4 days in country

Friends,


It has been 4 days since I arrived to the D.R. Honestly I have to say that it has not hit me yet. Our schedule has been occupied with many orientation classes and prepartion for exams.

I am now living with a Dominican family. They are very kind and have taken me in as part of their family. Before meeting them I was told I would be living with a mom and her daughter but as soon as I arrived I was welcomed basically by the entire neighborhood which were all of the ¨Santos family¨. Where I sleep lives the mom and her daughter but I dine and share amongst all. This consists of an extended nuclear family (great grandparents to small children and even adopted kids).

I am sharing this gigantic family with 4 other trainees (all living in seperate homes in the same neighborhood). We will be here for the remainder of training which ends on October 28th. From now until then we will all be divided up by language proficiency and begin taking intensive courses which includes safety precautions, health awareness, and general knowledge of the culture. We all hope to fulfill our requirements in order to be sworn in and become volunteers on October 28th.

Once we are sworn in we will be given our location and assignments where we will begin our 2 year commitment. Below I have included the yummy foods I have had plus our mailing address. There is much more to come....


Fufu the platano
Mangu
Berengena con semillas sesame
halbondigas
habichuela blancas
Cafe Santo Dominigo
Jugo de Mango, lechosa,pina,guineo con vainilla

mmmmmmmmmm.......


Cuerpo De Paz
Apartado Postal 1412
Santo Domingo Dominican Republic

Lots of love

Marite

6 More Days

I have 6 more days to go and the anticipation is high...

I decided I would begin this blog sharing a bit of my anxieties and excitement. I was officially invited by the Peace Corps to work in the Dominican Republic July 8, 2009. I begin my training August 20, 2009. As you can imagine 6 weeks notice is not much time to get everything sorted out and ready to go. Since applications can take over a year to process, I thought my leaving this soon was unlikely.

The Peace Corps is an organization I have wanted to join since high school. I was very close to applying my senior year of college but then decided to have some solid work experience that can shape some of my long term goals and help me decipher more of who I really am.

As of right now my future title as a volunteer is "Community Economic Advisor". I say right now because everything is still very much in the air. My three months of training could ultimately alter my assignment and final work destination depending on my response to the actual training. At the moment the only thing that is certain is that I will train for 3 months in Santo Domingo and will be living with an assigned family.

Communication will be limited and may be hard to come by however I hope to update this blog as often as possible and wish it to be a window to my experience abroad.

Now with only a few days left to go I am left with some packing to do and a lot of "good bye" and "see you later" . It is truly hard for me to leave so many wonderful friends and acquaintances behind. There really are no words to describe my experience in DC, which leaves me saying "I'll be back". I wish you all the best and hope to see you in the Dominican Republic.

-Marite