Barceló Resort, Punta Cana

 We spent our last weekend at a resort... quite a good way to finish, I'd say. We spent three days eating, swimming, eating, tanning, eating, sleeping, and repeating.  Fantastic :]

"I need a picture of us doing cart wheels in floaties."

 We got to talk to a lot of interesting people from different places... we decided that we don't like Americans so much though. They were kind of obnoxious. Some people we talked to came from the US only for the resort, and that seemed kinda sad to me! I mean the resort was fun and all, but I'm not sure I would want travel that far and then only stay in one point. I much preferred all the traveling we got to do within the country, and hanging out with the locals. So this just confirmed for me that I'm not really a resort person, I'm more of a real-culture person :]

I wanted to do fun poses. They wanted to be lame.

We passed a man selling paintings, and I asked how much they were. He said $35.  We all kinda blinked, looked at each other, and said "Thirty-five dollars? What is that in pesos?"  Then we had to laugh at ourselves. Going back to America is going to be an adjustment.

Nuestro castillito de arena.

GUESS WHAT. I spent three days on the beach and did NOT get any sunburns. I was so super vigilant with sun screen... I have to be in a wedding on Friday! I didn't want to be a tomato! 

One night for dinner we went to a Hibachi Japanese restaurant. The completely-legit-Japanese (not) chef, José, was the most disappoint chef ever. There was no onion volcano, no flips, nothing was thrown at us. And he lacked a sense of humor. I was being so funny and he didn't even get it.

El Mercado

Last night we went to el mercado, which is where you can buy all kinds of touristy things at a supposedly cheaper price. Supposedly. 
El mercado is in this really sketch part of town, and I'm very glad we had Olga and Virginia take us because we would've had no idea what we were doing, and then would've stood out even more for looking around wide-eyed at all the shops. There were so many shops though! Anything dominican that you could possibly need. And I spent entirely too much money.
We've gotten really good at haggling though! The good thing is if you can speak Spanish pretty well they usually charge you less.  I've decided if you can't get them to below half of what they start with you're not really trying. Lauren's favorite thing to do is to look offended after they say a price and then say, "Ya tú sabes es tan caro..." (You know that is too much).  Mine is to say, "Bueno, pero sólo me queda un mil." (Okay, but I only have a thousand left.) and then start laughing and say nevermind when they try to ask for more, and wave your hands and start walking away. 
The price tag on one painting said RD$4,500, but he offered it to me at a "precio especial" for RD$2,500, and I convinced him to take RD$1,000. That was my win of the day. :] And it's a beautiful painting too.
I've bought quite a bit of paintings, I'm afraid... I'm interested to see how I'll manage to transport them all back home.  I'm glad that I've really only bought things that'll last, not just little bracelets or knickknacks. Maybe I'm growing up...

I wish I had pictures of all the paintings to show you! Maybe I'll be able to take some before I pack them all up.

Night on the town.

And by the town I mean, we returned to Blue Mall. Except this time we were prepared! We actually fit in this time (as much as blonde people can here), and had quite a fun time. We went to the movies, and then to this ritzy Spanish restaurant on the fifth floor of the mall. We sat outside on the balcony and had a great view of the city at night. We reminisced about our favorite parts of the trip, and about our favorite dad memories (since it was Father's Day), and all in all had an incredible evening together.

One reoccurring theme we've been noticing is how much communication seems to fail. It happens ALL. THE. TIME. Because really, while our Spanish is no where near perfect, I feel like we are pretty good at explaining things. We are understandable, I'm positive. But somewhere between us speaking imperfectly and them speaking inaudible, something goes terribly wrong.
A few examples:
At the Spanish restaurant:  ask for a six tapas plates, receive one plate full of a lot of things that aren't tapas.
Other restaurant: ask for two yuca tacos, receive one cheese taco.   Do you see what I'm saying? How do you confuse "dos yuca" for "uno queso"? Those aren't even hard words!

