So, in the spirit of catching up with everything I've done so far, we come around to the weekend of the 5th, which was the AFS Dominican Republic orientation camp. I was one of the first to arrive at the AFS office Friday morning, so I hung out for a little bit with Pablo (a family friend who works with AFS) and had some mango fresh from the tree, which was sooo tasty and not something you get at all in England. When some other students started to arrive I went through and tried to talk with them a bit, about how everything was going etc.

Once more people started to arrive, people generally started talking to others from their country in their language, so there wasn't much for me to do or say, but every now and then someone would make conversation. I only got to properly talking to anyone when Maja arrived; Maja is a Norwegian AFS student but she's half English so I was able to have proper conversations with her, and I cannot tell you how weird it was to hear someone talking with an English accent! I never realized, but at some point I'd gotten used to English being spoken with an accent, and it was really strange to talk to someone who, for lack of a better phrase, spoke normally again.

Once everyone coming from Santo Domingo was there, we set off to the camp. It was in a place called Villas de Matatá and ohmygod it was absolutely stunning. Once we'd all put our stuff away in our dorms and had a welcome assembly thingy most people went off to the pool, but I went down to see the view; there were a few areas with hammocks or chairs each linked by paths and these went down further than I thought, and the view was just spectacular, as seen in the photo for this post. Which reminds me actually, I will post some albums up soon so you can see everything if you haven't already on my facebook.

After lunch and everyone had a break, we got put into groups to do the actual orientation stuff, and I was with Maja which I was very pleased about. The group stuff was generally about safety, rules, what to do and what not to do, and was kind of boring to be honest. Informative, yes, but I knew everything we were being told anyway. The first night was fairly uneventful, just a bit of swimming and talking till late with the other girls in the dorm. The next day was pretty much the same in terms of activities; sitting round discussing our time here, hanging out, swimming, playing pool. It was generally a really nice atmosphere to the day, happy and relaxed.

Saturday night was where the REAL party was at! It was the birthday of one of the staff, and she has this birthday every year at the orientation camp, so there was a big thing where each country went up and sang her their countries version of 'Happy Birthday' which, of course, meant that I was singing alone which was kind of mortifying as I can't really sing all that well… But after all that, there was music and dancing and just this big party and it was all kinds of fun, I danced salsa, meringue, bachata and whatever else and probably looked like a fool, but it was so much fun I didn't care!

After all the dancing finished at about midnight-ish, and we were told to go to bed, we begged with the volunteers to have just a little time in the pool before bed, just to cool off, and after enough begging we got our way! Now, let me make this very clear, we were told we would only get a couple of minutes to jump in the pool so running straight there and jumping in was everyone's first instinct, and I was NOT the only one to go in fully clothed! In the end, we did get about half an hour in the pool so, granted; I could have changed into my bikini. But I didn't. So that's that. Don't even think of mocking me for it, even though I forgot I had my headphones in my pocket and had to get new ones.

That's basically the end of that weekend, we all went home the next day, and I realize this has been an incredibly long post, so I'm just gonna leave it here for now.

Until the next time! - Jazzy x