Learning to Live a little

This week is exciting because I will be visiting a fellow volunteer at her site. I will be taking a 4.5 hour bus ride to a batey in the south of the country to get a more in depth look at the typical life of a pcv. Bateys are communities in the south of the country, with a mostly Haitian population, where the most common form of making a living is working in the sugar cane fields. i expect the experience to be educating and eye opening.
next week i will begin CBT training in Constanza. I will spend about 5 weeks there and I am really looking forward to that because it is located further North in the country so the weather will be cooler. I will miss my host family here in santo domingo though. Especially the delicious natural teas that my dona makes me every morning! But I look forward to the change of scenery. Time goest by really slowly here. At first I thought it was just me but after speaking with some other volunteers, they feel the same way. After doing some serious thinking as to why this might be, I came up with an answer. Pace of life in the U.S.( even if you´re from a small city) is so much faster than life in the DR. In the states, people are always doing something, even when they´re not doing anything ie..computer, watching tv..
But here, since surfing the net and watching tv for hours just isnt part of societal living, people do other things to pass the time such as go outside and sit in the porch, walk around, or hang out by the colmado. Based off of my experience it seems to me that Dominicans really live each day more and take life each day at a time. I never really see anyone in a rush or a hurry. This is very different when compared to the U.S..... especially NYC. I have therefore come to the conclusion that the reason why me and other volunteers that i have spoken to feel that we have been here for over a month when really its just been 11 days, is because we are adjusting the the change in pace of life. I think that with time, we will grow accustomed the the pace here, and I personally look forward to it. A couple of days ago I thought to myself, ¨the days go by so slow here.¨ But now I know better and think that Dominicans live each and every day in a way that we could never understand.... unless we lived it too..Talk about giving a new meaning to the tem living life