We're also getting used to the "we-have-everything-on-the-menu-except-for-that" in most restaurants. Because if you ask for it, they probably will just say "No." and you say "No?" and then they say that's out but you can have this-that's-nothing-like-that instead!
So entertaining.
I've kinda forgotten what it's like to not have no idea what's going on most of the time. Everything is kinda a surprise here... there's no telling what you'll get.


Well, I'm currently watching Toy Story in Spanish, which is about as entertaining as you'd expect. Pahahah.

Hope everyone is having a good night! I'll see you all in a week :]

Love,
Abby


Oh PS, I forgot! At the mall they have a churro shop in the food court. If normal churros just don't have enough sugar for you, you can fill it with nutella, and cover it in white-chocolate and sprinkles. Phew.

JLG.

Juan Luis Guerra. 

I tried very hard to think of a comparable Juan Luis Guerra in the US, but there really isn't one. Imagine if the US had one genre of music that everyone in the nation enjoyed more than all the others, and then that there was one artist who did it better than anyone else, and everyone could point to that one person as the sole American artist who had achieved the most worldwide success.  With that in mind, you can start to understand why 50,000 people flocked to the Olympic Soccer Stadium in Santo Domingo for his concert on Saturday night.

Damp.

As we get to the stadium around 7:15, it had just started to rain. It was one of those rains that you welcome, you know? Light enough to cool you, but not enough to ruins things. Our tickets were for el terreno, or the groud/field area of the stadium, so we made our way in and got up as far front as we reasonably could. Then we stood there for over an hour until the concert started.

Wet.

By the time the opener actually started playing, the light rain had turned into a kind-of-annoying rain. We were starting to get a bit uncomfortable... the open was decent, although we had no idea who he was, but we tried to pick out one phrase from every chorus to sing along with him just the same ("Quiero salir contigo está nooooche...").  In the break between, it stopped raining for a second, leaving us in a mass of wet, sticky, smelly people armed with thunder sticks packed up against you as far as the eye could see in every direction. Then I began to wonder if this is what hell was like.

I took a video so you could fully appreciate the enormity of the masses of people.

When Juan Luis Guerra finally started playing, we'd already been waiting there for over two hours, and then it started pouring. The torrential downpour kind, where the rain actually drowns out the sound of the thunder sticks instead of the other way around.  Once JLG started playing I regained the will to live. He was soooo good. He had a full band complete with back-up sings and a brass section behind him, along with huge screens that illustrated and complimented his lyrics. It was super high energy, and the crowd was going crazy, singing all the songs at the top of their lungs.  It was such an incredible feeling... standing among thousands and thousands of people dancing in the pouring freezing rain. We couldn't help but laugh :] I won't forget that anytime soon. After about seven or eight songs, the wind had picked up, and since we had no deep-seated emotional attachment to the artist after all, we let our fear of pneumonia win out and pushed our way through the masses and finally made it to the exit on the opposite it.  Oh, and Juanes was at the concert too. If you are unfamiliar with Latin pop music, that's a big deal.

Completely drenched.

We were so. Incredibly. Soaked. I honestly my camera was done for, but it turned out to be a little trooper. I was wearing denim maroon shorts, and as they got wet they started dripping dark purple dye all down my legs... I still have some stains around my ankles. So funny! I thought I was bleeding profusely there for a little bit.
We found a street vendor selling hot ears of corn, which tasted like heeeaven. We were so so cold, and it was still pouring! We sought refuge from the rain under the roofed-around outside an emergency room on the corner while we waited for our ride. Oh, and while we were standing there, there was a commotion and a guy (who looked like a security guard or policeman) was rushed in who looked like he'd been stabbed in the back. A few minutes later there was another fuss as a man was usher out of the hospital with his hands behind his back, and the escort was carrying a gun. So. That was mildly terrifying. But we're all okay so no worries, everyone :]

So Saturday was eventful, to say the least. I decided the concert was one of those best-experiences-that-I-never-want-to-do-again type of things. It was definitely a slam bang finish to our weekends in Santo Domingo, that's for sure!!

