Melia Santo Domingo Hotel & Casino

... make sure they were coming. Sure enough, they showed up (and right on time, which just doesn't happen in this country). I was even a little late and they gave me **** for it. I was so excited because not only did most of them attend the meeting but we filled out the Action Plan poster to continue construction of the central workshop and they followed through it with, meeting again on Sunday to put in the floor to the workshop. ROLLERCOASTERS: perfectly ...

... Santo Domingo teaching in a bilingual private school. We met at the mall near where I live. I really appreciated having the opportunity to get hear her firsthand perspective on what to expect in Neyba. She lived with the same family I will be living with, and also weighed and measured children. The work I'll be doing in Neyba is the next step in the project after her work. Today provided quite the Dominican adventure. Mark is entering a contest sponsored by Google ...

As I begin my journey, I have discovered one of the best places to start is the first European city in the New World, Santo Domingo. The capital of Dominican Republic, Santo Domingo has a rich and complex history primarily due its occupation by Spain, Haiti and US over the past few hundred years as well as its ethnic variety. In addition to Spanish colonists and enslaved Africans, groups that have settled here over the centuries include ...

... plastic surgeons, nurses, anesthesiologists, etc comes down every year to do free surgeries on things like cleft lip and palate, burn scars, and deformities of the hands and ears. They use Peace Corps volunteers as translators, and we got to help at every stage of the process. On the first day, there were over 1,000 people lined up outside of the hospital to see a doctor and to find out if they qualified for surgery. Of those, 400 made it ...

... of war you played as a kid and the commando comic books you used to read. Haha. Anti-aircraft guns that you could actually sit on and turn the wheels to aim. It was a lot of fun, until of course the guard saw me and motioned to me to get off. He neglected to tell the local boys to get off the guns they were playing on but I guess I´m used to being treated like a foreigner these days, Oh well, good fun while it lasted. That took up one day. Another day we had this ...

... like a public bus) to the expreso stop, but we were stopped by a couple of enterprising motoconcho drivers who decided that us (and our luggage) would be perfectly safe on their two motorbikes. That's one girl per bike, plus a rucksack each and a suitcase nestled between the handlebars on both bikes. At 50 mph on crowded roads. Definitely an experience and rather cool. After that the 4 hour bus ride was a bit of an anticlimax, but we reached Santo Domingo without incident ...

... the two of us. Then again, maybe such a lesson just makes them seek bullets instead of blades as their weapon of choice. Either way, after incurring such a frightening attack I can see why so many people cheered on Bernard Goetz back in the day despite the extreme nature of his act of presumedly self-defense. I also understand why vigilantes like Charles Bronson would probably be welcomed by a good part of the ...

... where the only food was popcorn being sold by street vendors. I would forgive the purple backside I went home with if there had been some sort of rich tradition associated with such brutality...perhaps the Dominican people were demonstrating their anger toward the Spaniards for enslaving them; perhaps they were "conquering" dictatorship of Trujillo with every smack to the a** of every unsuspecting person. However, when I inquired about the ...

... little kiosk to do just that so I made a run for it. I found the bus to my friend Elena's site and was on my way. Only problem...I had never been to her site and I didn't know how to get there. With no phone, I had to just guess that the bus drivers would know where to leave me. Villa Guerrero, I had said. Where did they leave me? La Higuera. It sounds so similar when you are a gringa, I suppose. I was a bit unsure as I jumped off the bus ...

... a filled-in latrine (more commonly known as an outhouse). I bought wood and cut it to make a box which we painted white. We went all over the place to find good soil to throw into the mix, but mostly we found sand. We quartered off the box and made a grid of seeds and put in the seeds in each square of the grid so we could remember what we planted. I used seeds that friends from the states had sent. All of this I thought might take a few hours, but in ...