a few pictures

my first english class graduated!
this is "my" beach, about 20 minutes from my house.
me and the mom

I can´t believe...

...that I´ve been here for over 7 months! Time really flies here. Overall things are going well, I´m about to start a new round of English classes and also start teaching a 10 week course on sexual health for kids from the high school in town. My mom and her husband Patrick came to visit for a week, which was great because I hadn´t seen them in quite some time, plus it´s always fun to show people around my village. We also took a trip to Las Galeras, which is kind of touristy but also drop dead gorgeous. This past weekend I went into the capital and then went to visit a friend who lives nearby, which was a nice relaxing time. My house is getting painted right now, which is great because it looks amazing but also really crappy because I have to clean up after the painters. I´ve been cooking a lot, but this is a country where rice, oil, and msg are staples, so let´s just say I don´t have a lot of dinner guests. I made a frapuccino-like thing with a borrowed blender yesterday and all of my neighbors mocked me, but then I made them try some and everyone was like, ¨Lily this is so good, now you can get married.¨That´s basically the ultimate compliment here in terms of cooking, apparently a woman can´t get married until she knows how to cook well. It´s frustrating for me because the gender roles are so fixed here... but I´ve been feeling even more frustrated with the role the Catholic church plays in the community here. I´m in a bit of a hurry so I can´t go into too much detail, but I will say that if the church leaders put half as much effort into improving the situation of the community as they do into fundraising for the church, people in my village would be a lot better off. Ok, that´s all I´m going to say about that for now, have to go get some flyers printed for my new English class. I hope all is well, maybe next time I will attach some more pictures!