Last weekend in Santo Domingo!

Friday after work the girls went to the local nail salon again, we're beginning to become friends with the ladies who work there :] Alex and Lauren dumped the nail polishes out on the floor to pick colors... I told them it looked like it was take-your-child-to-the-salon day. Christina and I went to get Bon froyo while we waited... it's quickly becoming my favorite dominican treat. It's like Spoons except you get to pick as many fruits as you want and they blend it all of for you like a smoothie except solid-er. And super cheap. So delicious.

On Friday night, José took us to a few different discotecas, we had a pretty fun night dancing merengue and bachata!

Andrés y su gatita, Afrodita.

I tried to get Andrés to sing me his song but he just wasn't feeling it... sorry, everyone.

I realized I had yet to take a picture of Ana and me, so here we are! Me and my Domincan mother, we make a great little family. She takes care of me.
Last night we got to go to Wendy's! Caesar salad and a frosty have never tasted so delicious... Mmm America :]

ImpACTA and Botanic Garden

I love this quote, it says "He who lives and dies without impacting the lives of others, it's as if he never existed."

Today I went with a group from work to a ceremony for the opening of a center in San Pedro de Macorís. Save the Children worked with an organization called ImpACTA Kids Foundation, founded by Manny Acta, current manager for the Cleveland Indians. I was just perusing his Wikipedia page and found this:

"His ImpACTA Kids Foundation has raised a significant amount of awareness and donations in providing children with the opportunities to achieve their dreams. As of 2010, the ImpACTA Kids Foundation has awarded $5,000 in college scholarships in the United States and neared completion of an athletic/education youth complex in Consuelo, Dominican Republic."

That's where I was! The athletic/education youth complex completion ceremony! It was quite the neat little place. I knew that baseball was huge here, but I didn't know that over 10% of all players in the MLB are Dominican... that's nuts! This complex has a ton of fields where kids can sign up for leagues and be coached and play ball, and inside there are little classrooms and centers with computers where they can work on homework. Pretty cool!

There they are... all the little beisbolistas.

After work Virginia took us all to the National Botanic Garden.  They charge foreigners more... five times more, and not even underhandedly. It was printed on the sign with a different price for extranjeros. How. Rude.

The garden wasn't quite what I was expecting... we hopped on a little train and drove around. It was huge! It would've taken an hour or two to walk it. There also were more trees and less flowers, but it was still very beautiful.  I got a kick out of the tour guide, who would repeat everything he said in Spanish and then English, expect his English was nearly unintelligible. The Spanish we understood fine, but of the English all we could catch is "On the left... *mumblewordswords* on the right... *noisesnoisesbamboo*"  I couldn't stop laughing.

Pretty Japanese garden (wait a second.. I thought this was a National garden...)

Alex and I reallyyy wanted to rolled down this huge hill in the Japanese garden, but there was a lady taking wedding pictures and the guide was watching us so.. we refrained :[ Being grown-ups is hard.

Oh hello there Señor Perrito, whatcha doing up there?

Tonight I went to the supermarket with Ana and her three grandkids... SO funny. Andrés sang a song for me in the car. He sang "Have I Told You Lately That I Love You," which would be adorable from any six-year-old, but from one who hardly knows any English, it's almost unbearable.  The next time I see him I'm going to try to convince him to sing it again so I can get a video :]

THAT'S ALL I DID IT! I'm fiiiiinally caught up :]
You have sufficiently been filled in on all my recent doings, and now I'm off to bed!

You may leave me lovely comments if you feel so inclined.
Buenos noches!


Con cariño,
Abby

Gracias, José.

