Rule no. 1: no excuses play like a champion

I promise this post is not gonna be me bitching about the peace corps. anything but actually. however, i will say the peace corps is not for anyone who is anything less than entirely committed. This first week has been incredible, emotional, and quite the struggle all at once. If the year long application process doesn't weed out the truly dedicated, training certainly will. that said, i am so excited to be here. every day i wake up more enthused about my situation than the day before. everyday i learn new aspects of the culture, and i know i am still just testing the waters.
our education trainer came and spoke to us today about what to expect in the upcoming weeks. we are moving to another town in the north of the DR with just the education trainees. there we will have our community based training (cbt) and will begin to learn the specifics of what we are going to be doing for the next 2 years. she got me so excited about it all. i haven't felt more secure in my decision to be here than when i walked out of that meeting.
i am glad that my emotions are starting to settle down a bit. it's not that i ever despaired, it's just that i felt for a while that i was all over the place. But now that i'm really making new friends, and just diving into each new experience, i am growing more and more comfortable here. the DR really is an amazing country. it is loud, beautiful, loud, happy, and loud. sometimes i hear music blaring (or maybe i should say i feel the music blaring) and i figure that it must be just outside my window. false! it is coming from a car all the way down the street. yikes cripes, those drivers must not have eardrums.
today (or yesterday when i post this) we learned the bachata and the merengue. roughly at least. it was so much fun. our teachers are fantastic dancers and then we all looked equally awesome, i'm sure, as we tried to emulate their movements. there were differing levels of success, that's for sure! i for one kept switching the order of my feet when i would step for the bachata. oops.

also you guys are getting totally spoiled. 2 posts in 2 days? what?