la gripe

in the past 36 hours i have come down with a pretty intense attack of the gripe, which is a general term for sickness here in the DR. apparently you can get the gripe by washing your hair at night here, and also by using paper products rather than a handkerchief to blow your nose. interesting. in other news, i am going to the beach! kind of. for security reasons, i can't write the name of the village i will be living in, but it's in the northeast of the country in a province called maria trinidad sanchez. i'll be in a very poor rural village on the side of a mountain, about 30 minutes from the ocean. i don't know a whole lot about the project, but my partner organization is the neighborhood association and part of my project will be to form a youth group in the town and work with the local school. i'm a little nervous because i'm the only new youth volunteer to be in the north of the country, so on the map of all the sites mine looks a little aislado (isolated). but there are two current youth volunteers somewhat nearby, and there will hopefully be some other volunteers from different sectors nearby as well. it's apparently really gorgeous, and there is cell phone service so all in all i am pretty happy with how things have turned out. when we return to the capital in a few weeks, i will receive a big folder with more information about my site and my project, but for now it's a relief just to know where i'm headed. my laptop is running out of batteries, so i have to run, but keep in touch. apparently phone cards to call here are verrry cheap...

still here

it's been a while since i've updated my blog and i've found myself with a bit of free time...so here goes nothing. i'm still up in the mountains and i'm still enjoying it here, although training is becoming slightly monotonous. we spend hours and hours a day in technical meetings, but i don't feel any more prepared for the moment when i'm an official volunteer and am charged with improving the lives of young people in my community. nonetheless, i've been making good friends here, both american and dominican. the youth group i have been working with is really inspiring; despite their less than ideal living conditions they are filled with ideas and dedication for improving their community. they're also incredibly fun to hang out with-- this past saturday, we held a surprise party for another trainee's birthday and a lot of my youth group kids came. we danced merengue and bachata and just hung out together, which was really fun. another positive of this training is that i'm getting some good experience in dominican culture; by this, i mean i am adjusting to a lack of organization and structure in basically anything. (ex: my NGO internship consists of 4 trainees following around one dominican for 4 hours a day. while certainly an interesting experience, it's only nominally an internship.) i've also become accustomed to constant noise in my life, i think due to the fact that i live with probably the 2 worst behaved children in the country. it's actually pretty sad, as their mom has very few parenting skills and at least twice a day i watch her beat her kids with a belt because they don't want to get in the shower or some other absurd reason. i find myself really looking forward to getting to my site and just being a part of a community for the long haul. at the same time, i am pretty anxious about being by myself in my site, since i've been around other americans since we arrived in the DR. i'm sure i will adjust quickly, but it's a daunting idea at the moment. speaking of my site, in just 2 days us youth volunteers will get our site assignments from our APCD (the director of the youth program). i'm definitely looking forward to knowing where i will be living... hopefully it will be a campo (rural) site. ideally i would like to be somewhat near a friend or two, either that or have cell phone service so i can talk to people. i'm going to finish up this entry for now, but i'll write again on thursday when i know where you all can find me for the next two years. please keep emailing and writing letters, and i'll do the same for you. communication is awesome.

love,
lily

las montañas!

well, we have been here in the DR for almost a month now and so far so good. i´m now in a small town in the mountains, and i absolutely love it. the weather is cooler than in the capital, the people are very friendly, and i am enjoying the time with the other youth volunteers. it´s been really good getting to know everyone, although i do miss some friends who are in other sectors (health, community economic development, water and sanitation). we will be here for 5 weeks doing training specific to the youth sector, which i am really excited for. this week we will be starting two internships, one with a local NGO that does community development and another with a local environmental youth group. i am living with a host family here, and it´s definitely a crazy house. people are always coming in and out and i´m still not entirely sure of who actually lives there. nonetheless, i´m happy to be living there and i´ve been getting along really well with my two host sisters, who are 15 and 26. my friend derek lives 3 houses down, and then two other friends, lupe and molly, live very close by so that´s been fun. i´ve been playing a lot of dominoes here and am starting to get the hang of it! soon i am going to teach my host family how to play uno, which was a big hit with my family in the capital. this town is much more tranquilo (calm, peaceful) than the capital, which i definitely appreciate as we can walk basically everywhere and safety isn´t a huge concern. i have been getting lessons in dominican cooking, so hopefully by the time i have some visitors i can prepare a dominican feast! today we had sancocho for lunch, which is this yummy stew type dish with all sorts of root vegetables plus meat. ours included plantains, potatoes, squash, leeks, yucca, carrots, beef, chicken, and some other vegetables that i don´t know the english words for. i think that´s about all i have to say for now, but i will be sure to update with more news from the mountains sometime soon.