Tuesday in the Dominican

Well, i am watching the judo tournaments at the olympics and decided it was a good time to continue my story of the Dominican Republic. Looks like i ended with potholes in the sky last time, so here's what followed touch down in the Carribean. The Dominican terminal is not very well labeled for first time visitors, so I followed the crowd to the underground space everyone must go through to legally enter the country. There are no directional ropes or anything to tell you to go here first and get your "visitor card" (for $10) before you go here to fill out this paper, and then go up to immigration counter. So, as you can imagine I got to visit the woman at the counter I chose several times. I took the paper they give you on the plane to the counter and was told I needed to go fill out another paper on the column behind me that had almost the same information on it! Paper Work!!!! She didn't mention that i needed to also go stand in line and get my visitor card, so I came back up to the counter with the freshly filled out paperwork and was then told to go get my pass! Why she didn't mention that before...? Anyway, I walked over to the line, praying that it would go quickly because by then everyone else was also in line. Oh, I forgot to mention that the plane was 30 minutes late getting in and since I was the only "purple person" on my flight I didn't know if everyone else was already there, if they had taken the others to our hotel already and someone had to stay behind for me??? Worry...never does any good, but we seem to do it anyway. So finally I got all the right stuff to get through to baggage claim, and with just a little hiccup there (fuzzy brain syndrome strikes again) I was through to the terminal. Turns out most of the people were still coming from Atlanta, but the West Coasters/Southerners were already there. Yea!!! I finally found my "purple shirt people" clan.

The rest of the bunch arrived shortly and we enjoyed a pizza lunch, loaded our luggage into a truck and headed out for our hotel. While we were waiting for the rest of the crew, Heather (one of the VisionTrust employees) informed us that everything is half an hour from everything else in Santo Domingo. Our hotel was about half and hour from the airport. The orphanage was about half an hour from the hotel, etc. The hotel was lovely, and I shared a room with a girl from the home office named Tawny. Our room had a fabulous view of the pool and then farther out you could see the ocean. We got settled in and rested for a while and then it was off to a fajita dinner at one of the local "fast food" places. Delicious fajitas. The soda in other parts of the world is a little different than in America. It is usually a little sweeter. I decided to try the grape soda, and I have to say it tasted like they just mixed a powder with carbonated water. Not my favorite, but you put enough ice in it and it seems to get better. Perhaps the extra water helps.

Anyway, after dinner we went back to the hotel and had our first team meeting. I had forgotten about those and was looking forward to chilling in my room (as I think some others were as well), but I managed to keep my eyes open during the whole thing (barely). As I recall, they briefed us on what we were going to be doing this week and introduced everyone to everyone else, especially the people from the two new foundations we were coordinating with (VisionTrust and Remar). Then we finally got to go to bed.

TUESDAY

Morning comes early in the Dominican. We had to be up and ready for breakfast by 7 am. Now if you know me at all, you know that I don't usually see the sun until at least 7:30, but after a good nights sleep I was pretty rested. The night before, my roommate (Tawny) and I discovered that neither one of us had brought an alarm clock! However, Tawny's phone had one so we used that. And let me tell you...that thing was so loud in such a quiet space that it scared both of us awake. if I could have reached it, i probably would have thrown it off the balcony. I made it down to the lobby a few minutes early and was reading a bit, when I remembered that I didn't have the yellow card we were told we "must" have to get in to eat, so I ran back up to my room to catch Tawny before she came down (since she had the key) and get that card. Turns out we didn't need them really. They never checked for them. But, it was a good idea to get there early because there was another large youth group staying at the hotel so those who were early got ahead of them. Some of our people came a few minutes later, and they were still in line when 7:30 came and went. I think we got out around 8am, which wasn't too bad, especially considering Dominican time is kind of like Israeli and African time. One must be flexible to survive there.

Looks like I will have to continue this story later, but I will leave you with some pictures to whet your appetite for more. =0)

signing off @ 12:18 am

I thought this was a statue until I saw some of them move