Day 4

I'm posting this soo late because I went to use the iMac but the blog took 5min to load because everyone had to watch the latest episode of LOST and was hogging all the bandwidth. But the episode is over and I understand why it is called LOST: Nobody understands it and they are all lost... Anyways. Today at school we finished the shelves in the storage room. They look really good. Before the room was just a separate place to pile things. Now they have two walls with ceiling high shelves. We also built a bench for the main play area. We taught the kids how to play four square and they love it. Peggy wanted us to teach them because the ball has less of a chance of flying out over the wall. After school we went to the mall, Hector dropped us off then went home. Everything in the mall was a new experience. It was a regular mall, a Pizza Hut, McDonald's, Burger King, Radio Shack, and some other local stores. I bought a special rock called Larimar. It's usually blue, sometimes green, and is found only in the Dominican Republic. After wandering around for a while we got something to eat, and broke up with a time and place to meet. Everyone looked around for a while. I went into a local grocery/convenience store to see what they had and how much it cost. Since Hector had gone home the plan was to get a taxi home. Taxis in the Dominican Republic are very different from taxis in the United States. The taxi was a seven passenger van, counting the driver, that is six seats for passengers. We fit all ten of us in those seven seats. Jon, Anthony, Paul, and Graham sat in the back three seats, Mrs. Pappano, Mrs. Curletta, and Mrs. Blevins, sat in the middle two, and Mr. Pappano, and I shared the front bucket seat. It was really tight, and I was hanging out the window, witch is pretty sketchy with the kind of driving that happens down here. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but this kinds of madness can not be accurately described with anything short of experience. There are three lanes, people are constantly switching lanes, and motorcyclists are always weaving between cars, in both directions. It is pretty funny to see two motorcycles try and go between the same cars in different directions at the same time. Tomorrow is Sabado, (Saturday) and if it doesn't rain, we will be going to the beach, there is a 30% chance of precipitation, and it should be around 70*. 70* sounds perfect to everyone who lives in upstate NY, it is currently around 30* in NY. In the Dominican Republic, it is always soo hot that today, it was around 70*, overcast, and raining, and one of the secretaries at the school was walking around with a coat wrapped around herself. And the motorcyclists looked really cold this morning. If it doesn't rain then we will go to the beach and eat spaghetti. I don't know why, but in the Dominican Republic everyone eats spaghetti when they go to the beach. In America, hamburgers are "picnic" food, in DR spaghetti is "beach" food. I am making soo many errors with spelling and grammar. It is a combination of it being 10:45 (local time), and speaking in three different languages every day. Today especially I spoke more spanish than usual because we went to the mall and everything is in spanish. In just the past few lines I have tried to substitute "en" for "in" and "dia" para (for) "day". Some people, when I struggle, dismiss it and get someone who knows English, but I prefer the people who don't mind repeating them selves multiple times, and make a genuine effort to understand me. The bugs are starting to come out so I should probably get under a sheet and go to bed. I will try to have more video up tomorrow, depending on cpu availability. Hasta Luego mis amigos en los estados unidos y mis hermanos en Cristo.