Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Finally in the D.R.!

Hello everyone!
I am here in the D.R. in the school that I go to on my host sister's computer. She is a teacher here at the school. Yesterday was my first day of school and not very many people speak english, so it was a little scary for me. It is currently raining and here they cancel shool when it's raining ( I wish they did that in Homer!) I'm not really sure why they do that, and my host sister tried to explain it to me but I couldn't really understand.
When I left Alaska, I went to an orientation in Miami where everyone who was going on an exchange to South America from the U.S. met and got prepared. There were six people going to the Dominican Republic.
When we landed in Santo Domingo, the capital of the D.R., another exchange student and I got picked up by her host family and we went to this big Italian dinner thing at the host family's friend's house. There were five courses! And on their t.v. they had a video of one of Celene Dion's concerts playing over and over, I guess they like her alot :) after the dinner we stayed at the host family's house and watched 3.10 to Yuma with the host brother (we watched it in english because that host family knew english very well. People in Santo Domingo speak english alot..but other places not so much). The next day I rode the bus to San Juan and met my host family there, and I was feeling a little homesick so the AFS people who spoke english let me go with them to Las Matas for the night so I could get more accustomed. I also found out that I'm only staying with my host family for a month, and then moving to a different family for the other 9 months. This is because the family is going to Europe for a month so I need a place to stay.
Both of my host families are very nice, even though none of the parents speak any english, but my one host sister does a little. I'm learning more Spanish every day, which is good.
The school I go to is good, the classes I have are trigonometry, Spanish, physical education, informatica (a computer class) and French. French and Spanish are pretty hard... because I have to go from Spanish to French. But the French teacher is also the English teacher, so that helps.
Everyone here is very nice and welcoming so that is good. One thing that's really different is when I'm walking down the street, guys will whistle or yell, "Hola, Rubia!" which is "Hello, Blonde!" because noone here has blonde hair or blue eyes. It's kind've funny but it gets annoying.
Well, that's about all I can think of to say right now! Please comment or send me an email or something..I want to hear from everyone! How's Homer going? How's school there? Anything new? Miss you all alot! Lots of love.