2.6 percent of my life

Today we had a discussion in training about how, statistically speaking, Peace Corps is 2.6 percent of my life. And when I get back to the states, I still have 69.7 percent of my life to live. I haven´t decided if 2.6% is a long time. Compared to 69.7, I guess not.

Life is moving as I know it. Last weekend I visited another IT volunteer, who has been serving for just about a year. She lives in a puebla of about 30,000 people called Cutupu. It´s north of Santo Domingo, outside of a bigger city called La Vega. It was a very eye opening experience, because I was able to first hand see how volunteers live and work in this country. Renata, the volunteer I visited, lives around the corner from a school where she works in the computer lab and teaches English three times a week. She has this awesome three bedroom house all to herself. Now when I say awesome, I mean it´s a big house and it´s all to herself. We didn´t have running water the entire weekend and the power was off most of the day and into the night a couple of nights as well.

But overall, the whole experience made me very, very excited to get to my site in May, and even more excited for August when I will have my own place. Basically, I´m excited to offically start my life in the DR.

This Thursday, my group is broken up into two separate groups: the IT volunteers and the Environment volunteers. Us IT volunteers will be going to El Seibo, which is the east part of the country, for 5 weeks to have technical training. I´m not quite sure what to expect, but spending 5 weeks away from Santo Domingo is quite appealing to me at this point.

The DR has had its ups and downs for me. I feel homesick for Reno, for friends, for comforts of the first world like showers and 24 hour electricity. But when I feel like that, my host family here in Santo Domingo will do something that makes me feel welcome and like I can do this for two years.

For example: my host family is stoked on Tacos. Which only proves what I have known most of my adult life, that Mexican food is the most popular cuisine on the planet. Anyway, before I left to visit Renata, I showed them how to make Tacos, college style. What I mean, is some ground beef, the ¨Santa Fe¨ taco mix you buy at grocery stores and just add water to, to season the beef. Some tomatos and hot sauce. They loved it, and they might have been some of the most unexciting tacos I´ve ever eaten.

The night I got home from my visit, Sunday, Tacos were on the menu again. But this time, my Doña, the head woman of the house, had seasoned the beef with garlic, oregano, salt and pepper. They had the tortillas frying up in some oil on the stove. Fresh cut tomatos and lettuce, and of course hot sauce.

Four days later, these were some of the best tacos i´ve had in the last year.

It just proved to me once more how welcoming the people here are. They are open to me and my past experiences, and they want to take what I taught them and make it their own. I know it´s only tacos, but hey, it´s also a great metaphore for life.

I know not everyday will be easy. But I have to remember, when I do feel homesick and would rather be back in the comfortable living of the US, where I have family and friends... sometimes it just takes tacos to bring people from around the world together.