Road Trip!

Friday was field trip day with 10 of the orphanage kids (mainly the high schoolers). We headed out bright and early at 7am and loaded the bus to head about 2.5 hours away close to Santiago and to the center of the DR. I sat with Yessica, a 13 year old girl, that is probably one of the only kids actually in her correct grade based on her age, and a 4th year student at the English Institute.

We stopped in Santiago for a bathroom break and Coco bought some candy for us, some sugar cane candy like those peppermint sticks that you buy at Cracker Barrel that melt in your mouth! As we stopped, we noticed that one of the back tired looked flat so our next stop was the Gomeria (tire shop). We pulled up on the side of the road like we were parallel parking and got our tire changed with 26 people on the bus! Peguero, our driver, actually was cranking the tire himself...wonder if he got a cut of the pay :) They took the tire off and started to fill it with air, and then we heard BOOM and the inside of the tire had popped so time for a new tire!

We headed out and went to a park to sit and eat our snacks that Coco had prepared for us. Each person got a PB sandwich on a sweet roll, box of raisins, an apple, lime cookies, and cheese crackers! Apples here are expensive (23 pesos a piece...36 pesos = 1 USD) so the kids only get them at Christmas. Well they are out in the markets now being sold because it is close to Christmas so we got to enjoy them! Tasty!

After leaving the park we walked to a church that had stained glass windows that came from Italy. They were very pretty and the church was large! We walked through the church and then headed back to the bus to travel to our next stop.

The next stop was the Mirabel Sister's museum. The Mirabel sisters are well known in the Dominican Republic because of their fight to get Trujillo, the Dominican dictator, out of power. Minerva was the leader of the sisters and she went to law school but was unable to practice law because she did not give in to Trujillo's romantic leads. The sisters were known, in a movement against Trujillo, as the butterflies (las mariposas). They fought in this movement despite being put in jail, tortured, the incarceration of their husbands, etc. Finally Trujillo decided to get rid of them and had their car stopped on the highway after visiting their husbands in jail, and he had men take them into a sugarcane field and kill them along with their driver. People began to follow their cause and take notice after their murders, and six months later Trujillo was assisinated. Dede, one of the four sisters, still lives and was at the museum that we went to. The museum is the house where the sisters lived for the last 10 months of their lives with their Mom. We toured the house, spoke with Dede, and saw the mosulieum where the sisters and one of their husbands are now buried. If you are interested, there is a movie about these sisters called "In the Time of the Butterflies" with modern actors, etc and it tells the story well!

After the museum, we headed to lunch. We went to a place called La Sirvena. I can't begin to explain how big this place was. It was like 2-3 Sam's Clubs in one building but stuff was sold like at Krogers, not in bulk. They had a dry cleaners, a pharmacy, a Jet Blue Airlines booth, food, clothes, deli, furniture, EVERYTHING! They had a food court as well, which is where we ate. We had Domino's Pizza because it was the only choice but it was tasty.

We drove by Los Gigantes baseball stadium, one of the six national teams here in the DR. We couldn't go inside but we got to see it from outside pretty good. We then bought 6 large stalks of sugar cane on the side of the road for the other kids that weren't able to come. These stalks were as tall as me!

We stopped at park that had a gazebo in the middle with a painted ceiling. It was interesting and we took a group picture while we were there!

When then headed to the sister city of Altanta, GA where they had a park with a huge playground. We played around here for a little while before heading to Santiago.

In Santiago, there is a large National Monument and we stopped there to look at it. It sits high up on a hill that overlooks the city which was neat to see because it was dark when we stopped so you could see all the city lights around this monument. They had horse drawn carriages for rides which was an interesting view in the DR.

We made it home about 10:45pm and I headed straight to bed!

Today I'm in the airport. Christine left about an hour ago to head home for a month, she has been here since Jan 3rd and hasn't been home yet! She'll be back Dec. 5th. I'm waiting to pick up a physical therapist and a PA that are coming to do a site visit for the next 3 days before their group comes down in March to do health outreach. Luckily there is free internet here so I'm able to blog, upload pics, and keep myself occupied! That's all for now! Below are my pictures from the field trip!

http://picasaweb.google.com/Geedz913/FieldTripWithOlderKids?feat=directlink