Today on the way to work, we came up to a stoplight that was just about to turn red... you know, one of those do-I-slam-on-the-breaks-or-do-I-go-for-it ones.  José slammed on breaks, which surprised me (drivers here typically go-for-it all day every day). He then explained, "If just me, I go. But wif you in car, I no go." Which I thought was really endearing, you know, how he thinks I'm precious cargo... but then he motioned handcuffs being put on his wrists and said "The American Embassy? They come after me! Me? Go to jail." because hurting an American is a very bad thing. Because we Americans are born with "how you say... privilegio." 

Glad you care so much about my well-being, José... wait.

Ahahaaa.... :]

Domingo.

After we got back from Samaná I passed. out.  But once I finally awoke from my slumber, Ana took me to La Zona Colonial to buy souvenirs for people :]  And GUESS WHAT. I bought two paintings!  One is big and by a Dominican painter, and the other is a Haitian piece that's a bit smaller.  I wish I had pictures of them, but he wrapped them up so quickly and I haven't yet decided that it's worth repackaging them... but if I do you'll be the first to know.

 I'm so excited. They're my first two pieces in my international art collection.

Samaná Day 3: Cayo Levantado

 

Señor Pirata

On Saturday we took a boat across the harbor and out to Cayo Levantado, a tiny little island off the coast of Samaná. It. Was so. Beautiful.  Luckily, currently it's not tourist season here (which is not what I would've thought), so the beach was fairly empty all day! I couldn't believe that a place so gorgeous didn't have more visitors, but I wasn't complaining!

A few days ago we'd driven past a woman crawling on the beach while her boyfriend took pictures.... we thought we'd see what the allure was.  I'm still not so sure.

This is the life.

We stayed on the beach for most of the day... we didn't want to leave!! Oh, and while Aaron and I were in the ocean we talked to these guys who looked straight of Jersey shore, except plus 200 pounds, who owned underground casinos in Toronto. Never before had I heard the word "eh" so much come out of the mouths of such thugs... interesting the people you meet while floating in the Caribbean...

The view of Samaná from the boat! Qué chulo.

There are boys in our group too... they just tend to be our photographers usually.

ALSO, while we were there, I realized one picture couldn't begin to do justice to the incredible paisaje (I had to use that word because I can't remember the word in English) that surround us, so I took a bunch and put them all together for you! It turned out way better than I thought it would honestly... I'm so proud of myself. 

Samaná Day 2: Salto de Limón y Playa Cosón

On our second day in Samaná, we ate breakfast and then headed out hiking. Danny, our fearless guide, said that this was his 22nd time completing the trail to Salto de Limón.... wow.

The trail was absolutely beautiful! We had the options of riding horses (I kinda wanted to just for the sake of saying I'd ridden a horse through the forest to a waterfall in the DR), but we ended up walking and I welcomed the exercise :]  The trail wound through the trees right next to a river--gorgeous!

 We had to hike down a zillion stairs to get to Salto de Limón, and there were lots of tourists everyone (stupid tourists...), but it was totally worth it!  The waterfall is way bigger than my pictures suggest, in fact I just looked it up for you and it is 170 feet tall! Yikes.  There's a pool at the bottom that you can swim in, so we did, of course.  The water was super cold, but we swam all the way behind the falls and there was a little cave behind it! About the size of a small room... it was unreal. I wish I had a waterproof camera--it was so so gorgeous behind the water!
The only problem is that when I was initially getting into the pool, I jumped from a big rock into the water (in an attempt to avoid climbing over little rocks), and ending up slicing my shin on a rock under the water... ouch. So then we got to see the "Salto de Limón" along with the "Salto de Sangre"... ha.. gross.  It's developed quite a beautiful bruise too in the past few days, so that's something.

Christina face-planted into the dirt about a second and a half after this picture was taken...

After lunch we went to another beach in Las Terrenas called Playa Cosón, it was beautiful! (But that's nothing new...) We hung out there for a few hours... we played dodgeball with sand, and some local boys taught Matthew (our resident parkour master), how to swing out of a coconero. All in all, a great afternoon.

