Dia de Accion de Gracias

Happy (belated) thanksgiving everyone! Since Thanksgiving obviously isn't celebrated in the Dominican Republic, I am here in the capital to celebrate with all of the other Peace Corps volunteers. We had this huge all day event yesterday at a fancy shmancy country club. We each paid 500 pesos to come to the festivities, but it was so worth it. I went swimming (my first time swimming on Thanksgiving! Crazy!), played soccer, beach volleyball and dominoes, danced with my fellow youth volunteers in a talent show, and danced in a bachata and merengue contest. And the food was great- turkey, stuffing, cranberries, cheesy mashed potatoes, batata (which is like the dominican equivalent to sweet potatoes), broccoli, salad, and pumpkin and pecan pie. There were about 200 people at the thanksgiving, and since for the first time EVER I could not celebrate Thanksgiving with my real family, it was nice to celebrate it with my peace corps family.

Things in Baoba are really moving along. I play dominoes every night (surprise, surprise) with a group of teenage boys that come to my house, and during the day I visit houses and chat with the women of the houses. I had my first english class on Tuesday, and there was a great turnout. 18 students showed up, ranging in age from 11 to 27, and they all had so much energy and enthusiasm. Within the 2 hour class, they learned how to introduce themselves by stating their name, hometown, nationality and profession, and then they just played a lot of competitive learning games. It was great, and now I'm not so nervous for my next group of students on Saturday.

With my youth group, we're doing an angelito thing for christmas, which is kind of like secret santa. So every Wednesday (when our youth group meets) we give a small 20 peso present like candy to the person whose name we drew out of a bag, and then on the last day we have a big christmas party and give a 200 peso present. My person is a 15 year old girl so that's an easy one to buy a present for. I have no idea what I would have bought if I had selected the names of one of the 30 year old guys that are in my youth group.