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...