Good to be back!

Back in Jarabacoa!! My flight got in last night at 3 AM. A couple who is on the board at our school picked me up, Marisol and Franklin, and they were so nice! They said they would be my parents while I am here:) I got up early this morning (big suprise there), got all unpacked, and then we went into town to do some grocery shopping/wander around, BUT forgot that it was siesta time. We went hiking to the waterfalls instead, so fun! Man i missed doing that! After we hiked, my roommate Melissa and I cleaned out our ENTIRE kitchen...it is so clean and organized now, so exciting. Thats it for today--it is only 5:45 and I am already ready for bed!

Devos this morning: pretty strong reminder that if you are going to call yourself a Christian and try to lead people toward God, you better be living your life ALL OUT for Him!! Prayers to be conscious about EVERY single thing I do and say/be able to love like Jesus did at ALL TIMES!!!

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!!

Easter dinner!

Easter dinner!

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!

March 29!!!

Whoa, things have been CRAZY around here!! I don't really even know where to start here! School has been crazy, I feel like I am just running around all the time, but busy=good! My sister was here all last week, which made things even more crazy, but it was wonderful to have her here! I got to spend a lot of time with her-we all hiked the waterfall on Sunday, went to Pica Pollo (our fave spot) for dinner on Monday, had YL club Wednesday, Thursday she came to school and met my class, then we went down to my favorite spot down at the river and hung out at camp! It was a really fun week, and having Kara here was awesome!
Friday we had a huge Easter egg hunt/party to raise money for our 5th grade expedition!! We had an Easter egg hunt, egg toss contest, egg decorating contest, and sold a bunch of treats!! It was really fun, and we made quite a bit of money for our trip after break! We are studying immigration, so we are going to go to the capitol and visit an immigration office and museum, and then we are going to a Haitian village to learn about them immigrating to the DR, and will do a service project there! We will be camping out somewhere near there....with 19 5th graders...haha this is going to be crazy, but we are all going to learn so much! I am so excited!
After that crazy week last week, we are now on SPRING BREAK and it is wonderful!!! We rented this awesome house for $450 for 5 days....CRAZY!! It is so wonderful to have our own space and be on our own schedule since we are usually just on Maria's schedule! Funny stories though....on the way here we stopped in La Vega at a grocery store to stock up for the week, and our taxi driver was like okay you have 15 minutes, so we all took part of the grocery list and ran through the store, it was hilarious! Then, as we were leaving La Vega, our taxi driver, Giovanni, realized he needed new tires, so we stopped at a mechanic place and they put on new tires! it was rediculous! We were obviously really late by this time so we took a "shortcut" through the mountains which meant super tiny roads and going super fast....quite an interesting trip! But we made it, and that is all that matters! It has been so fun so far! This morning, JulieAnne and I went for a run and then swam laps in the ocean....can't get much more perfect than that!!