un dia perfecto

Hello! It’s been a bit longer than usual between updates—I’ve been relatively busy and yet not doing anything particularly interesting. We have class from roughly 8am to 6pm everyday (with a 2 hour lunch break) and when I get home I usually play a lot of Uno with my host siblings and go to bed early. Once in awhile I reconvene with other PCTs to watch episodes of the Office or just hang out. For the most part, it’s good times, but perhaps not the most interesting blog material.

A lot of our classes have been, well, less than illuminating. Luckily, I’ve got some good PCT friends here who make excellent flow-chart-drawing companions.

Plus, whenever we get too down about having a 4-hour Excel session on a Saturday morning, we can just think about last Sunday when we all went to Playa Esmerelda, a gorgeous beach a few hours away. It was essentially a perfect day. Playa Esmerelda was the most beautiful beach I’ve ever seen, even moreso than the beach at Nagua. Plus, our group was the only people there. The weather was great—warm and sunny, but not too hot—and I applied enough sunblock to prevent sunburn. And when we were thirsty, Keane climbed a palm tree and provided agua de coco for everyone. Even the slightly-perilous ride there in the back of Ann’s pickup truck was fun, in a roller coaster-esque fashion.

Hopefully I’ll be able to upload pictures soon, because it was an amazing day.

It wasn’t quite as exciting as Playa Esmerelda, but teaching my first Spanish-language computer class was the other high point of the week. My companeros Stephanie, Carlos and I gave a good class. Our trainer Ann described it as “freaking awesome,” which was nice J We taught the class how to save and open (guardar y abrir) Word documents, as well as how to copy, cut, and paste (copiar, cortar, y pegar). The kids had fun with the activities we planned, they understood our Spanish, and I believe they also learned how to save, open, copy, cut, and paste. Super bien!

This weekend we have another technical session on Saturday and on Sunday we’re going to a meetup of all the ICT volunteers. Also, possibly we’re going caving? I’m a bit unclear on the details, but it should be interesting.