Week 4 Continued...Santo Domingo!

Thursday morning we woke up early and hopped on a bus to Santo Domingo!  It's about a four hour bus drive, and the buses have AC which feels so good after sweating all day every day in our house haha.  We spent the first day here checking into our airbnb and wandering around the streets by our house.  Our airbnb feels like a mansion to us because it has AC, warm showers, running water, an oven to make cookies/brownies in, a tv, and wifi that actually works.  We were in love from the moment we stepped inside.  We walked around the streets a little bit right after we got settled in which was gorgeous.  About a 5-10 minute walk away from our place is the main street in Zona Colonial (the older area of Santo Domingo with cathedrals and old ruins and buildings) with lots of vendors, restaurants and artists selling their paintings.  It was so so pretty, and we stopped at the super market there to buy a few groceries to last us through the next couple days.  We also went to a super yummy pizzeria which hit the spot!  We spent the rest of the night enjoying wifi and Netflix at our place and eating warm homemade cookies :)

Friday morning we woke up and made chocolate-chip pancakes since we had a stove :)  We all love food and love that we have a little kitchen for the weekend!!  After breakfast we headed to Tres Ojos, which is a national park close by that has cool lakes, rocks and trees everywhere.  Our favorite lake was one that we had to take a little boat ride to get to.  There was a dock there and the water was such a beautiful turquoise color, especially when the sun shone right on it!

After Tres Ojos, we headed back to the plaza by our house to grab some lunch and walk around!  We found a yummy restaurant right on the plaza, my friends fed some pigeons on the square and then we went to the Chocolate Museum!  We didn't stay there for very long but I wanted to pick up some dark chocolate for my dad :) And the packaging on the chocolate was SO cute.  Also, right next to the restaurant we ate at there was an 'Amber Museum'!  There is Amber everywhere here which is fun to see my name everywhere haha.

We took a quick breather at home and charged up our phones a bit then Ashland, Alyssa and I wanted to go rent bikes for a few hours to ride around the streets in Zona Colonial.  It was so so pretty.  We loved looking at all of the windows, walls and flowers everywhere.  We felt like we were in a European city or something, it was so pretty.  And afterwards we rewarded ourselves with some churros with nutella :)

Friday night we brought out our big mattress in the living room so we could watch movies on a megabed and sleep out there (while eating brownies and ice cream of course).  Best decision ever, love these chicas.

Friday morning we slept in which felt so nice!  We knew that there was a mall nearby that was somewhat American so we decided to spend the mall there.  We spent all morning at Agora Mall, got matching pjs at Forever 21, got hand sanitizer at Bath and Body Works to keep me from getting sick from my students, and we went upstairs in the mall and found a bunch of American fast food restaurants which was a fun surprise! There was also a movie theater in the mall which was fun to discover! These are our matching avocado pjs haha, we love love love the avocados here and just had to get these when we saw them.  Don't know how I would survive all of this without these girls!

After the mall we walked for a minute to Office Depot for Alyssa to find a pen (long story haha).  We were going to go to the beach but found out it was farther away than we thought, so we headed back to our place!  We hung out in our pjs, watched some Netflix (we're taking advantage of it working here before we go back to Puerto Plata where Netflix doesn't work haha) and then made some spaghetti for dinner which hit the spot!  After dinner we walked around the streets again for a while, looked at the street performers at artists and got a fresh smoothie before we headed in for the night!  We are going to miss these streets, they are so fun to just walk around on.

These are some pictures of Plaza de Espana right by our house, so so beautiful!!

We watched lots of Netflix and used lots of wifi on the last day while we could haha!  We ended up getting our laundry done at a laundromat here because our washer at home makes our clothes smell weird!  We also took advantage of our oven for the last little bit that we had one and made more chocolate chip cookies :) 

Week 4 in the DR

Monday we had school off for a holiday which was so so nice!  We really have been spoiled lately with days off and time to go on little trips!  We decided to use Monday to take the 45 minute guagua (bus/van things here used for public transportation) ride to Cabarete beach! On our guagua ride there we met a man named Ernesto (Ernie).  He sat right in front of us and turned around chatting with us in Spanish for a little bit, wondering why we were here and where we were staying and everything.  Then he said "Well that was fun! I'm a translator here and just wanted to mess around a little bit to see if you guys knew any Spanish".  It was so fun to chat with him after that, he chatted our ears off about how he translates for pastors and different programs that he helps with that do similar things as us around here.  He even said he would come stop by our house in our little neighborhood with some of his friends in a foundation he helps with.  It was so fun to talk to a Dominican in English, I love meeting people around here and it makes it even easier to do so when they speak English :) We snuck a few pictures of him for memories.

Cabarete is a little bit past Sosua, where we went a few weeks ago! We loved Cabarete so much because it had the cutest shops and cafes lining the streets of this small little town.  The beach itself had way calmer waves than Sosua and was perfect to just relax on and lay out in the Sun!  Plus there was a cute old lifeguard tower that was a fun backdrop for pictures!

Before we headed to the beach we stopped by fresh fresh cafe, which everyone from past semesters told us was a must-go place to eat.  We wanted to just look at the menu before we went to the beach so we knew if we wanted to go back for lunch, but we ended up caving and getting nutella and banana crepes because they sounded SO good and were only 150 pesos (like 2-3 dollars).  They were so yummy, so pretty and hit the spot.  Nutella tastes like home :)  And of course we had to go back for lunch for the freshest smoothies and a yummy lunch!  We sat in the cutest little booth while we ate, and the cafe is filled with shelves of oils and beauty products.  It felt like a hipster cafe from the states, we LOVED it!

Tuesday and Wednesday were our only days teaching for the week since we had our 4-day weekend vacation this weekend!  Tuesday I actually ended up running around town to different hospitals with one of my friends who was sick, but Wednesday flew by even though the kids were extra crazy that day.  After school Wednesday I had to run with my friend to pick up her results of one last test, and then when we got back we wanted to walk to get some pineapple and bananas from the fruit stands in our neighborhood!  Angel (bottom right picture) was riding his bike outside of our gate and wanted to come with us, so we walked through the streets to go get fruit and stopped and said hi to some cuties playing outside!  We spoiled Angel with a Coke, a banana and a piece of pineapple.  He is so sweet and you can tell that he just wants to be around us teachers and hang out with him.  Love that boy!

This sweet girl is always locked in this gate in front of her house whenever we walk by.  We think that her parents go to work all day and lock her up by herself all day, we never see her outside of the gate and never see anyone in there with her.  It breaks our heart every time.  She always yells "Hola!!!" as loud as she can and always wants us to come over and hold her hand through the gate.  These kids are in such hard circumstances, and we try to show them love any way we can.

Now we're off to spend the weekend in Santo Domingo!  We are so so excited!

Week 3 in the DR

What a week!  I can't believe another week flew by and that we've been here for 3 weeks already.  The days go by so slowly and some days it feels like we've been here for months, but it is so crazy that 3 weeks have already flown by and how familiar we are with the culture and the norms already.

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!