15-18 de Enero
Lo siento for the long break between posts, the last few days have been absolutely ridiculous. Thursday was good, I had a lot of class but it was all interesting and knowing that Thursday night starts the weekend helps a ton. When I was walking home from school some little girls stopped me and gave me like a mini bouquet of flowers and I was like “I’m sorry I don’t have any money!” (people here like to give you stuff and then you just have to pay for it because they try to trick you) but they were just like “no we got this just for you! It’s free, just for you!” haha so cute. We went out to El Fogon (the bar by campus we went to last Thursday) with everyone. Rosie (as usual ha) found some boys and brought them over to sit with us. The guy next to me was named Dary and we talked to them for awhile, they didn’t speak any English so it was really good practice to have real conversations. He was 19 and shorter than me but had cute dimples and was really nice. He texted me later that night saying how much he liked me (and texting back in Spanish is much harder than English, I’ll need to practice) and called me angel the next day.. sorrrry Dary but we’re just going to be friends. But it’s good to get to know people from here so we can know where to go and to just meet as many new people as we can.

Friday I had to meet with my community service prof to go tour the schools we can choose from to volunteer in this semester. It just started misting when I was walking there so I didn’t bother to get an umbrella or a jacket.. poor choice. It started pouring after I had walked about two blocks but I would have been late if I went back because I had to take the long way so I wouldn’t fall in the mud. I walked just about 20 minutes in pouring rain and was completely soaked by the time I got there. Classy. But it was worth it to see the kids.. they were so cute and so excited to see us (the first school we went to was pre-school through seventh grade and the other one is little kids too but didn’t have class on Friday mornings) and I literally can’t wait to start. We’re going to visit one other school this week and then I think we start next week so that should be sweet.
Even though it was raining, everyone told us that it only rains more inland and that it wouldn’t be raining by the coast soo we decided to make the trip to Sosua and spend the night as planned. Overall, the trip was a very good learning experience and I feel that things can only improve from this point. It was one of those trips that everything that can go wrong, goes wrong. After finally getting to the bus station with all of our stuff soaking wet, we found out that there weren’t any more spots on the bus and would have had to wait three more hours for the next one. Luckily, (not sure actually how lucky it was) there was a taxi driver who said he would take us all there right then. His taxi was a minivan, but there were eight of us plus the driver so three people sat in the back and four sat across the two bucket seats in the middle. I was a lucky person to sit on the bucket seats soo by the time we finally got there an hour and a half later my body was asleep from the waste down. We were going to go to Puerto Plata but ended up going to Sosua, but we didn’t realize until we had to pay that he made us pay more. It really ended up only being about $10 per person but the bus ride home cost us $4 so that was kind of lame. All of the hotels we tried to reserve ahead of time so we just decided to go and find one when we got there. We actually managed to find a place right away that was really cheap and close to the beach. It was like an apartment and had one room with two twin beds pushed together (we didn’t find that out until Bri slept in the crack of the two beds) and another room with two sets of bunk beds. It had the creepiest decorations but had a porch with a good view of the ocean and a big table so that was cool.
Even though it was raining we decided to go to the beach to look for somewhere to eat. Naturally, it started to rain as we were walking and almost no places were open because of the rain. We think we were in the wrong part of Sosua because everyone talks about how amazing it is but the side of the beach our hotel was on was kinda sketchy and random so who knows. So starving and in the rain we walked all the way over to the other side of the beach to some big resort looking places. Again, almost nothing was open but we finally found a restaurant. I got lasagna and a rum and coke (ordering your own cocktails is still awesome) along with everyone else because our trip was going so poorly ha. We all felt better after we ate and started to make the twenty minute trek back to our hotel. Naturally, it started literally pouring so hard that we were completely soaked in about a minute. This was actually one of the most fun parts of the weekend though, we ran along the beach in the water (which was so hot compared to the rain) and just ran around and danced in the rain. We bought a big bottle of rum and all of the people who were in the few shops that were open laughed at us for being stupid tourists at the beach in the middle of a hurricane. We had cocktails on our porch which was actually really fun because now we’re all really comfortable with each other. All of the girls decided to wear like fancy, short, going out dresses so we got all dressed up and went out to find a place to dance. There were no bars on our side of the beach and the only way to get anywhere else is on a motoconcho = motorcycle taxi. So we all got on the back of these motorcycles in our dresses and all kind of thought we were going to die the whole time but it was actually pretty fun minus the death part. We got to a nice discoteca on the other side, but after about 30 seconds of being in the bar we realized that just about every single guy was over fifty, fat, ugly, and old and every girl was a prostitute. It was terrible to watch these old guys slap these beautiful girls’ asses and they would just start dancing with them and stuff. We asked a motoconcho drive how much they charge and he said 1,000 pesos which is a little more than $90. We decided to try to find another bar so that we could dance (and not feel like prostitutes.. wearing short going out dresses was a poor theme choice) but the next bar we went to was the same thing, only with a few transvestites thrown in there too. It was all just too much so we took the motoconchos back to our side and after getting overcharged by these guys too we were back in our hotel before 11:00. We hung out for a little while longer but just gave up on the day and went to bed. I slept on one of the bottom bunks with Rosie, twin beds just aren’t meant for two people.

