Happy Birthday EMMA!

First I have to wish Emma a Happy 28th Birthday! Welcome to the club :) Hope you had a great day!

Today was a field trip day for me. Heather had to teach her class at the English Institute so I took the team to Dajabon, the Haiti/Dominican border, and was the caboose again. It is always interesting to go there because each trip is a little different. Today there was an older Dominican lady with a disposable camera trying to take a picture of the Asian students that are here with the group. There was also a man that yelled out and said "Are they Chinese? Or do they just look Chinese?". It is funny how fascinated they are but I suppose if they never leave their island they don't see many people from foreign countries.

The market was a more crowded today than last time because it was Friday versus Monday, but definitely not as crowded as I have seen. It was a peaceful day, and we made it through without too many difficulties.

We headed back into town and I hung out in my room until time to head to lunch in town. We ate lunch at Comedor Adela where they serve buffet style food. It is always way too much food, especially before heading to the beach to lay out! They have everything though, rice, bean, chicken, beef, goat, mashed potatoes, spaghetti, broccoli, these little wheat things called quepers, stewed eggplant, meatballs, cheese empanadas, bread, cake, pineapple, and watermelon. It is an amazing assortment of food and I used to eat so much when I would come only for 1-2 weeks but now that we go with groups often, I've learned not to stuff myself!

From there we headed to the beach for a couple of hours. It was a hot day at the beach. I kept having to wipe my face on my pillow/towel because I'd be dripping sweat and wake up. But, it was great! On the drive home I saw an interesting lady walking down the street. She had shorts on and you could only see her left leg and on the right side she had a crutch that she was using to walk with. I didn't think much of it until I happened to look down at the crutch and she had a small foot that was actually holding on to the crutch with her toes. She must have had a shortened leg with some type of deformed foot attached. It was interesting and I didn't want to be a noisy onlooker but medical stuff like that always peeks an interest in me!

After returning from the beach we had free time until dinner and then again after dinner until 8pm when the older kids went to church. I hung out after dinner and tickled Ari, with her newly removed front tooth, chased around Nena, and Luz Maria and then sat and hung out with Nena for a while to cool off.

Tonight we had movie night with the group and watched Elf. I hadn't seen that is a while so it was great watching it. Made me excited for Christmas time! Julie and Heather baked cupcakes during the movie and they were done right as the movie finished. Great ending to a great day!