Time Flies

I can't believe we are almost to the end of week three here! We have had our moments of desperation fighting cockroaches and enduring sunburns, but for the most part, we have been working hard, enjoying each others company and becoming better for the experience. We have a new found appreciation for our chilly Rexburg home. We think the mosquitos are finally getting bored of our Dominicanized bloodstreams. We have learned many new hobbies with a sudden lack of movies. We now know new two player card games, we are making mission books and a wedding book, and we have learned to walk a lot! We have made many new friends and we love speaking Spanish again! They people here are very friendly and willing to help us out. Last night a big group of us went to a fancy Thai restaurant which was DELICIOUS! We loved the coconut mango rice best of all. Ani's brother arrived yesterday for camp and he and David have been rocking out on their guitars all morning with about two dozen kids surrounding them and singing We are the World. I am very impressed with how much David has been working to improve his guitar skills this month. He's doing a great job. The camp counselors are starting to trickle in and they should all be here by Sunday night when we have our first official camp dinner together. We are excited to meet all of the volunteers when they get here!

Week Two

Our Jungle

More pictures to come! They are taking forever to upload! :)










Today we went to visit one of the employees of DREAM, Felicia at her house. DREAM employs her to clean and she is so kind. We walked up to her house (hut) which was only about 10 minutes up the mountain from the DREAM center and we felt like we had gone to another country. It was so beautiful! There were roosters and all kinds of animals (including naked children) running around, every kind of tropical plant you can imagine, ruins of old stone buildings and whatever else you might picture in the jungle. It was so strange to walk up a road just a few minutes and leave the hustle and bustle of motorcycle taxis zooming by and street vendors selling and enter a tranquil and peaceful piece of nature. We walked around her family's land and looked at their platano (bananas that are more like potatoes that they fry and eat with salt and ketchup) trees, pineapples, avocado trees, orange trees, and some fruit called buenpan. I don't know what it was. They looked like small green pumpkins growing on a REALLY tall tree. Who knows! We bought some mangos out of the back of some guy's truck. We have also tried guava and passion fruit (Chinola). I really like the Chinola juice! David found an empanada stand, which we were excited about. His little piece of Argentine heaven for breakfast. We also found a restaurant like Cafe Rio! An American family from California moved here and opened a FreshMex place and we love it! We have also tried Gelato. We don't see the difference between gelato and ice cream. Maybe the Italians can convince us otherwise, but not the Dominicans.

We had our first DR doctor experience today. David has had an earache for a few days and we was dying a little bit this morning so we took him in. He prescribed three medications which they gave us and we walked out the door without paying anything. They told us that if they needed any money they would call us later. And out of all the people we've met here of every color and ethnicity...our doctor was Indian (actually from India) of all places. :) Random.

In other news...we think we may have killed the nest of cucarachas that have been living behind the cabinet under our sink. We sprayed it two days ago, sprayed it again yesterday and the owners son came today and drew some magical voodoo lines with chalk that he said kills them immediately. We'll see how that goes.

Overall, we are having so much fun! We are starting to greatly appreciate all of the below 30 days off of school that I had and the mornings of scraping the snow off our car. I think I prefer it. None of my shoes or rings fit me here because I swell up in the heat. I can wear flip flops or tennis shoes. No regular sandals. Awesome. We are loving the people and the slow pace of life. We really enjoy the food and the novelty of everything. We are excited for whatever lies ahead.

La Playa

I have a feeling we are going to regret this super sunny day in a few hours. Today was our official first leisure day here in the DR and we played at the beach all afternoon! Along the beach are various restaurants and bars that have lounge chairs you can pay to use. The local secret is that the yellow chairs at Jose Oshay's are free. Because of this little secret, everyone we know ends up in the same spot on the beach. It was fun to hang out with everyone, play soccer, read, swim...BUT...despite the constant application of SPF 50, I think we will be sorry for soaking it up. I can feel the heat trying to burst out from under my skin. Oh well. It was a great day and exciting to see all of the kite surfers. It is such a crazy sport! It looks like a blast, but it costs hundreds of dollars to try. Maybe someday.

