Hola i’m back in Santo Domingo and I have to say that I am pretty sad tpo be leaving my Campo. I got pretty attached after being there for so long. I am really going to miss my amazing family and the chilled relaxed campo feeling. BUT i was SOOOOO excited to get back to the capital and see that my friend Sonia (a good friend from my first 6 weeks) was at my house here! That was an amazing suprise!! And i have to say that i HAVE had an AMAZING time in this country and I am getting really sad at the idea of leaving. This is a beautiful and rich culture that is so lively and i have become really attached. It is amazing to be able to have the opportunity to live in tropical paradise for 3 months and i’m not going to complain about eating fresh fruit and meeting amazing people :-D. I have had ups and downs through this all, but i wouldn’t have traded any of this for anything!! I am so excited to get back and tell stories and show pictures! I will be in the capital until Tuesday morning and then i have a spanish test, and final retreat until we get on a plane for Miami (ultimatly Chicago, but you all know what i’m really excited about!) on Thursday. I just really thank God for this amazing life changing experiance it has been something I will always carry with me. So with that I will sign off from the Dominican Republic! Dios se bendiga Uds! :-D

Thank you everyone for keeping me in your prayers i am feeling a ton better after i found out that i had been drinking water from the canal that my family kept in the fridg. So who knows what kind of nasty i have been drinking. But i got some pills and feel a lot better now. This week has gone pretty quickly, and we have had electricity almost every night this week! So YAY! We also started teaching english to the youth after or full days at camp so our days are pretty jam packed!! Oh and i have to tell the story that yesterday we went down to the Canal to take some pictures and we found a HUGE DEAD HORSE floating in the canal, pretty much the most disgusting thing i have ever seen in my whole life, some men pulled the horse out by its tail and legs and it layed on the ground, so gross. But that was the excitment that we got this weekend! Anyway i hope you are all doing well! Its only 19 days left in the country, keep us in mind as we wrap things up here!Also check out the pictures of Las Zanjas on the Goshen SST page, you can see my awesome tan!! Love to all!

hey everyone! sorry its been so long since I have had anything to say but I’m back! So my time in Las Zanjas has been interesting. Not as exciting as Marcos i must admit. I have been pretty sick this week some throwing up and stomach stuff. Ruth and Eric came to visit yesterday and so they gave me some pills. Turns out there have been 4 people in the hospital from our group so far, we have already broken the SST record! So I am working on recovering from that.
We did start the camp this week and things didn’t go as well as maybe we had hoped. First we didn’t get materials copied because we didn’t know that things weren’t open on Sunday so we had to wing it the rest of the week. And when we did end up making copies we only made 30 because we thought that would be enough but for the morning and afternoon groups we had more than 50 at times. so we have been feeling stressed and under prepared. We need to learn to work on Dominican time and realize that things don’t always happen when we think they are going to happen.
SO at this point in service I am doing a little bit of counting down (we have 26 days from today until Miami!) and lets just be honest I will be ready to be able to sit down to go to the bathroom again! But I am working on my Spanish and enjoying the cool rain and the great people! I hope you are all well and I will see some of you in 4 weeks!

Hola from the campo! Ok well im not in the campo right now, im in San Juan but i do live in the campo… so an update. I am living with a grandparent couple who are raiseing a 14 year old girl her name is Rossi and they are pretty nice but you know, really old and blind and in their own world. I WISH WISH WISH i would have broght the solar shower with me!!! i have a latrine that i have to use. I take bucket showers from the rain water and i have a hole in the ground to do my thing that an array of bugs and animals crwal out of. SO there are a few ajustments i have had to make as far as my living standerds goñ. so it will be interetsing to see how the next 5 weeks work out. I will be working with a camp that starts a week from today, and as far as i know there hasn´t been any planning for it yet. so i will be excited to see how it works out. I would really love your prayers for peace and understanding while im here so that i can feel at home with this new way of life. I will keep you posted as much as i can but who knows how offten i will get into San Juan. Oh on the plus side its sooo much cooler here! i actually wore long sleeves yesterday!! SO thats great! alright i hope you are all well and i will be seeing some of you in about 5 weeks! Love You!!

