My new palace (and the clumsiness that is I)

On Thursday I arrived in El Seibo for my Community Based Training. We will be spending about 5.5 weeks here doing technical training, spanish classes, and internships in computer centers. I was very excited when I arrived at my new house because it is beautiful and I have a nice room and even a private bathroom! I call it my palace. The food the doña cooks is amazing as well. Then, the first night I took a shower and as I was reaching for my towel I slipped, fell, and cracked the bathtub. It´s one of those plaster ones where it feels like it might break if you jumped really hard...Anyway, I smushed in the plaster in the corner. (I thought immediately of my mom and the broken toilet in Cuba.) I felt so bad and didn´t tell them until the next day because I didn´t want to just arrive and announce that I´d already broken something. But since then, things have been going well. On Friday night I went to the adventist church with my doña and son where they sang Jesus songs (some to the tune of Country Roads), watched videos where white Jesus healed people, and did a little skit about Jesus flowers (yeah, i must have missed something there). On Saturday we went to a beach called Playa Esmeralda which was about 1.50-2 hours away. It was absolutely beautiful and there was hardly anybody there. Another volunteer, Angela, and I took a walk down the beach and met this nice man who cut us each a coconut and I got to drink the water fresh from it and then eat it. Yummm. Later that night we went to the one and only discotec in town called WOW. Yup, it´s name is WOW. My dancing skills are pretty much in the dumps but I still danced some merengue and bachata. Sunday I hung around at home and watched movies like The Italian Job and Back to the Future in spanish. It rained so I didn´t really venture out. And the rain brought the cockroaches (there was one in my bathtub this morning which I had to kill...yes, I killed it myself. And then another one on the floor. But I was too traumatized from the first one to deal with the second one and had to call my doña to take care of it.) As for training, we are doing a mini community diagnostic (which we will spend the first 3 months at our own sites doing- basically just learning about the community) and will be presenting that next week. We are also observing and talking to teachers at the high school to learn more about the education system. I´m a little disappointed that my spanish hasn´t gotten too much better, which also makes me nervous about teaching in spanish, but I guess that will all come with time. Love you all and think about you all the time! (I actually spent time last night looking at the pictures of everyone I brought!) MUAH