Light at the end of the tunnel

It´s almost time for me to go home again!

This time it´s my sister´s graduation, and Christmas, and New Year´s. I´ll be in one of my very favorite places, Gainesville, Fla.

I´ve been anticipating this for a month now, because the last month has been busy with parties, youth conferences, and visiting friends. We had two Thanksgiving celebrations, David came to visit me in El Limon, we celebrated his birthday, and had two youth conferences, one for technology and one about sexual education. I´m ready for vacation!

Then I´m ready to hit it hard again, in what will be my last four and a half months of Peace Corps. It´s come up so fast. Now that the end is in sight, and I feel better at my job than I ever have, I have a pretty ambitious plan for my return.

Some other volunteers from my group and I are scheming on developing a project to train teachers about better methods of education. It´s an essential need. The principal of the elementary school and I are also working on a class competition to try to motivate better attendance, arriving to school on time, and behavior.

I want to train another group of Escojo Mi Vida, the sex ed program of Peace Corps DR, because a lot of my group is heading to the capital to go to the university in January.

We´ll hopefully be getting our lab going again, by giving classes at night. I´m searching for a teacher. It´s a win win win, money for the school, services for the community, and a job for the teacher.

I want to start a girls group, a Peace Corps initiative in gender equality, to talk to girls about gender and becoming independent women.

My journalism class will continue, hopefully with a radio show where they´ll talk about the news and interview newsmakers!

And of course, I have some personal goals as well. I want to jog to Las Terrenas (about 15 kilometers) and hike Pico Duarte!