Thursday, April 22, 2010











14 days left in the DR! I can't believe this semester is almost over!
Things have been so crazy here (hence the fact that I havent updated in SO LONG!) Last week was busy with Young Life (I am officially a leader now, so i get to really be a part of it which is so fun!), Bible Study and getting our class ready for our expedition last week! We have been studying immigration, and went on a service trip to a Haitain batay, which is a little bit similar to a migrant farm in the U.S. Dominican sugar cane field owners give Haitians an area of land by the farm where they can live, but they are extremely poor. Dominicans have a lot of prejudice against Haitains, so it was huge for our kids to go and SERVE them! It was really cool for them to learn that they are a different nationality, but they are the same as we are, AND even though they have next to nothing, they are so happy! We did a service project at a school there as well. We also visited a Holocaust museum. On the way home on Saturday (my birthday!!!) we got to stop at the beach for a couple hours, and Ciara suprised me with a cake! It was wonderful! Tonight is expedition night, so we are presenting to parents all that we have learned about immigration so far! Pretty much all we have learned this semester is working towards this night......it will be great but I can't wait for it to be over!!

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Monday, April 5, 2010



run pictures!!
(Julie-Anne, Me, Maddie)

April 5

It is already April? when did that happen? I will be home in a month....CRAZY! The rest of our beach trip was awesome! On Thursday we left the beach in the morning and headed to Puerta Plata to hike the "27 Charcos" (27 waterfalls) which was so amazing! Amanda rented a car because her dad was visitng, so we all rode together but ended up having quite the adventure along the way! We got completely lost...and ended up stopping and asking a tour bus driver to point us in the right direction and he actually let us follow him for a while which was SO helpful! We finally amde it to the waterfalls not too far behind schedule! It took us about 3 hours-we hiked up the mountain mostly in the water and had to go on trails around some, and then came back down the mounting jumping and sliding down the waterfalls! It was so much fun!
Friday, Amanda's dad headed back to the states so we (Kymberlee, Maddie and I) rode along to Santiago with Amanda and went out to lunch and saw a movie in ENGLISH (we saw The Lightning Thief--pretty good movie!)
Saturday I ran in a 12K "Mountain Marathon" in Jarabacoa! It was really fun to do something that made me feel a little more of a part of the community. Maddie, Julie-Anne and I went to register Saturday morning and they made us get our blood pressure and heart rate checked before we were cleared to run, weird!!! It was fun though because we got to talk to some other Dominicans in line and found out that people came from all over the DR to run in this race, so that was pretty cool! The race started at 3:30...which was terrible because it was SO HOT...but funny because along the way there were tons of people throwing water at us, including little kids running around in their underwear back and forth from streams along the way!! It was quite the sight! At one point I had to boys come at me from both sides and DUMP 2 buckets full of water on me...i was SOAKED, but it felt pretty good! Eric and Mark were awesome--they went back and forth among all of us girls that were running (they rode Erik's moto) , bringing us water and gatorade! (needless to say, apparantly they don't close off the roads here for races like we do!) The best part was the finish--at the end of the race I was all by myself and as I ran up to the finish line the guy on the loudspeaker said "Y una Americana!!!!" (An american girl) and everyone cheered!! So funny--And i got 7th place, so I was pretty excited!!
Sunday...HAPPY EASTER!!! We went to church and then had an Easter potluck with a bunch of people and played an intense game of apples to apples! It was a very fun Easter:)
Back at school today....not ready but here we go!