Peace corps acronyms, volunteer visit assignment and Santo Domingo

Saludos! I have come to learn that the peace corps loooooves acronyms. An entire training session could not be understood without knowing what these are and as consequence, if you read my blog regularly, you're going to want to know too. These are the important ones that pertain to my service and some pertinent dates.
PST: pre service training- what I am doing now.
PCT: peace corps trainee- what I am now until swear in on May 15.
PCV: peace corps volunteer- what I will be after May 15.
CED: community economic development- my program/sector that I will be working in for the next 27 months.
PCVL: peace corps volunteer leader- usually a volunteer who extends their service to lead a program for incoming volunteers. My PCVLs name is Sasha.
CBT: community based training- my CBT will be April 1- May 3 with the rest of the CED trainees in a town called Peralvillo. Obviously more on this to come, but the main industry we will be working with there is cacao.

On Thursday March 21, everyone will leave Santo Domingo for the weekend to go visit a real life volunteer and see what it's all about. Each of us will visit a different volunteer in a different site for 4 days. I, by fate, will be visiting Erin (who's blog I have been reading religiously since I got my invitation and who I have been in communication with) and her husband Tyler. They live in Pedernales, which is on the southern coast very close to the Haitian border. The trip will take me a total of 7 1/2 hours each way by guagua (that's a bus) but I'm confident it will be well worth it and I'm beyond excited to visit them!
Also by chance, I was able to meet both of them at the peace corps office yesterday in Santo Domingo.

Below are some photos of our trip to Santo Domingo- including the guagua ride, the colonial zone and some of the city itself.
Also a pic of me making dominican empanadas and Kate's birthday which was Wednesday. Her for real party is tomorrow.

Besitos!! Kaley

Un chin de dique

I know my spelling and grammar errors are probably driving the few people who read this absolutely nuts (I just re read my last post, ha, you got the general idea, right??!) but please bear with me as I figure out the best way to do this!

But what, you may be asking, is dique?

I'll get to that in a second. I am now living in a northern barrio of Santo Domingo with Doña Casimira, a 78 year old spitfire of a host mom who I am convinced has more energy and definitely more friends than me. Everyone in our neighborhood calls her Mom. This is partially because everyone loves her like a mother and partially because she is related to a solid 60% of our barrio, she has 10 kids and some 30 something grandkids. Below (I think it's below, I write these posts from the blogger app for iPhone and I have yet to see how they post on a non mobile version of my blog) is a photo of Casimira buying plantains from a street vendor just in front of my house. She's pretty b.a.
There are 2 other volunteers living next door with her daughter and about 6 others living in my barrio.
I'll also leave you with some pics of the training center, the house, my room and of course my bed with my mosquitero.
I will be living here for the next three weeks of basic training. The peace corps training center is within walking distance from my house. After these first 3 weeks I will relocate for my CBT (community based training) which will be a much more rural setting. This will be with the other CED (community economic development) volunteers to train for job specific stuff for 5 weeks.
Anyway, the power comes and goes here como si fuera de moda. And each time it does, it's like a competition to see who can yell "SE FUE LA LUZ!!" first. I hear it from every window and street corner juuuust in case I didn't notice that the music from the corner colmado is no longer blasting. Don't get me wrong though, those of you who know me know that I looove me some bachata music.
The god news is we have a generator so my novelas do not get interrupted when we lose power. Score.
So when I asked about why the power goes out so much or why the water doesn't always run I often get an answer that has the word dique in it. Dique is the first dominicaism that I have learned thus far and I've never heard it anywhere else. It means "supposedly" or "they say that". But not just that, it's a polite and socially acceptable way to say that you believe something is maybe not true or only a rumor.
I have also recently began what I am sure will be a love/hate relationship with public transportation in the DR, but that will warrant a post of its own.

In other news, I have found myself a running trainer (lisanne, the volunteer next door) who I will repay with Spanish lessons. I'm covered in noseeum (no idea how to spell that) bites and have not been sick yet! I'll try to get another post up before malaria miercoles.

Paz, amor y dique! Kaley