Not in Kansas Anymore

After months of talking about it, we finally started our blog. It took 4 days of being rained in without leaving the house, our street, or our mud-filled dirt road, but here it is. Also, after over a year of preparation, endless medical exams, phone calls, and interviews, we are finally official Peace Corps Volunteers. Ya. We arrived in the República Dominicana in August as 2 of 59 trainees, one of the largest groups of volunteers to enter the D.R. Our training consisted of rapid Spanish language (te ta= como tu estas in Dominican Spanish), technical (based on sector- youth for Tina and business for Dominic), and medical components (how to avoid and/or deal with dengue fever, amoebas, cholera, and other bowel issues).

We lived with separate host families for the 10 weeks of training. We were in Santo Domingo, for 3 weeks, and then for 5 weeks, Tina went to Constanza and Dominic to Altamira for technical training. We then had training back in Santo Domingo for another 2 weeks.

Our marital bliss in Santo Domingo consisted of lots of hand holding, and, always the gentleman, Dominic walked Tina to her home every afternoon. How elementary-school romantic it was! Luckily, our host families were very supportive of our relationship, so we were allowed occasional conjugal visitations. Tina lived with a rad Doña, and the Doña’s blind mother, who occasionally wore glasses (we were never able to quite figure this out). Tina’s blind abuela was insanely difficult to understand, but through the weeks, she became easier to understand, once we realized that she repeated everything she said about 4-5 times within the hour. As long as we understood the first time, we were good to go. She would always ask for the “Americana,” while holding Tina’s hand, to which Tina dutifully replied, “Pero, estoy aqui, abuela.” When Dominic would leave to go to his respective host family, he would say his goodbyes, inevitably followed by the abuela saying, “Mas temprano, por que?” Our blind and usually incomprehensible grandmother took a liking to us. Santo Domingo was hot, humid, and infested with mosquitoes. Despite that, we enjoyed it and will forever have smile-inducing memories from the town.