Mercure Comercial Sto Domingo Santo Domingo

... this Peace Corps experience; ups and downs. Fortunately, there are much more ups than downs, but last week was kind of a downer for me. I tried to start my English class and only three students showed up so I ended up postponing it until the beginning of March. I also had spoken with a representative from Plan International that was going to come to a meeting (that he scheduled) and did not show up where we were going to start a youth group, community ...

... and today he enlisted Santiago and I as his project staff. The contest is in honor of Google's 10th birthday and the company is seeking ideas that will change the world (http://www.project10tothe100.com/). In January, the public gets to vote on the top 100 entries, and the top five finalists will receive funding to turn the idea into reality. Mark's idea is to take plastic waste (the plastics that currently can't be recycled since they are undesirable to turn into ...

... Jews from Curacao, Canary Islanders, Germans, Italians, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Lebanese, Syrian, Jewish refugees, Japanese, Hungarians, Chinese and many others. In fact, Chinese immigrants were the second fastest growing immigrant group in the Dominican Republic. I arrive in Zona Colonial, one of the historical districts in Santo Domingo, by taxi and quickly settle into a very cheap hotel that borders El Conde (a popular street for ...

... idea to go to the local beach area for some real RnR, We asked for directions to Boca Chica. Haha. Directions. After an hour and a half of trying to find the bus station which apparently was just around the corner we finally found it smack in the middle of Chinatown. Yes, they have a Chinatown. Why the directions didn´t include that vital piece of information I´ll never know. Anyway, we boarded a 25 seater bus and settled in for the, supposedly, 30 - 40 min ride. Well ...

Hi All! Just a quick note to let you know I posted a few more pictures on my Flickr site http://www.flickr.com/photos/90483948@N 00/ if you are interested. I finally figured out how to post pictures here on TravelPod but honestly I am too lazy to post in two places. As my sisters constantly point out, I use the internet like it is 1999 :) I am in the capital after my one-year inservice training. We had a great ...

... the main strip as we continued on the extremely long malecón, which stretches on into the horizon hugging the rocky coastline. Although there were no street lights on the side of the malecón we were traversing, there were plenty of passing cars and still a presence of flashing neon across the street, though it was obvious we had left the center of the action behind and were treading into a less-populated and less-visited part of ...

... 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 ...

... surgeons, doctors, and support staff in the world. Memorable moments: Sarah got hit with fluid from a hydro-seal (fluid filled sack in the scrotum AKA nut juice) The girls room smelled worse than the guys room (only in the peace corps) I ate incredible homemade bread (just like in the United States of America) Seeing my first surgery...and not passing out Put up some new pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcinthed r/ Or for group pis: http://www.flickr.com/groups/pcdr

... no one did. My party suddenly consisted of about fifty neighborhood dominican kids looking to be entertained. I pulled out some of the board games my Aunt Karen had sent me and the kids enjoyed them, though some of the pieces went missing and the kids fought over most of them. Then, the 12-year-old girls in my Escojo group performed their Reggaton routine (and it was actually ¨G¨rated so I was proud of them) and some older folks came over and brought soda, so it wasn´t a complete ...