My first days not speaking English

This is it - the beginning of the end of my good English. Even after only speaking Spanish for part of each day over the last three months, it has already become so much worse. And as of yesterday, I have yet to speak English! (except to the dog.) This is the week we are making our official visits to our sites. We are assigned project partners, who came to meet us in Santo Domingo this past Tuesday and brought us to our new homes. Its been a stressful time, making first impressions with the people I will be working and living with for the next two years. I've got a lot of pressure, as my site has hosted trainees over the past three years, which introduced them to a lot of great volunteers, so I've got a lot to live up to. There is a big long list of things they want me to do throughout my service, its a bit daunting to see it all there written out like that, but I'll do what I can. The first three months will be spent doing a diagnostic of the community, to get to know more about it and its people, and to help determine which projects are the top priorities. During that time I'll be living with a host family. I'm staying with them now and have already decorated my room! Its nice to have pictures of home up on the walls. Here is my new family, I can't call them host "parents" because I'm six months older than the "mom", so I'll say my host brother and sister Julio and Jenny, with their new dog Toby:

Here is Jenny with her adorable son, Jose Miguel:
...and their home (my room is at the front, behind the white windows):

The living room - a couch!

Its a nice quiet neighborhood and comfortable town. It is small enough to walk around the main area in 20 minutes, but big enough to have around 15,000 people! (many of whom live in small communities outside the main center.) Its hard to believe there are so many people here because it really has that small-town feel. Though, if I need anything like Internet, a grocery store, etc, I can just come here to Nagua, a short ten-minute ride on a moto.

After a long night of packing that last night in Santo Domingo, I got up early the next day to move my luggage and meet my new partners in the capital's center. We had some meetings and information sessions, then took a long, uncomfortable ride in a pick up truck back to where I will be living. The trip from the capital to my site took about 5 hours, and by the time we arrived I just wanted to go to bed. But no! Not only was I meeting my new host family, but they had a big welcoming party there waiting for me. Everyone was really excited to meet me, it was really sweet, but it took a lot out of me to keep the energy up for that long! I've been catching up from it since then and now I'm worried that my family thinks I'm lazy because I sleep too much. Oh well, what can you do. They'll get to know me eventually.

So, this is it, I head back to the capital Sunday for my last week of training! We have three more days of information, then our "swearing-in" ceremony on Wednesday night, where we are officially welcomed as volunteers for the Peace Corps. After that its Thanksgiving (my first away from home : ( They do a special dinner and party for all of the volunteers in country), and an all-volunteer conference that Friday. On that weekend we move in officially! Its life as a Dominican now, no more American friends to run to, we're on our own from here on out. Scary! Wish me luck.

Joan