Jajajaja!

Best spanish story so far:

I went over to my neighbors house last night by myself. I had an amazing 20 min conversation with them and was told that my spanish was very very good! Neil eventually walked over and we then spent the whole night there. While over there was was asked in spanish "what is your favorite sport... do you understand? you know, to play (jugar)" I thought he said jugo (juice) So when asked -what is your favorite sport to play? I answer "your mothers juice"

lol the whole place was laughing and yelling NO NO NONO!!! hahaha... we figured it all out and got it fixed eventually...

Me cabesa...

Exploring, weddings, church, kids, football and class... this sums up my last few days:

Me and Neil (my droomate) have explored quite a bit around our house. It's the coolest place ever! I still just feel like it's all a movie. I found a little cliff near my house that local kids like to jump off of so that the americana (or sometimes they will yell canadian) could take pictures of them. Wile i was there, a mob of naked 5-8 year olds came running/swimming over to me. they also joined in the cliff jumping and also wanted many pictures taken... lol.

Neil knows a bit of spanish so I am often looking at him when someone talks to me. The family told us something about going to iglesia (church) on saturday night. so we got dressed for church and grabbed our bibles. "no necesito biblia" so we left the bibles behind and were quite confused. When we arrived we saw that we were really going to church for a wedding. jaja that was an amusing surprise... later there was a reception that only the close family members could go to. so they dropped of me and Neil, along with two other girls from our group that stayed with a family attending the reception, at our house. We then spent the night playing euchre and dominos :)

Church was really frustrating... they translated about half of it. during the other half I was zoning out and trying not to fall asleep. and even during the translation part it was still very slow and hard to concentrate on... the worship was good though

whilst walking around our city, Neil and I ran into a baseball field. It happened to be the field that a fellow SI worker runs. He saw us and yelled "hola amigos! come and play! come and share!" so we then spent the next hour or so playing baseball :) at the end we tried to give a very broken gospel message to the kids. that was good :)

We got a little american time when the SI guys invited us to be a part of their fantasy football league. haha I'm not all that into football except as a social event but since this was social i decided to join up. lets go cowboys defense :P

I'm not a fan of class... some parts were super easy and other parts I was completely lost during...  iiiyy me cabesa (aaah... my head...)

The start of something new

Well the traveling fatigue is wearing off now and I'm ready to start really enjoying this place. Yesterday and today we have done orientation. Part of that yesterday involved walking around our town on a scavenger hunt. I was FINALLY able to use the little bit of spanish that my friends have so lovingly drilled into my head. My scavenger group was in a vegi shop and was trying to figure out what a root looking vegi was. I asked a man "como se dice?" (how do you say this) and in a very manly guttural way he answeres "RRRABON!" I asked him to repeat and he said it again. It kinda reminded me of an old hebrew man because instead of rolling his RR he made that throaty sound that's more of a RHG sound. He thought we were still puzzled so he took out paper and wrote down "RABON" then wrote it again in cursive underneath. lol i think he was just showing off his ability to write. we told him good job and then went on our marry ways. Later that day we ate at a resturant and for about 30 min i was trying to learn words that i could fit together that would compliment a chef. I finally pieced together the words "good" "work" and "delicious" and was quite proud of myself when i yelled that across our table at the chef. He thought it was pretty funny.

Well we meet our host families today. hope that goes well. Adios

Los Adventures

Here I am in the Dominican! I'm filled with lots of emotions as I look at the base that I will spend most of my weekends at. I feel overwhelmed, excited, worried, adventurous, hungry, not hungry, joy, sorrow, helplessness, and lost. I may be the only one from our group of 15 that is taking spanish 1. Most of the group has a pretty good foundation and spanish and they still feel overwhelmed. I have almost no spanish background and feel screwed.... haha. The team has commended me for coming here without spanish and have told me that I seem very calm about it all. They can't see what's inside my head though... Well I'm going to stay positive and just take things uno day at a time :-D