Today we had our service orientation and last time as a group. And during this orientation we got the information about our families, what job we will be doing and where we will be living. And all along here I thought (and so did my leaders and the girl going with me) that I would be in the city. BUT alas, i AM in the campo to everyones surprise! (I think it was Bruce and Paula’s comment that jinxed me!) But i will be living and working in Las Zanjas which is a campo 20 minutes outside of San Juan. SO needless to say that information shook me up a bit and now I’m am a LITTLE more apprehensive than i was before. I am sure it will be great, just need to get my mind in that gear now!!! SO keep on praying for me,that i will adjust and have a wonderful time. Im sure it will be amazing!! Just thought i would let you all know, that i get to experience the campo!! YAY!

So I get the pleasure of being in the city a day longer than Marcos does. I head to my service location in San Juan on Friday. It took a while to actually get my service location, but I am getting pretty pumped about my new change in location. I will be working with a Peace Corps worker in the CITY (yeah thats right, no campo for me ;-)) of San Juan. I am also going with another girl from my SST group named Heather. We will be working with a day camp for kids teaching nutrition and stuff like that. I am pretty scared about meeting a new family and getting used to that again (now that i know my city family so well) but I am really looking forward to it!! And just so every one knows we are offically (today) hlaf way through our 3 months of SST (not that I’m counting down the days until I see Marcos or anything!) So thats exciting! I will let you all know more when i do! I hope all is well with you all and keep the prayers up for Marcos and I as we leave our families who have been amazing and get to know a new place!! Talk to you again in San Juan!

This past weekend was amazing! We took our longest trip to Barahona and Pedernales which included time at in Haiti. So let me tell you a little bit more specifically what all we did…
On Thursday we left for Barahona in the south (west i think) of the country and drove a long while until we got to an awesome mountain of dried up coral and we climbed up those rocks to see some Taino art that was on the walls of the caves. After that we went to the Lago Enriquillo and saw some massive iguanas, that was pretty cool. Then we made a trip across the border to go to a market in Haiti. It is amazing to see the culture differences in such a tiny island and just right on the other side of the boarder.
On Friday we got up and drove to Pedernales where we stopped at a Larimar beach. for those of you who don’t know Larimar is a type of stone or rock that is only found in the DR (they are really proud of it) So we stopped at a beach where this awesome stuff just washes up from the ocean and we had a chance to look for some and collect our own. That was really fun. After that we drove to a different beach and spent the day there, relaxing and swimming in the amazing Caribbean Sea (I’m not complaining!)
The next day we went to Haiti again but this time to an actual town/city. It was an amazing difference. The people are so much poorer in Haiti then in the DR but it was amazing how much more at ease and comfortable i felt around them in comparison to how i feel around the tigres in the DR sometimes. It was a great experience for the Haitians to show us their homes.
Then we went to Bahia see las Aguilas and i have been told that this is the worlds 7th best beach. And i would believe it. We had to take boats to get there because it is completely remote and untouched. it was AMAZING! unfortunately about 2/3 of the group got sick and were running for the bushes through out the day. But even in spite of illness we had a great time. The water was so clear and perfect for snorkeling (for people who like that sort of thing) and they even found large star fish!!!
The next day we left for home, but first we stopped in San Rafeal to do a river hike. A river hike is exactly how it sounds, we hiked up and down a river. it was so much fun going up, unfortunately the river was a little strong and i was a little cocky and i slipped on a rock going into a spot deeper than i expected and got my feet taken out from under me and landed HARD on my knee and came out with a sprained knee and HUGE bruises to remember my time there. luckily there were some awesome girls in my group who helped me down the river.
It was a great weekend overall!! i am having a great time here, we leave for service in about a week, and i still don’t know exactly where i will be but i will keep you updated! thank you so much for your emails and letters!!! keep them up they make me so happy to receive!!! blessings and love to all!!

