four other volunteers on this project and it’s been a little stressful but a lot of fun, too. Jumping into the field and working with youth has definitely made me excited for what’s to come in my actual job.

So one month down and one and a half to go of training. Sometimes I feel ready to start work and other times I sense that I need more time to prepare. In terms of Spanish, the more I learn the less I feel that I know. I did move up one level in my language proficiency since arriving in country which is promising, but there is still so much to learn! Dominicans talk FAST and it is hard to adjust to.

Today I had my most traumatic experience thus far in country: my hand was attacked by fire ants. My Spanish class met in the mountains and as I was sitting in the grass I suddenly felt intense burning on my hand and holy cow -- do not mess with fire ants. I had tons of little white bumps on my hand and it hurt!! Ok, so I am mostly writing about this to show how lucky I have been. A lot of volunteers have had problems adjusting to all this change so for me to only have dealt with ants, I feel very fortunate.

We've got a lot of excitement to come in the following weeks. We will soon be preparing our next presentation, a charla on sex, and on October 1st we find out our placements for the next two years. I am anxious to find out where I will be living and working!! In the meantime, I am going to enjoy my weekend of hanging out with friends and host family, participating in a big domino tournament, and last but (hopefully) not least, attending a Jehovah's Witness church service. Wish me luck!