hola

So far my impression of la repúblia dominicana is very good. On my flight out of JFK almost all of the people on the plane were dominican. I sat next to a mother and daughter and later figured out that the abuela was sitting across the aisle from me. She basically forced me to take the candy she offered me and definitely less wary of body contact than americans. When we landed the plane erupted in applause, it was pretty cool.

There were four other people on my program that were on the flight, we got picked up and off we went to Casa Club in la Vega, a town 30 minutes from Santiago. Casa Club is an environmental co-op run by the people of la vega. There are signs saying things like "plant a tree when you can" etc etc. Went swimming, met people, talked about the DR. There was a lightning. Next day, (today) had lots of orientation stuff, really exciting. Met even more people. There are twenty people in all on our program. Oonly three guys though.

Met my host family today!! They are really nice. There is Germania who is 73, Fanny who is 40 something and Prisila who is 19 and also goes to PUCMM! Can't understand half the things they are saying. Oh, also, weird thing: no throwing ANY toliet paper in the toliets. They have smaller pipes + dont have the money/means to purify and clean the water with all that paper in it. So literally nowhere in the DR can you do this. Anyways, tomorrow tour of the city, ill hopefully get a cellphone so I will post that number. People should call me, not me them. It is cheaper if you guys buy a phone card. Incoming calls/texts cost me nothing. And it would be more expensive if i called you guys with a phone card.

Warning though, this blog might not be as successful as I wanted it to be (as in lots of updates,etc,etc) because they really emphasized the importance of "cutting the wire" to America. It makes sense, if i am reading and writing in english once a day that will really hurt my spanish learning. So maybe once a week, we shall see.

Muchos besos