I finally have something interesting to say! I thought I should get this online before Marcos comes back to tell you all about his amazing time to Cusco! So this weekend i went to Selcedo and Jarabacoa. They are two citys north of Santo Domingo. On Friday we left Casa Goshen at 7 am and headed to the Mirabal Muesam. The Mirabal sisters are national icons here. They were part of the 14th of June Movement to over throw the dictator Trujillo. Three of the four sisters were killed in a plot by Trujillo and his secret police the SIM. We were lucky enough to have a meeting with the last sister still alive. She is concederd a national tresure. Her name is Dede Meiabal, and her son was actually the vice presedent of the country a few years back.

After that historical feild trip we went up to the Mts. of Jarabacoa. It was BEAUTIFUL (i suggest you check out the pictures on Goshen’s website) We stayed in a beautiful community and played in the river all day and that night the locals taught us how to dance Dominican style. It was so much fun! On Saturday we took a trip to an organic coffee farm and saw that process and took and amazing hike and ate organic strawberrys and raspberrys on the way! After that we headed to a waterfall and played around for a while. It was an amazing time! I am really glad that we got the chance to get out of the city a little bit and see the beauty of the country! I can’t wait to show you all my pictures!!! Love to you all and I hope you are all well! Blessings!

Hi again from the DR! sorry it has been a while since i have had something to say! it has been nice though to have some time to get into the whole rutine of spanish classes and lectures! We did make the trip to San Palo (I think) The home of Sammy Sosa and we went to a sugar factory and a Batey that was an experiance, not only was it interesting to see how factory workers work and the conditions they have, it was interesting to see how the people who actually cut the sugar cain live. It was a little depressing to see these communities that are kept in oppression. anyway it was a real experiance. and this weekend i will be headed to the classic waterfall that the DR SST goes to all the time, so that will be exciting! anyway i will write more later, my time is almost up here! take care all (and be safe and have fun this weekend Marcos! And Mom and Dad have fun in CO!) Love to all!!

I have had a very exciting past few days… let me tell you….

On Friday we went to the colonial zone and had a lot of fun not being the only white people around. we saw old forts and where Columbus lived. We also saw churches and where the heros of Dominican Republic are burried. It was a VERY linda ciudad, and i enjoyed it a lot! After we were done, Maria and I got ready to go home, but got a little confused. My host dad had given me directions to where to go to get home, but obviously i needed a little more direction. Maria and i asked a few people for directions in our broken spanish and found out at least we were walking the right direction. We ended up walking a little more than 2 1/2 miles and were very dirty and gross when we finally got a carro publico. I told Maria that its probably good that my mom doesn’t know what I’m doing all the time, she might not like to know we were walking down (sometimes through) a busy street lost hot and dirty trying to ask directions in a language we don’t really know… it was a good experiance.

Today was also very exciting all around! I got up early at 6 am to leave for casa goshen. From there we went to tres ojos which are beautiful caves with bright blue water at the bottom. It was quite the fun experiance. We even sang 606 at the bottom of one of the caves. From there we left for the beach!! My whole self was in the Caribbean Sea it was beautiful! we had 5 hours to have as much fun as possible on the beach. I did a lot of swiming in the clearest water i have ever seen and we played water vollyball and ultimate frisbie. Amoung other things we also did some sun tanning, and dispite the SPF 30 i put on before going in the water, I am bright red!! its really sad and uncomfortable! my three year old sister even asked why i was so red today!

After i got home I found my host mom, her sister and cousin having a “beauty parlor” in their house. It was fun and they decided they wanted to make me look more feminine. So they gave me a french manicure and plucked my eyebrows and put a LOT of makeup on my face. It was quite the experiance. But i had a lot of fun!! They are really great people. SO as you can see i am having a great time and i am excited for a new week to start. and i also can’t wait until my sunburn turns into an awesome tan! Other than that thank you all for youe prayers, I am off to watch Willy Wonka for the 2nd time tonight in spanish! Have a great weekend!