I hope everyone had a great thanksgiving. All the volunteers got together in the capital for a big celebration that was quite a lot of fun. I got to do a little beat boxing for the talent show, seemed like it was a big hit. Unfortunately a bunch of people from our group have had to leave for various reasons. This is always sad to hear and puts a damper on things. I am starting to get settled into my site making some new friends and improving my spanish, though i still have a long ways to go. My site is pretty disorganized, I can tell that getting people together to move forward on projects is going to be a big challenge, hopefully I am up to the task.
Life here isn't all rough, but its not all fun and games either. The community I work in is extremely poor, there isn't much in the way jobs. People pretty much live off what they grow in the farm. That being said, everyone is very happy and friendly, even though they don't have the material comforts that we have, they certianly enjoy life. I hope everyone back home is doing well, I miss everyone a lot. Send me updates even if i don't get back to you. Its nice to hear from the outside world

So I have been in my campo a bit over three weeks I guess. Everything here is going fairly well, if a bit slow. The people here are absolutely wonderful, they have greeted me with open arms everywhere I turn. I spend most of my days taking pictures of the people here. They get really excited to have someone come and take their picture, especially the children. I get asked fifteen, twenty times a day where’s my camera, take my picture, ectera…It’s great because it provides me with a way to enter their homes and gain their confidence. My Spanish is coming along slowly but surely, more slowly then anything else. It is definitely frustrating to have so much you need to communicate, but be completely unable too. I find myself in plenty of awkward situations because of my limited understanding. I know that in time this will stop as my Spanish improves but it does get to you sometimes. I need to get started on my community diagnostic, as much as I enjoy just sitting around, the boredom is definitely starting to get to me and I need to do something. Tomorrow we have a meeting in barohona with all the other volunteers in my region. I am looking forward to going as this will be my first time in barohona, and my first time seeing the other volunteers in a few weeks. It should be a good change of pace getting out of here.

I have come to realize I am in love with mangos, there is nothing like eating fresh mangos off the tree to make you feel better. My community is mostly agricultural, and thankfully mangos is one of the fruits they produce here. I think I ate about five of them today, man it was great. Besides eating mangos I have come face to face with real poverty for probably the very first time in my life. Some of the homes here are nothing more then wooden shacks with a little bit of electricity every one in a while. Today one of my friends was asking me to taking him with me when I leave for the United States. I was trying to explain that this wasn’t possible but I couldn’t. They don’t have to much here and as bad as the economic situation is in the states, things are a lot worse here. A few days ago one of the older people in the campo asked me to give him money to help support his sick son. I felt bad but I had to explain to him that I couldn’t give him any money, as volunteers that’s that something that we are really not supposed to do, and as a volunteer I didn’t have to much. Still I couldn’t help but realize the fact that as I was saying this my 250$ camera was hanging by around my neck. That’s more then most people make in a month here. Its frustrating that at this point I can’t do more. I hope that in the future my efforts will make an impact here but we shall see. anyways
I love hearing from home, please keep in touch.
So I have been in my campo a bit over three weeks I guess. Everything here is going fairly well, if a bit slow. The people here are absolutely wonderful, they have greeted me with open arms everywhere I turn. I spend most of my days taking pictures of the people here. They get really excited to have someone come and take their picture, especially the children. I get asked fifteen, twenty times a day where’s my camera, take my picture, ectera…It’s great because it provides me with a way to enter their homes and gain their confidence. My Spanish is coming along slowly but surely, more slowly then anything else. It is definitely frustrating to have so much you need to communicate, but be completely unable too. I find myself in plenty of awkward situations because of my limited understanding. I know that in time this will stop as my Spanish improves but it does get to you sometimes. I need to get started on my community diagnostic, as much as I enjoy just sitting around, the boredom is definitely starting to get to me and I need to do something. Tomorrow we have a meeting in barohona with all the other volunteers in my region. I am looking forward to going as this will be my first time in barohona, and my first time seeing the other volunteers in a few weeks. It should be a good change of pace getting out of here.

I have come to realize I am in love with mangos, there is nothing like eating fresh mangos off the tree to make you feel better. My community is mostly agricultural, and thankfully mangos is one of the fruits they produce here. I think I ate about five of them today, man it was great. Besides eating mangos I have come face to face with real poverty for probably the very first time in my life. Some of the homes here are nothing more then wooden shacks with a little bit of electricity every one in a while. Today one of my friends was asking me to taking him with me when I leave for the United States. I was trying to explain that this wasn’t possible but I couldn’t. They don’t have to much here and as bad as the economic situation is in the states, things are a lot worse here. A few days ago one of the older people in the campo asked me to give him money to help support his sick son. I felt bad but I had to explain to him that I couldn’t give him any money, as volunteers that’s that something that we are really not supposed to do, and as a volunteer I didn’t have to much. Still I couldn’t help but realize the fact that as I was saying this my 250$ camera was hanging by around my neck. That’s more then most people make in a month here. Its frustrating that at this point I can’t do more. I hope that in the future my efforts will make an impact here but we shall see. anyways
I love hearing from home, please keep in touch.

