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!