Monday, August 25, 2008

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

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

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.

Monday, August 18, 2008

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!

Monday, August 11, 2008




pictures of my house in virginia