On the road again

Well we are all back together in Santo domingo again! it is great to see everyone again. we are all looking a bit more ragged (some more than others--Dan didn't shave for all of CBT. respect.) However, it was very sad leaving Dona Agueda. I was alright leaving Bandido behind, but i definitely welled up when i was saying goodbye to my Dona. She is a sweet woman, with such a peaceful spirit and it's always sad, and difficult, to leave someone like that behind. But we have to keep moving because that's how training works! soon though we will all be in our new cites for two years and will cultivate deep relationships with equally amazing people i'm sure. if i can be sad leaving a woman i only knew for 5 weeks, imagine how strong the relationships i have will be after 2 years in my cite. i get excited just thinking about it. But yeah, when i gave Dona Agueda her poem book she got emotional so then i started crying and we hugged and that was it. on the road again. (speaking of, i've been on a willie nelson kick recently. just saying.)
So i finally got my merengue on! the night before we left El Seibo a bunch of volunteers who live nearby came into the city and we met up with them in the park. And they taught us the merengue and the bachata. or, well, they tried to. we are gonna need more practice to get to their levels, but they have a year's head start so i'm not worried. anyway it was really fun, because i love dancing and we haven't really danced much here. i definitely can dance the merengue better than the bachata, but i need to practice because i wanna get good at them, come home, and just put you all in awe of my mad dancing skills. (sure...) 
The youth presentations at the ayuntamiento went really well too! my group did a "night of merengue" presentation and they danced three pretty awesome dances. One of them was a mix of bachata and merengue, which was particularly complicated. We had more of a hand in the getting them to research and write up their speeches and in helping them plan the event. i wish i could say i had anything to do with the dances, but i didn't. that was all them, and they nailed it. the three other groups had videos they had made. one was a documentary about the bullfights in El Seibo. another was a telenovela that i heard described as "the dominican slumdog millionaire without the millionaire" which sounds about right. and the last one was another telenovela about a rebel girl who ended up pregnant. they were all very good, and tastefully touched on some hot topics here in the DR, like the drug problems and delinquencia. 
So tomorrow we all find out where we are going! and by tomorrow, i mean tuesday, so probably today for all of you. i already have an idea of where i'm going (cough, cough haitian border) because the process of elimination worked wonders while i was talking to some volunteers at a teacher training we sat in on. so that's awesome. i get to learn creole! when i told that to me dad, he just said "when are you ever going to use that again?". he so doesn't get the point. haha, sorry dad, love you! 
Also yesterday was a fantastic day. first a bunch of us went to the book fair that's going on in the city right now and i got some children's books that i am very excited about. snow white, pinocchio, sleeping beauty, etc. i hope they aren't too hard for my future kids to be able to read, since i will really be working with the basic levels, but maybe i can just start a book club where i read to them once a week or something. I want to have a little library of kids books to use with my kids because what i have now is a) very basic b) stapled together and c) not varied. so slowly i will try to pick up books here and there. i also bought peter pan for me. it's not a hard read so i think it will be good spanish practice for my level. Then we went to see the avengers, which i don't think is out in the states yet so yeah be jealous because it's awesome. and i'm sure it will be great for all of you who don't have a bunch of dominicans cheering every time the hulk comes on the screen. it was so much fun to go to the movies though! a giant air conditioned room watching iron man and co kick some ass. good times. and after that we went to a merengue concert! we all were on a hill right next to some ruins of a franciscan monastery while we looked down on the show. it was a really fun time, especially because we are all back together again! even if only for a few days, it is just so great to see everyone again. i'm pretty lucky with this crew i came to country with. don't worry, i'm not going all sappy on you guys, i'm just saying that i lucked out. i can't wait until we all know where we are going and what we will be doing!
So one final more somber note before i wrap this up: i had such a cool conversation with Dona Patria yesterday. i feel so lucky that i am able to get by when i talk to her now because she has such cool things to say. she reminds me of kahlil gibran in how she can take profound and important themes and make them seem so simple. we were talking about always living with love and peace in your heart. about how you won't have pain in your heart when you live in love and peace. and the truth is i need to remember that sometimes. i definitely forget sometimes and those are the times i do things that i don't like. that eat me up with guilt for days and make me not like that part of myself. and here my little dona in my seedy little barrio starts talking to me about just living with love for the world inside of you, and it just seems so simple somehow. I am so glad she is my dona. 
and on that note, i'm done! over and out.