Woodley's World: Off to La Cumbre

Today we headed out from Santo Domingo to La Cumbre where we’ll be for a month doing our community based training. We had quite the adventure once we got to Santiago. We had to take a guagua (which means bus, although in this instance it means a truck which we piled into the back of with all our luggage) from Santiago to La Cumbre. First, they had to push start the truck. Then we were in a bunch of traffic and our truck rear-ended the truck in front of it. However, here in the DR that doesn’t mean that you stop and exchange information so that you can get things repaired. It means they gave our truck driver dirty looks and kept on driving. Then our truck kept dying so finally the guy stopped and went and got us another truck. So we unloaded our stuff and loaded it in the other truck and piled in the back again. Then this guy had to stop and get his gas can filled on the way up. We he put in the back of the truck with us and it proceeded to leak gas slowly all the way up to La Cumbre.

We arrived about 12:00 to our houses. My friend Kevin lives in the house about 20 yards up the hill from me, which is where we’ll be holding our Spanish classes. I have to go down a set of stairs to get to my house. It’s definitely a more humble home than my one in Santo Domingo, but cute nonetheless. I took some pictures of the house and the views from the back that I’ll try to put up with this post. My new host family consists of Doña Maria y Don Arsenio and their two godchildren Edwin, who’s 10, and his sister Lizbel, who’s 6. I have one of the bedrooms and all four of them are sharing the other bedroom. The bathroom and shower is in their bedroom. Doña Maria brought me a bucket so that if I have to go to the bathroom at night I don’t have to go into their room. We have power for part of the day but it goes off about 7:00 pm, which is also about the time it gets dark. Although it’s pretty cool to have everything be pretty much completely dark at night and be able to see the stars again. It’s pretty cold up here at night. I was wearing jeans and a long sleeve shirt tonight and I actually have a quilt on my bed.

Speaking of beds, I’m laying in mine underneath my mosquitero (mosquito net) and think I’m going to head off towards dreamland. It’s only 8:43 but I’m exhausted from the weekend and all the traveling. So...hasta pronto mis queridos amigos!