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.