Friday March 5, 2010

Today was a fire hose of information. The morning presentations revolved around the dos and don’ts, PC policy and so on. My favorite piece of info was that Peace Corps volunteers can own a horse! And it costs a grand total of about $200 US to buy horse and saddle. So if anyone wants to contribute to the “buy Elisa a horse fund” – it definitely won’t be refused :-D.

I had every intention of going into more detail about the things we learned today, but I’m afraid most of it has sunk somewhere down deep in my memory do to minor overload. I can tell you, however, that Peace Corps is prepared for everything and I’m in the hands of extremely competent people. We learned a little bit more about the training for our specific programs as well. The ICT training involves a stay with current volunteers, three presentations in Spanish to Dominicans, an ‘internship’ of about 5.5 weeks where we’re in the field, work with a youth group, and a final series of exams before we are sworn in as official volunteers.

We are going to be given a cell phone when we leave for our first days of field work, until then, we are pretty much contained with in the community where the training center is. The community itself is lower-middle class, but the facility where we train is on beautiful grounds. Our classrooms are actually just open areas with a tin and grass roof surrounded by mango and palm trees. Our language classes are in little bungalow-type things in which we’ll be learning with up to 5 other people at our same language competency.

The biggest news of today is that I met my host family. The doña’s (mother/woman of the house) name is Patricia; she has 9 kids and 16 grandkids thus far, I think. Apparently all families here are huge. Everyone comes and goes freely, everything is shared, they talk pretty loud, and a little too fast for me to understand more than about of a quarter of what they’re saying. But, for the most part, I think I’m staying afloat in the language department. I have my own room, which is more spacious than expected, though I think I’ve discovered I over packed a little. But – in my defense, today was evidence that it does get cold here – well, cool in comparison to some places, but enough so that I had goose bumps and wished for a sweatshirt. My host mom has told me that it’s my private space and that I should see this room as well as the house as mine. This was quite a relief after the dream I had last night about finding out they had gone through my luggage.

Tomorrow’s another early rise day, we do train six days a week, so I have a feeling my body clock is going to have to quickly readjust to waking up somewhere around 6 and going to bed at 10.