Week 8 in the DR!

Monday we had school off because it was Independence Day here in the DR!  We took advantage of having an extra day off and decided to venture out and find a hike that one of the girls saw online.  It was pretty hard to find but was so beautiful.  It was tucked away in the mountains in this tiny village and we had to take a few different guaguas to get there.  And once we got near the head of the 'trail', a few neighborhood boys had to come with us to show us the way.  We walked through so many cow pastures and hills, we really were in the middle of nowhere haha!  We ended up needing to rock climb down a little cliff to get to the pools, but they were absolutely beautiful and so fun to swim around in!  They were so deep so we were able to cliff jump into them, it was for sure one of my very favorite days here so far!

Also, since it was their Independence Day (they call it Carnival) there was music blasting all weekend.  There is usually loud music blasting until late at night every day, but the past few days it has been until 3 or 4 in the morning.  The Dominicans are crazy partiers!  This little boy is wearing a classic 'Carnival' mask!

Then, after a day off of teaching we were back at it!  The kids here have taught me so much about patience.  There are some days where they drive us crazy because they won't sit and listen to us, but there are other days where we can see the English starting to stick and make sense to them.  We've learned that the most important thing to do is love them and be good examples to them, because so many of them have the complete opposite of that at home.

Here are some cute neighborhood kids! They love it when we come visit their houses and play with them.  They especially love getting spun around and thrown up in the air, I love this neighborhood of ours and love that we can walk to see our kids' houses anytime we want!  That's one of the coolest parts of being here in the DR, living in the same neighborhood as the people we are helping.  It would be such a different experience if we didn't live right here in the neighborhood, even though the neighborhood can get pretty sketchy at night.  It is worth it to be so close to these sweet kids!  One of our favorite things to do with them is walk them to the house where we buy ice cream and get them some to share (first picture in the third row) :)

There were a few nights this week that were pretty stormy, and one of those nights I was outside of our gate playing with Jose Luis when it started down pouring!  We were getting all wet when one of the head teachers here told me to bring him inside before we got drenched.  So Jose Luis got to be inside of our house for a little bit which was so fun!  He loved it and it was so fun to play with him for a little bit inside!  One of the girls here got a concussion from our hike on Monday and had just told one of the other girls that she wanted to see Jose Luis so badly when we brought him in the house!  It was a mini miracle that he was already in our house when she had said that!  So we brought him upstairs to see her before we took him home!  It was such a fun night with our little visitor!

Friday was our neighbor Papi's birthday!! He's the taxi driver that drives us around whenever we need to get around the city.  When we were walking home that day, we heard loud music coming from the street and discovered a little band playing outside of Papi's house!  There were a lot of neighbors and kids gathered around dancing and listening to the music.  We joined in and played/danced with the kids and celebrated with Papi!  They blasted music all night and drank a lot of alcohol.  Classic Dominicans! Papi is the man to the left of the drummer in the second picture!

Week 7 in the DR!

This week can be summed up in three words: lice, funerals and waterfalls!  It has been the weirdest week ever, so much has happened and it has been insane!

This week we discovered that a few of the girls had lice which is not a fun thing to discover haha.  And as the week went on, more and more girls discovered they had some lice.  Luckily I haven't had any all week, but it has been insane around here.  We've been washing all of the sheets/clothes we've worn recently and have been soaking our hair in all kinds of oils.  One night we even slept on the floor in the kitchen after we bleached the floors in our room haha, it has been rough.  Fun stuff! This is our neighbor Nicolasa double checking that the rest of us didn't have any!

Also, this week one of the ILP coordinators came to visit and check up on things here.  It has been so hard here and it was good to tell him that and all about our concerns.  Food has been a bit of an issue since we're hungry a lot of the times but now he knows and is working to fix that and some other issues! He took us out to pizza the last night he was here which was so fun!  We had a big group go to the Italian place near our house and ate our body weight in pizza :)

Thursday morning we had a very interesting experience haha.  While we were eating breakfast we got a message from one of our head teachers telling us that the principal from our school, Javillar, had died and that we needed to get ready super fast and go to a memorial for her.  So we all hurried, got ready and hopped in a few taxis.  When we got there, we found out that it was the principal's sister who had died, not the principal herself.  We walked in and saw the principal crying, we all walked over and gave her a hug.  And then the family members all got us chairs and had us sit down in this small room with the family all surrounding the open casket.  It was a really sad moment for this family but it was so awkward for us because we had no idea who this lady was and were stuck in this tiny room with just her family.  We didn't stay for too long but it was for sure one of the weirdest moments of my life!

Then on Saturday we headed to 27 waterfalls!  It is exactly what it sounds like haha, 27 waterfalls that you slide down/jump off of that all loop together!  It was so pretty and so fun!  The water was pretty cold but it was really fun to go through each waterfall with all of the girls!