Aurora Del Sol Hotel & Casino Santo Domingo

... like I have more project ideas but also ways to implement them in my site. It was just nice to be with the other volunteers for a long time as well. PROJECT IDEAS: I think in a previous entry I mentioned some of the projects I would be working on, but after this IST we had to make a list of possible projects that we would wish to accomplish over the next two years, here are those projects ...

... through. We totally took the fording option and just plowed through. Eventually the rain let up and the sun came out on the 45-minute drive and I thought the road conditions would improve. Wrong. The deluge started again and as we turned off the highway into a more residential area the flooding got even worse. Serious rivers were flowing through the streets at this point. In some places the water was completely covering the streets and was up on the ...

... wind picked up making for a rather blustery afternoon. So, we met up with Dale and Marta next to a tree that had a phone in it, and ran for the nearest restaurant which just so happened to be the Hard Rock Cafe. So we got some tea and nachos (classy:-) and waited for it to stop raining. Then we just relaxed back at the hotel and ordered pizza. The next morning Miriam and I took a stroll around the Palace before heading to the museo de hombre (museum of man, aka the ...

... and pitched in too. That made 5! It cost about $150 which is ok cos in NZ it costs several hundred. Wednesday was Independence Day here, and we went inland to the town that has the best carnaval (Spanish spelling) in the country. We had met a Korean guy and a guy from Hong Kong at the hostel, and we decided to go as a group. They were great guys. The carnaval parade was pretty amazing - first there were schools from all over the country going past doing a dance ...

... from Zona Colonial, with not much to see except a rocky shore littered with garbage, and lots of cars whizzing by us along the road. There weren't many shops or restaurants from the Zona Colonial area till we got to the street where we had to turn up to get back to our hotel, Avenida Maximo Gomez. Part of Malecon, and the shops didn't seem to be packed tightly together as we thought they would be - it was really spread apart, so it wasn't very ...

Hey guys-it's summer-woo hoo!!! I've officially been in my site about a month and a half now, close to 4 months in country, and time is going fast. This past month I've been working b/t my two schools testing all the students the teachers referred to me in grades 1st-4th, that have problems reading. I've tested over 100 kids, and I love working with them, it's just really sad to see a 14 yr old in 3rd grade who doesn't know the vowels yet. The school year is ...

... tourist zone. Suddenly I saw a kid appear on the opposite side of the stone bench that separates the sidewalk from the rocks and sea to our left. He walked alongside us only a few meters away and appeared to carry a stick, though I couldn´t tell for sure because I made an effort to ignore him as I do with all bothersome touts. He was trying to get our attention and continued saying something to me which I couldn´t hear due to the noise ...

... on their butt. Luckily Morgan and I did not become victims, maybe our whiteness gave us immunity. I decided that this whole idea of carnival is somewhat bizzarre since the only people that really get dressed up are men, and then all they do is go around hitting people. So I am a little confused of why men only participate, and why only women get hit? Maybe it is another one of those Machisto type of phenomenon that only exists in a machista ...

The chaos finally died down with the word of my sudden "near-death-experience" that my neighbors had invented and when I made it back to Pimentel after my haitus in the capital to get away from the loco vecinos, things were getting back to normal. I was back only one day in my site, just long enough to explain to everyone I was in fact, not dead, not going back to the United states and not entirely still mad, trying to sqelch any rumors that were going on about town and the surrounding ...

... The next day, Neal and I were taking some wire off the dominican ¨¨grill¨¨ and it whipped back and stabbed me right in the left eyeball. When it was still stinging me the next day, I called the nurse to tell her what happened and she told me I should come to the capital right away. I ended up having a torn cornea and have realized that next year I am going to Pedernales with everyone else instead! Hopefully you all had a better fourth of July and enjoyed some fireworks for me!