 We had lunch at a pizza place, that was quite delicious, and that's where we met an Aggie, class of '74, who invited us all out for drinks and hors d'oeuvres. He took us to this super ritzy restaurant and ordered a bunch of different tapas for us! Almost every dish was something I'd never heard of before, but it was all so good! I enjoyed the octopus ceviche :] The Aggie Network is so cool... he was just so nice to us. I still can't believe he did all that for a group of kids he didn't know!!

Our whole group with Francisco, the Doting Aggie.

We couldn't resist.

After our long day running around seeing the sights, we had a lovely dinner and then went out dancing! The place was actually a car wash which turned into a dance club by night... pretty interesting! We had so so much fun working on our bachata dance skills again...

That's all for Friday!

Samaná Day 1: Playa Rincón

On Thursday morning, we woke up suuuper early and went to the bus stop. (We found some other Americans from Utah there!)  It was a three hour ride on a greyhound-like bus, and I slept most of the way and then woke up in Samaná!
Samaná is gorgeous... it's on a tiny peninsula on the northeast part of the island.

Hotel Docia

We went to our little hotel just long enough to drop off our bags and change into swimsuits, and then we were off to the beach! 
The beach that we went to first is called Playa Rincón, and it is hands down the most beautiful beach I've ever seen.

Usnavi talks about Playa Rincón and how great it is in the musical In The Heights, and I had been keeping my fingers crossed that we'd get to go there when we went to Samaná, and we did!   It was even more beautiful than I'd expected.  I cannot aptly describe how incredibly blue the water is! And salty. It was very very very salty.
We spent most of the afternoon there... just relaxing in the waves, hanging out on the beach, and exploring. We found a freshwater stream that was coming out from under a cliff.
What was incredible is how few people there were on the beach! I thought surely a beach that beautiful would be a big tourist attraction, but I guess it's too hard to get to.  Every now and then there'd be a couple walk down the beach, but usually our group was the only one on the entire corner of the beach! How cool :] 

We went a little bit farther down the beach where there were a bunch more people. There were a ton of kids playing in the sand, people camping, guys playing baseball, and people jumping into the river there. This part of the beach was a lot more happening.

That night we went out for dinner at a Chinese restaurant right up the hill from our hotel.  I didn't really expect asian food in the DR to be amazing, but the fried rice I got was really really good! We had to make fun of Christina though.... who gets spaghetti at a Chinese restaurant in the Caribbean??

Miércoles.

On Wednesday we went to dinner at Danny's house.... his house is so beautiful! So much so that I had to take pictures to remind myself for when I have a house... and I thought I'd share.  I just love all of the artwork! He travels a lot, and his wife is an interior designer, so between the two of them they've come up with a pretty impressive display of art in their house.  I loved it!

The big space in the middle is because the artist asked to have it back for a bit to put in an art show.

Danny got this painted for his wife for their first anniversary... how beautiful and adorable is that??

Danny painted the one of the crying woman, and the African woman on the right. Who knew he could paint?? That man is so full of surprises...

Also, on Wednesday I talked to Miguel for awhile in Spanish and found out I can still, in fact, understand Spanish. When he consciously tried to speak without slurring his words and without crazy slang, we actually managed quite a long conversation! Pretty funny that that's what it takes here, but good nonetheless :] 

Martes Martes Martes.

MIRA! Ana bought me a Cookies 'n' Cream Hersheys bar! How did she even knoooooow that that's my favorite candy bar in the whole world? It's like she's my mom!

Also, I'm halfway done with the Hunger Games in Spanish.... puedo hacerlo, ya estoy segura.

10 Things You Can Buy at a Stoplight

1. whole pineapples
2. cell phones
3. guava
4. candy
5. phone minutes cards
6. bouquets of roses
7. windshield wipers
8. mangos
9. phone chargers
10. watches

Jarabacoa!

