Thursday, December 22, 2011

El Seibo Visit

Such a lovely little town. It's a shame my site doesn't have views like this.
This weekend I finally went back to El Seibo to visit my former host family. When we first arrived in the country we had ten weeks of training: five weeks in the capital (Santo Domingo), and five weeks in 'Community Based Training' (CBT) getting hands-on experience. For those of us in the education sector, our CBT was in El Seibo, a wonderful town in the east with 24 hour electricity and very low crime. I really loved the host family I lived with, and even requested to be placed in the East so I could go back and visit them. But despite getting my request, it took me eight months to get back there (I almost made it out in October, but they were sick when I was free).

It was great to see them, and they're all doing well. They're not wealthy, but they've found some additional sources of income (selling paintings for a friend and selling meat pies from their house) and seem to be doing better than they were when I was living with them. But maybe it's just that my perspective has changed: they're probably wealthier than anyone in my batey. The house had been fixed up and repainted some though, and the mom is studying nursing, so I really think their situation is improving.

We didn't do anything very exciting, but still managed to have fun. I taught them UNO and Kings on the Corners, and we made grilled cheese sandwiches one night. I visited some of the other people and places I knew. There used to be a cousin living with us, but he was back with his family in another town, so I didn't see him or the neighbor girl who moved away to live with her mom.

I didn't get many pictures worth sharing, but I did want to show off the ghetto basketball hoop that my host brother (just turned 13) made with some neighborhood boys.

Awesome!


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