Host Family

I live in a small apartment with my host mom and her 25 year old daughter. My host mom has another son and daughter who are both married. Some of the other students I've talked to say that their host parents don't put much thought into the food they cook. But my host mom makes amazing food for me every night and asks me multiple times if I've had enough. She works as an accountant in the President's office all week and spends time with her children and grandchildren on the weekends. She always offers to drive me and my friends to where ever we're going and shows me around the city so I can become familiar with the city. I have my own tv and my own bathroom which is rare around here. I also have recently discovered the free internet that occasionally shows up in my room! My host sister is very nice and speaks English which is helpful when I'm at a loss for Spanish words! Soon she says she's going to take me to get my hair done so hopefully i'll learn how to keep it straight in this insane heat and humidity. Over all, I'm happy with everything and I think I lucked out!

Classes

Many of you have been wondering what my classes are like here. I'm taking six classes but my schedule is still not finalized. I am taking classes a t three different universities. The first one is called Bonó and I'm taking Social History of the Dominican Republic. It's 3.45 hours long which seems never ending but we do activities that relate to the material so time passes quickly. But there is a lot of reading for that class. All in Spanish of course which takes even more time, but I'm getting used to it. I'm taking 3 classes at my "home school" FLACSO which is run by CIEE, the program I traveled with. There I'm taking a Living and Learning seminar where we learn more about underlying issues in Dominican Culture, a Spanish Conversation Class, and a Language and Culture class where we learn about things like Dominican authors and common everyday language. The last school I'm attending is one of the biggest universities on the island called UASD. They are extremely disorganized and slow to respond or help in any academic situation. I had my first class today and found out it doesn't exist. So I'm back to looking for a sixth class. So far I like all my classes. I came here not knowing much about the country so I'm learning new things everyday about the history and language. That's all for now. I'll adding another post about transportation and my host family soon!