This news deserves its own post:

FINAL PLACEMENT!!!!! Our Health Peace Corps Director came to the village today to meet individually with us and tell us our “tentative” (aka 95% sure) community placement.

I will be living in the province of Santiago Rodriguez (northwest DR) in the small, rural town of Lima. I am in a cool, hilly/mountainous location! My project partner/community contact is an older woman, and I will already have 2 Dominican health promoters at my site to work with me! I might have tentative electricity and probably no running water. I have two other health volunteers located in the same province. The main city I will using will be Santiago (the second largest city in the DR).

That’s all I know about for now until October 19th when I get all the final details. But, YAY!! My placement seems great and I can’t wait to get there!


Other Updates:
• This morning I awoke to 6 Dominican DEA agents (drug enforcement agency) with semi-automatic weapons hanging out next door. Turns out, they were investigating my neighbors as dealers…
• I had my first village presentation today on the importance of hand washing. It went really well and we made faucets out of old soda bottles!
• I saw Anchorman for the first time last night (English with spanish subtitles). It was better than expected!
• We went to a child malnutrition center in Bani yesterday and ate green leaf soup and played with the kids. A small Canadian nun is the director, and when I mentioned I was from Wellesley she exclaimed, “we have a large contingent there”. Oh Sisters of Charity..