We had a free weekend this weekend and wanted to make the most of it... one of Ana's nephews, Miguel, is our same age and he was kind enough to invite us to stay at a house his family has in Jarabacoa.  Not knowing what to expect, we packed our bags and loaded up into his suburban for the drive.  Two-ish hours and quite a few winding-mountain roads later, we arrived. And... I'm not even going to try to describe it. Here:

I promise I took these pictures myself and did not find them in an online catalog...

Yeah. We were just a little bit excited. But as much as we loved the house, we had to make the most of the daylight! We threw down our bags and changed into swimsuits and headed out. Miguel took us on two different little hiking trails near rivers.  The mountains were so so beautiful! It was astounding to me how different the vegetation in Jarabacoa was, just a few hours away from Santo Domingo and its beaches.

Trail one.

The second trail we went on led to Salto Baiguate.  We drove about fifteen minutes down these tiny back country roads, then walked fifteen more, and found ourselves at the bottom of a beautiful waterfall :] We hopped in the pool, which was frigid, and tried to see how close we could get to the falls before the current pushed us farther away. We even jumped off the cliffs! Afterward we laid around on the rocks in the sun like lizards. Or mermaids.  I was a mermaid. 

Mom, you would love it here :]

Sometimes we take "Poster Pictures," in hopes of making on a wall in the Study Abroad office... look, look at us being Aggies and traveling...

Once the sun started going down we headed back, but must've fallen in the pool...

     After swimming and dining, we got ready and headed into town. Something I hadn't mentioned on here yet: you know how when you're traveling in a foreign country they tell you to try to blend in? Well here's the thing. Blonde people don't really exist in the DR, and so blending in is pretty close to impossible.  When we went into town, we walked into a pool hall, and, I kid you not, every single person of the fourty-ish people in the room looked up and stared at us as we walked in. ("Man, I must look good today...").  It's pretty funny, and we've gotten used to it while we've been here, but goodness! All I want is to be Latina but no one even starts to believe it for a second... :[
     We went to a few discotecas and learned to dance bachata! I got asked to dance quite a bit, but unfortunately I'm going to have to attribute that, again, to my hair color and not to my incredible dance skills... qué lástima.   It was an incredibly fun night just the same... I was worn out by the time we got back home!

Blurry, but you get the idea. Discoteca número tres.

Despite the tiredness, Lauren and I decided we just couldn't spend all of our time sleeping in such a beautiful place, and we got up at 5:30 to watch the sun rise over the mountains.  It was absolutely stunning.

     After the sun was up, I took a little nap on that plump yellow couch you see above, which felt great in the open air with the mountain noises all around :] But around nine, I woke up to the sound of frivolities and went and joined some of the kids in the pool. Soon after Aaron peeled a mango for us all with a knife the size of a machete. Cool.
     Once almost-everyone was up, we packed lunches and headed down the dirt road to a river. We followed Miguel's golden retriever, Vainilla, because she knew the way.  The dirt road was really more of a rock road, and pretty darn steep. We made it to the river and made sandwiches, and then started walking downstream. We found a deep pool we could swim in. Alex climbed up a cliff and jumped from about 5 feet up, and I had just told her how she needed to climb up to a tree and drop from one of its limbs, when three Dominican boys showed up, and then completely showed us up. They jumped off the cliff too, but from about twenty feet up instead, and one of them literally ran up the same tree I had mentioned, but didn't stop at the limb, and instead climb to its top and flipped into the water from around 30 feet up.  ... We laughed at the contrast between us Americans thinking we're cool and adventurous and then completely being one-upped by the natives, but we definitely enjoyed the show while it lasted :]

The rest of the afternoon was spent swimming, eating, and lounging around. It was such an incredibly beautiful, peaceful place with such a great group of kids... we did not want to leave. But alas, Miguel had some story about school and work the next day so we reluctantly got in the car...

All of us... such a fun group of kids:]

This weekend was so so SO much fun! It went by so fast but we managed to squeeze so many adventures into it. If I come back to the DR I definitely want to go back to Jarabacoa and spend more time, it's really a neat little town!

Well it's time for me to get some sleep...
¡Hasta mañana!
Abby