School was randomly cancelled last Wednesday which was a nice surprise! We didn't know until right before we would've taught so we didn't have time to go to the beach or anything but it was so nice to have a little surprise day off! We decided to walk to a lady in our ward's house to get some celebratory ice cream! She is the sweetest lady and wants to open an ice cream shop one day, but for now she has a little freezer in her house that we can just walk to and get a yummy cup of ice cream for like 70 cents. It's so so yummy too, it's the perfect softness and she always have new flavors for us to try. So yummy and she is just a 5 minute walk from us, it's a fun after school walk! It's hard to tell but I also love the picture of Christ she has right above her ice cream freezer. She is the sweetest!
One other thing about our neighborhood that I love is the basketball courts. We have to be careful because at night there are a lot of teenage guys that just want to flirt with all of the American girls, but my favorite part is watching the games with all the neighborhood kids while we sit in the little bleachers on the side of the court. We brought them laffy taffys this night and they loved it. They just love it when someone is paying attention to them and loving them, which are things they don't get often at home. The darker boy in the bottom right corner pronounced himself my boyfriend and was following me around all night haha, love him!!
On Thursday I realized that I have been slacking at taking pictures of my students because I'm usually busy trying to keep them entertained before they all go crazy haha. The kiddos in red shirts (Estibenson, Karen and Andy, Karen, Chanel and Andy) are from my first grade class in Javillar. The two cuties in the blue and red shirts in the last two pictures are from our after school program a few days ago. Love these kids even though they are so challenging during lessons.
On Friday we didn't have school because a group of us girls went with the local branch from Puerto Plata on their temple trip to Santo Domingo! We all loaded onto a bus at the church and headed off! It ended up taking about 6 hours because we hit some bad traffic but we were so excited when we hit Santo Domingo because we saw big buildings and American restaurants everywhere! Here is my little gang of friends in the church bathroom before we headed out (we love working bathrooms since ours at home are a little sketchy haha)!
It was nice to have the familiar feeling of a big city while we were driving by! We drove to the temple grounds, which is this big area that also has the CCM (MTC here) in the same gated area. It was so so pretty and we were so excited to stay in the MTC! As soon as we got permission we started walking towards the American restaurants that we knew were super close to the temple. It was about a 10 minute walk to McDonalds, Taco Bell, Wendy's, Krispy Kreme and a few other restaurants too. You have no idea how happy we were!!!! We have had rice and beans and mystery meat for almost every single meal and we were so pumped to have American fast food. We were so excited that we literally stopped at all four of the places I just mentioned haha. We all got something smallish at each place and were completely stuffed. It was SO YUMMY and was so satisfying to have familiar food!! I have never been more excited to have American fast food.
After our feast, we headed back to the temple grounds and sat outside of the temple for a little bit while we were waiting for the rest of our group to get back. It was so peaceful to be there, there was such a special feeling inside that gate. There were quite a few families and member walking around, going in and our of the temple and the MTC and just walking around the grounds. We sat outside of the temple on the benches for a while and talked and sang a few hymns. It was so wonderful! The next morning we got up pretty early and headed over to do baptisms in the temple. Doing baptisms in another language is one of the coolest things i've ever done. I felt right at home being in the walls of the temple, even though I am many miles away from home. The spirit comforts you and brings a feeling of peace and home wherever you are. Love this beautiful temple.
After baptisms, we made a quick stop at McDonald's to have one more dose of American food and then we hung out on the temple grounds writing in our journals/reading and having a relaxing morning before we were going to head back! (side note: we took warm showers for the first time since we've been here while at the MTC, best part of the trip right there ;) ) We had a late lunch at the MTC with classic Dominican rice and beans, and a delicious homemade pineapple and papaya drink that someone made. It was seriously the yummiest juice I've ever had! We ran into a few missionaries while we were waiting to eat lunch which was so fun!! One of them even knew one of our girls, it is always so fun to see missionaries from the states while we're here! One our way back we somehow ended up with a few street vendors on our bus selling candy haha. They drove with us for like 10 minutes and sold us all candy which was yummy! Our favorite was the picture below, it had the texture of a sucker but tasted like vanilla caramel. So yummy!
On Sunday we headed to Church and sat behind the CUTEST man. He seriously has the happiest smile i've ever seen. We are obsessed with him and he just kept smiling right at us. After church we walked around the neighborhood with a few of the kids and Jose Luis rode around on my shoulders for a little bit. Love these neighborhood kids!! We have been spoiled with a few days off this week, and next week we only have two days of teaching. Monday is off for a holiday and then Thursday-Sunday is our 4 day vacation!
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