Training!

First off, thank you all so much for the emails and comments! We have very limited access to email, so please keep writing even if I don´t write back right away. It is great to hear what is going on back home and to know that all of you are reading my blog :)

So we moved into our training community this past Sunday which was very exciting. It is a beautiful place and the families have made us all feel at home. It is relatively small and is set in an area with beautiful rolling hills. There is only one payphone in town (which doesn´t often work) and no one has internet or landlines. My host family is awesome and they have had five previous trainees at their house. My mom´s name is Edna, the dad is Eric and they have two daughters, Genesis who is 15 and Erika who is 11. Genesis reminds me a lot of my own sister so it has been a nice reminder of home. They also have a bunch of chickens, rooster, 2 dogs and a pig. Everyone has electicity and running water (although it isn´t always running). Most houses have latrines but a few people have American style indoor flush toilets. You can imagine they are pretty popular :) All of the houses are made of concrete with tin-type roofs. The weather is really intense and getting used to the humidity is hard. I have come to love my cold showers.

Everyday I have technical class from 8-12 then language from 1-5. Technical class is only with people in the CED group and focuses teaching us about the agencies we will be working with. My language class is really intense and the approach the spanish here is total immersion. I am in an intermediate group with two others and our teacher only speaks spanish. I can´t believe how much I have improved in just the last week alone. The cool thing is that all of our classes take place at a house in the community. Our "classroom" for tech class is in the backyard of someones home and my language class meets on the porch of another host family. It is definitly different but amazing. We are going out on our own next week to stay with a volunteer which should be an experience to say the least. I miss all of you and will update again soon!