So we have officially sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers. I have seen my site and it is pretty sweet. There is quite a lot that could be done there. i am in a campo, its pretty small, around 300 people, and its very poor but the people are awesome and so welcoming. There are a ton of mosquitoes and it is pretty hot, but the area is gorgeous, there are mountains surrounding me on all sides and a river right next to my house. I will be doing quite a few things at my site, working with the agriculture group, organizing youth activities, teaching english, teaching health, learning spanish, learning how to dance, and anything else that they throw at me. It is a bit intimidating, but I am looking forward to the challenge. Unfortunately there is no internet cafe in my site and the closest one is six miles away apparently so updating the blog might be hard. The good news is i get cellphone service pretty consistently so people can call me anytime. ]
anyways, life is good i am enjoying it here and am looking forward to whatever happens next

My office

things have been crazy the past few days I am not even sure where to begin. First my friend justin and I were supposed to go visit another volunteer.We were put on the wrong bus and ended up in the wrong town in the middle of no where eventually we figured it out but it took about three hours longer then it should have. anyways the volunteer we visited has a real kick ass site. he works with an eco tourism organization called 27 waterfalls. Basically guides take you up the waterfalls and then you get to jump down them. We got to do twelve of them and it was absolutely amazing. It was a pretty intense experience. Monday I a found a scorpion in my bed, and by found i mean got stuck by it. Didn´t hurt that much but needless to say it was quite a shock to turn the lights on and find that sucker crawling up my mosquitero. Those suckers are difficult to kill too. Yesterday the whole group went on a beautiful hike up through some mountains to this gorgeous waterfall where we got to go swimming. That is my job right now, sure is more exciting then pushing papers. Training is slowly but surely coming to an end, I am looking forward to the day when we are in our sites and done with classes

so its been a while since i have updated this thing. everything is going well. Right now i am in the cibao region. kinda north in the country. it is very beautiful as we live in the mountains. sorry for the lack of pictures but i left my camera cord in santa domingo but as soon as i can i will upload the pics. the people in the DR are so warm and friendly it makes adjusting to the culture much easier. Not to say there haven´t been difficulties, mostly with my stomach, the new diet doesn´t agree with me. My spanish is improving, i can almost talk to a four year old. I really like the family i am staying with right now. My fellow volunteers are pretty cool too, we hang out a lot. it is weird though knowing that in a month we will go our own way and not see each other so much. I miss the comforts back in the states no doubt, but i feel very good about my decision to come here. we shall see what happens in the future but i got faith i´ll be fine. Please keep sending me messages even if I don´t get to reply.

Training

So I have begun training. It can be very overwhelming at times. There is a lot of information being thrown at us in a short amount of time. It can be quite stressful at times. For the next two weeks I am staying in Santo Domingo with my Dona. Dona is kind of the woman of the house. It is just me and here so it is pretty quiet. She is extremely nice as are most Dominicans. They love to feed you non stop. Sometimes the amount of food they give you can be a little much. It is such a genuinely friendly culture here and Dominicans who know of peace corps really try to look out for volunteers. I haven´t had much a chance yet to explore the rest of the country but in the next couple weeks I will. Should be interesting. Life here is pretty good, but it is definitely an adjustment. For example the house I am staying at has no running water, they have to get it brought in. If you want to take a bath, use a bucket of water. If you need to flush the toilet dump a bucket of water down the toilet and hope for the best. I guess that is all part of the experience though. I like the other volunteers that I have met. There is a fairly largely group of us and we are still getting to know each other but so far everyone is pretty nice. I have already had to deal with two tropical storms and one tropical depression since leaving virginia. Hopefully i don´t how to deal with too many more storms but i have a feeling that is wishful thinking. Hope everyone back in the states is doing well. Shoot me updates of your lives and keep in touch

Just finished up with staging. I had a lot of information thrown at me but I feel pretty good. Tomorrow we leave for the DR. Everyone in my group seems real cool, I can tell that I am going to make some good friends out of this experience.

The adventure begins

I am leaving tomorrow to go to Miami for staging. This is the first step I will take on my road to adventure. hopefully I'll make it safe and sound without delay as Miami is under a tropical storm warning but i have a feeling i will be stuck in the airport for a long time.

I know some people might be curious as to how the whole process works so i will give a brief rundown as to what should happen. First let me begin by saying that i am not officially a volunteer. I can only be considered a volunteer if I successfully pass the training and swear in. Staging is the very first part of this process. It occurs in the United States and lasts about two days. During this time I will be introduced to the various policies and procedures of the peace corps and get to meet all the members of my training group for the first time.

After staging we leave for our host country to begin training. Training lasts about ten weeks and contains an intensive language component, technical skills, cultural, and safety components. For the first 3 weeks my whole training group will be in Santo Domingo, the Capital of the DR. During this time I will be living with a family there to expedite the integration process. The next portion of the training is the community based training, for about five weeks or so, all the volunteers from my sector will go to another community for addition training with more of a focus on technical skills that we will need for our job. I will be living with another family for the duration of the five weeks. Once that is done we are giving our community assignments and go there for about a week. After that we go back to the capital to finish up training and swear in. Usually 90% of the people pass training and become official volunteers. From what i hear it is a pretty hectic and demanding time, but well worth it. After training you are sent to your community where you will live and work for the next two years to figure it out for yourself. anyways i hope this clears up somethings. It should be interesting...please keep in touch, i would like to hear from people.

Wish Me Luck!

pictures of my house in virginia

Right now I am home in Virginia preparing to leave to philadelphia to go visit my grandparents for possibly the last time. For anyone who doesn't know I have been assigned to the Dominican Republic, a country that shares the border with Haiti. Right now I have mixed feelings, obviously i am excited, but i am also a bit apprehensive. Despite what some people might think I am not going away on a two year vacation to some tropical island. Instead I am going to be spending the next two years of my life living in a third world country as its habitants do working, socializing, and living among them. It should be quite an experience. I will try my best to keep some sort of regular contact but access to internet will be inconsistent at best (no internet! he must be roughing it). I have no doubt the experience will be life changing and I cannot wait to see what happens.