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