Well, this is my five minute update.  I just finished a three month “In service training conference” in the most likely Amazing and beautiful mountains of Jarabacoa.  We didn’t really see mucho of the landscape since we were working the three days we were there. The city seemed very nice and I had good bread for the first time simce arriving in this country. I also got my shoes cleaned by a kid in the park. They’re so much better at Cleaning my shoes than I am! However, as I walked away, one of the kids apparently squirted soapy water on my clean shoe – destroying its beautiful luster however temporarily.  Before I realizad what had happened they were done Laughing and had dissapeared.  Hopefully I can go back to Jarabacoa some day, it would be a great place to take visitors.

 

Thursday afternoon and Friday morning I spent in the big city of Santiago – this is on my way home.  It was great since I was able to tour around the city some with other volunteers who actually live there and I also got a few different errands done related to my project ( the current price of 1/4inch rebar is 33pesos by the way). I even went to a mall -- in the food court there was burger king, kfc, pizza hut, and dominoes. I ate chinese -- it was actually pretty good.

 

This weekend besides a bunch of work I need to do writing reports and funding requests/applications, I’m hoping to make some valentine\s day phone calls and perhaps dance a valentine’s day merengue. The merengue really won’t be that exciting since its what we’d do here for any holiday or random day of partying.  I’m curious to see if people pass out those chalky candy hearts that say BE MINE or LOVE’S 4 EVR on them.  I sure hope they do, but I imagine they would need to have longer and more intricate Dominican cat calls on them.

 

Until next time - & sorry this one wasn\t really very funny or interesting. Haven't been taking many photos lately but maybe I'll put a couple up -- it's tough to get a good enough internet connection to accomplish this.