Rainy Days

It has rained every day since we have been here. It's not super heavy, so we still go out. Last night we went to a really rich gated neighborhood for a concert. The 2010 bass guitarist of the year in the US came to play last week for a benefit concert and did another show last night that we got to go to. It was very interesting to be in that situation after having been to Caraballo earlier in the day, one of the most impoverished areas near here. I think I felt more pity for the rich people. Their lives seemed a little more pathetic. It was fun to listen to the music and eat pizza though. :)

Today we worked on various projects and continued registering students for the summer camp. We have less than 200 spots available at the camp I will be at and TONS of students have come to sign up. We will post the list of students that have been accepted next Thursday. David is working on writing a music curriculum as well as a camp theme song for this year that everyone will learn. I am currently working on putting together a workshop for the teachers next Saturday. We are going to focus on skills and strategies for increasing comprehension in reading. I am excited to be a part of it!

Right now we are hanging out with our new BFFs, Ashlie and Santos. They have been so welcoming and friendly. We are very grateful to have them here! We are going to plan a trip to the temple in Santo Domingo soon.

Cabarete

We can't believe that we are finally here! We have have a fun couple of days adjusting to our new surroundings and we are loving it. It has been very muggy the last few days since it has been raining each afternoon. We left from Salt Lake Sunday afternoon and flew to Denver,CO. Our plane was quite late and we made our next flight with 2 minutes to spare! We flew from Denver to Newark, NJ arriving around 11:45 pm. After finding our way to the train and down to the shuttle area, we finally made it to our hotel and to bed by 2:00 AM. We talked to a nice couple from Nicaragua in the shuttle on the way to the hotel. On Monday morning, we headed over to the airport at 7:00 after an appreciated complimentary breakfast and flew out at 9:15. We made very good time and landed 45 minutes early in the DR. We sat by a lady named Sandy from CT and talked to her the whole flight.

When we arrived, we made it through all of the foreign check points pretty quickly and found all of our luggage with no trouble. We even were able to check our additional suitcase for free when we told the flight attendant what we were doing! Score!

Ashlie, our new best friend who we have been communicating with for the past two months picked us up with our favorite taxi (guagua) driver, Marino. On the side, Marino is a merengue bands' manager. Our new apartment is much nicer than I expected. We are very pleased about it. We have a small kitchen to cook with and everything we need. The first day here, the thing that surprised me the most were the people riding around on donkeys in the street and random goats and chickens running around. David was surprised by the amount of poverty...which we realized today was actually wealth compared to another area we visited today about 40 minutes away. We went to a small village where we have another preschool called Caraballo.

Our first night here, we had dinner with Ashlie and her husband, Santos, as well as our upstairs neighbor, Molly who is also a volunteer with DREAM from Kansas/New York. Santos made us the most delicious rice with an eggplant salsa, fried bananas and Ashlie's favorite peach soda. It was a wonderful welcome!

We have been set up with an account at a little eatery (comedor) between our house and the DREAM center where we are allowed to go and eat every day at lunch for free. We are VERY grateful for that! It is extremely hot...but it will only get hotter. The rain and the humidity don't help, but it is beautiful. Everything is very green. The beach is a different world from where we are living two blocks away. You pass from fairly chaotic everyday business in our neighborhood called the Callejon into ritzy white laziness. It is weird. Right now we are sitting at an open air cafe/bar with internet on the beach called VoyVoy. I think we will probably be coming here a lot to use their free WiFi.

We are so excited to be here! We have met a lot of the staff now and spent a lot of time observing the Montesorri Preschools since their last day is Thursday. We are starting to get materials together for various projects. I am helping with a workshop we are doing for native school teachers on Saturday the 18th. David is setting up the music classes for the summer. He will be going out to Caraballo next week to help with a short summer camp they are doing their with international students. He may even be doing some construction!