My campo

I feel like the luckiest of all volunteers right now. So far, my site seems to be a perfect match. The last five days have been some of the best so far in the DR. My project partners, Ruth and Mariana are both young (23 & 25), well educated, super sweet, motivated, and love to play games. Right now, the AVE isn´t offering classes due to past technical problems, so we will be doing another Lanzamiento (opening) in a month or two. I want to make sure that we have most of the kinks worked out before we open for business. To begin, classes will be offered to students and teachers. There isn´t much of an interest from the teachers, so we are going to try and focus most of our attention on getting students up to par. I think we´ll be starting with the very basics like how to use the mouse and basic hardware knowledge. We´ll see.
From what I sensed, I´ll be spending much of my extra time working with youth. There is so much potential in the kids there, they just need a little organization and direction.
One of my first projects is going to be a week long day camp for the kids. I´m hoping to include computer classes, art, dancing, theatre, games, sports, and whatever else the kids are interested in. I´m feeling super motivated right now. Just getting out of the capital lifts my spirits greatly. I´m looking forward to finally getting a start on my projects.
My family is ideal as well. I´m living with Ruth, one of my project partners, and her grandmother, Victoriana. Ruth is the perfect connection to have in a town like Las Uvas. She knows the Buena gente, is involved in many activities, and is adored by much of the community. I couldn´t have asked for a better situation. I have electricity, a shower (well a stream of water that comes from a spout), a toilet that flushes, and a fan in my room. I´m living like a princess in Dominican standards. My Doña has a chicken coop/tienda in her back yard where she raises, butchers, and sells chicken. At every hour of the day there are people coming with pesos and leaving with a bag of freshly chopped chicken. I watched a chicken die the other night for the first time. They tied a string around the neck and watched it as it was strangled to death. Quite disturbing. It´s hard to really enjoy eating chicken when you just saw it wandering around the backyard 30 minutes earlier. Here, Death is in your face everyday. We live, we love, and then we get eaten.