Saturday morning we woke up at 7 after being so uncomfortable all night (well the three people in the two twin beds pushed together and Rosie and I). We got all our stuff ready and went and had breakfast at a little outdoor restaurant right outside of our hotel: the first thing that actually worked out smoothly for us the entire trip. We had a great bfast of ham, bacon, eggs, toast, and avocado for about $3 so that was awesome. We went to the beach because the clouds were breaking up and we knew that after last night that the sun would have to shine for us. It finally did come out and we had a relaxing day at the beach. The sand wasn’t as white as La Romana (and we were semi-biased from the mess of the night before) but it was still a very beautiful beach and we got to swim in the ocean and there were bigger waves here so that was exciting. We got lunch late in the afternoon and most of us just had a hamburger and fries that were awesome. We also got too expensive brownies but they were fantastic. The restaurant was ridiculously slow with everything even though we were the only ones in there so it took forever and we didn’t have time to go back to the beach after but we were all exhausted anyway so it was good to have a slow lunch.
We got on the bus to go back which was a really nice coach bus but was freezing so it was impossible to sleep. I sat by a girl part of the way there who was really nice and my Spanish wasn’t too bad. Rosie sat next to a guy who worked for the drug control organization and he showed her his huge gun. Bleh. But we finally made it home safe (Rosie and Angelica got pretty bad burns from the motoconchos but those were our only injuries).
When we got back we were still determined to go out and dance and Mike had some friends that were going to show us all a good place. It ended up just being one friend and he was no more than 5’2 and looked about 12 but he was nice. It was a pretty cool bar with a nice dance floor but the only people there were couples so again we all sat there awkwardly but it was fun to watch people dance. I danced with Mike’s friend (and I even wore heels because we took a taxi there.. I was more than a head taller than him, it looked ridiculous) and one of his friends who came but we didn’t do much besides movie in a circle. I danced with Joe which was actually one of the most fun parts because neither of us know what we’re doing but he would spin me and we probably looked ridiculous but had a good time. Rosie and I were pretty tired from the night before so we decided to just go home. Little did we know that Rosie had some visitors.. there were for real two lizards in her room. They were probably like six inches long each and bright bright green and the exact same color as her curtains and bedding. She came up to get me after she saw one because she was freaking out and we saw its tail from in her back pack and we decided to check the room to make sure there weren’t any more. When she shook the curtains another one flew out and up to the ceiling. Naturally we screamed and had to wake up mama and papa. By that time we couldn’t find either of them so I think they thought we were a little crazy but they were definitely there. Papa looked everywhere in her room and said that it had probably crawled out through the window (that she didn’t know was open in the first place and probably how it came in because of the rain the day before). We were still a little creeped and looked through her stuff even after they left but finally decided to go to bed. (I looked in my room when I got back and kept waking up paranoid a few times but neither of us got eaten in our sleep).
We woke up this morning and had frosted flakes for breakfast and then went back to bed until lunch. We went over to Victor’s mom’s house (our grandma) for lunch. She lives like two houses down right across the street. We had some really good soup with meat and rice and plantains and avocados. Grandma really likes to garden and her entire backyard is filled with tons and tons of orchid plants. All of them are orchids of different kinds (mom I’ll have to bring you there.. it was amazing) and she had even more up on the roof (along with two doves and a cockatoo!). We had dulce de leche which is a creamy really sweet desert that was kind of like a pudding/frosting combo that was really good. (I tried to make it for my 7th grade geography class, this was much much better). After hanging out there with the fam for awhile we came back to do homework and stuff. We hadn’t been back five minutes when Rosie came running out because the lizard was back in her room. (At least mama and papa didn’t think we were crazy. It did mean though that Rosie slept with a lizard in her room… blehhhh!) Papa got the broom and moved it outside but Rosie, Jenny, Stephanie and I screamed the whole time, it was hilarious. Right after that Jenny saw another one that crawled down into the basement which came back up and was on the stairs like fifteen minutes later. Paige, you would have literally died though this entire experience. They’re harmless lizards but still I keep looking around to see if there are more. We’re keeping our windows shut from now on. Today we’ve just been hanging out and doing homework and we have class again tomorrow afternoon. It’s going to be a short week because we’re going to meet Profesora Tejada (a professor from Luther who Rosie, Trena and I had this last semester who is from Santiago and has a J-term trip here this month with people we know from school) on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning (Wednesday is a holiday so we are only missing class on Thursday) to go travel with them. It’ll be really fun to see people we know from school and to get to go to places we probably wouldn’t have on our own. Sorry about how long this post was, so much happened this weekend and although it was a semi-mess I’ll remember it forever. Hopefully we can get rid of the lizards soon. Les extrano mucho!