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!