First things first, my computer stopped working for me so I'm typing this on my phone so most likely there will be a lot of errors but I will edit them all when I'm home with a working computer.
For the past few blog updates I have kept notes of what I've been doing. When I looked at my notes for this blog the first thing seemed like 3 months ago not 3 weeks ago. Anyways so a couple of weekends ago the entire CIEE program travled down to el Dajabon which is the border of the DR and Haiti. There is a huge market there that we had time to look through. You could bargain for what you wanted and everything was surprisingly inexpensive. I ended up getting a lot of my christmas shopping done and found an mp3 player for about $10 that looked exactly like one of the mini iPods. I made the vendor test it and everything to be safe and it was great. After our trip to el Dajabon we made a pit stop at a gorgeous, jaw dropping beach. The only thing was that the mosquitos there were huge and in large quantities but the view was worth it. I think the longest ive gone during my trip without a new bug bite has been 2 days. Thats a pretty good record for here.
The next weekend I took a trip down to Cabarete with 5 of the study abroad girls. Its a lovely tourist destination right on the beach. We spent the night in a hostel. When we got there we were surprised to see how nice the hostel was, having a pool and a trampoline and a pool table. We filled up the he room with bunk beds and only had to pay $12 per person for the night. We all had a great time, we went in to town and snaked on some Chinese food then took a stroll down the beach. On our way back we crossed paths with these two boys from the states and one of them did not like the culture here. He was saying how everyone needs to speek english and how it was so stupid that people kept trying to sell him things over and over again. It was very hard to be around because obviously you're in a different place where people dont have as much money as you and do whatever they can to make money to feed their families and themselves. The next morning was planned to be our beach day but when we woke up it was pouring rain. We walked to town in the rain and after we had gotten some breakfast the rain had cleared out and welcomed the bright shinning sun. We had a perfect 3 hours of sun to lay out in and then the rain started again. I had such a fun weekend away from all of the gap year kids and the CIEE program on the beach in the sun. "Beautiful girls on a beautiful beach in beautiful weather" -Addis perfect quote for the day. We then went home saturday and got back to Santiago around 7pm. The next day I got up and headed in to town from some walking exercise and some prowling for a pair of pants. On my way home I was crossing the street about 100 steps from my door when a motorcyclist drove by and swiped my purse on the pass by. I had no words at first and stood there in shock. The worst part was when he stole a glance back at me so I threw my hands up and yelled "HEY" because I was not able to think of anything else. My bag consisted of my DR $20 phone, 1000 pesos, and my ancient cracked ipod. That all didn't matter to me but it was so scary. I walked to my house and had to ring the bell because my keys were also in my bag. I then told my host dad what happened and he went out looking for him with no luck in the end. My family ended up changing one of the 3 locks to enter into the hours so I know need three keys to get into my house instead of two which is weird coming from a house where we don't even know where a kay is and where we leave our car keys on the car.
Speaking of keys about a week later I was sitting down with dinner and looked up at the table and caught sight of a set of car keys. looking a little closer the Maine key chain my mom had sent over to the DR was latched onto the keys and it made me really happy. Around that time it was my older sisters 21 birthday. My family had many family members over but my sister Jennifer was sick all night and couldn't even enjoy a slice of her very own birthday cake.
The next weekend I was privileged to have my mom come up and visit. When I went to get her from the plane the moment I said her I couldn't wipe the smile from my face. We went down to Sosua for the weekend. Sosua is another place like Cabarete. We stayed in a nice hotel with a pool and ocean view. We spent the day relaxing on the beach. We ordered delicious pina coladas that were served in a pineapple and half of the beverage you need to eat with a spoon because it was a lot of chopped pineapple throughout the drink from heaven. We also tried a casino one night which neither of us really understood ot liked. Another night of her visit I took her out to a discoteca so she could see some more of my life here. during her visit we also stopped to get a mani and pedi. They scrubbed my moms hands and feet so hard she had trouble walking after that. Her nails were a gorgeous red with an artistic white and gold design. She then had to leave after only 5 days. I missed her after the fist day she departed and cant wait to see my whole family when I'm home. Wish I could have made the trip perfect for he but we had a great time spending time at the beach and it was just nice to see her after a solid 3 months.
The orphanage is still going great as usual. My mom was also able to stop by the orphanage on her visit and was generous enough to bring along a bunch of little gifts for the kids. One of the funniest parts of visiting the orphanage lately is that all the little kids chant my name for me to chase them around. Its still a little hard running with my ankle but its so much fun and I love it. One day when I was sitting down one of the girls started playing with my hair and a minute later the owner, Rosa came over and braided my hair so nicely and it was so sweat of her I loved that part to. This is my last week of being able to visit the orphanage so I asked if I could throw a pizza party for them and of course that was okay. So tonight I will bring over some dominos and let the kids feast on one of their favorite foods I'm sure they don't get to eat very often.
A couple days ago when I was on my normal walk to school I came to a halt in the middle of the sidewalk with a cat laying in front of me. The fur was very dirty but it didn't look like there was anything wrong with the cat, no blood or cuts, just the fact that it didn't have a home. Also that it was motionless without breath.
last night we had our fiesta de despised which was the farewell dinner for the entire CIEE group. It was sad but I had a lot of fun. I was assigned the challenge of writing a thank you for a teachers of the semester...in spanish. I then had to read it on front of everyone and my spanish pronunciation really isn't the best not even close to being okay. It was okay, it went fine but I'm going to miss my teachers soo soo much. The gap year kids then had to preform a little dance. The boys started it off then Nikki and I cut them off and did a little dancing then our teachers cut us off and we all danced together lastly we had another song come on and invited the whole audience to come up and dance. It was a great time. After dinner there were a bunch of us that stayed there late dancing, well I was attempting to dance but it wasn't the best.
So lately I've come up with a few more differences of the DR from the states. One I hate is that they have no recycling here. I wish they did because then there would be a little less trash strewn thought the streets. Another difference is when you walk down the street be prepared to hear many whistles of rubia and Americana calls. We are told that here when men see women they think look good it would be rude for them to not call out to them and let them know. But really I think its because I'm a white young american girl that they think has a lot of money. It doesn't seem to bother me though because I just ignore it and keep on with my walk.
This Sunday I will be leaving for a campo out on the middle of no where. Im really excited to see what its like. We won't have any running water and will be away from the city, mostly all the cook will be done outside and the life style is very different. I think this is my last post until I'm home but once I'm home I'll edit this and give you all an update on the last adventure of my expedition in the DR. Its crazy to think I only have 12 days left.
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