Email change of address...

Hello, again!! Well, I have 3 things to announce...

1) I forgot to include this in my last email, but please do not distribute any of my emails or other communication to media. Things can be taken out of context, or people can read into things the wrong way, and it can cause problems for the Peace Corps and me. If it got bad enough, I could be terminated as a Peace Corps volunteer. Gretchen, don´t get any ideas. :)

2) This is my new email address. Hotmail was giving me problems, like I couldn´t send out updates to everyone at once...it had to be done in waves.

3) When I came down here, I was planning to be a Municipal Developer volunteer, which is in the Business Development section. There are 27 of us in my group (used to be 28, but one guy decided not to go at security checkpoint at the airport in DC), which is the most that have come to date in one program. WELL....when we got here, we were told that there is a new program that is beginning with our class. It´s in youth development and it is focused on assisting youth with preparing for the workplace, teaching IT and other computer skills, and teaching English. In some cases, the program works with teachers to teach them how to teach youth. So....we all were invited to apply for this new program, and of course, I did because 1) it´s new and undefined(totally my kind of work) and 2) I feel like I can get really enthusiastic about it. The Municipal Development program is set up so we work with Mayors of towns in setting up programs for people. It sounded really boring to me, so I´m super excited about the youth development! They announced yesterday that 7 of us are going to start out this new program and I´m one of them!! So....my focus has changed, but I´m super excited about it!!

Here´s my little fun story for the day. Today, about 10 of us went to another volunteer´s site. She´s been there for 2 years and just extended her stay for one more, so she knows what she´s doing. Her site was INCREDIBLY hot and humid. I couldn´t believe how hot it was!! Anyway, there were like 50 billion more bugs there than anywhere else I´ve been in the country so far, so I said something like, ¨Geez! There are TONS of bugs here!! They´re ALL OVER ME!!¨She responded by saying, ¨Yeah, they usually hang out around rotting fruit.¨ I was like, ¨WHAT?! So I smell like rotting fruit?!¨ That gave everyone quite the laugh. She was trying to back-track like mad, but you know how that goes...it just gets worse and worse as you go. Needless to say (that was for you Bonnette), we´re not our normal clean selves here in the humid hot insect-filled environment, yet....still having lots of fun! :)

And...I do have my digital camera here, but I can´t figure out how or where to download the photos. As soon as I figure that out, I´ll email some photos!

Well, hope you´re all doing well! I´ll talk to ya soon!