yo tengo un Amigo que me ama...

This week has been very busy, but full of adventures, smiles, and lots of reminders of why I love this place so much. I've decided that I like showing what's been going on through pictures so here are a few from this week...

This is Elizabeth, Bryson, and I in Caberete eating lunch. Caberete is a town on the beach that is near some tourist-y areas, but isn't as "Americanized." We spent the day there last Sunday. It was a lot of fun to enjoy good food (other than rice!), relax at the beach, hang out with each other, and of course, eat ice cream :) oh and ps, for all my dominican, tie-dye loving girls... I was representing ya'll Sunday and telling stories all day of what the "C" meant on my shirt :)

Elizabeth (who is also from Kentucky) and I found a sign at a restaurant (in the Dominican Republic!) for a mint julep so we had to take a picture... representin' the good ole' KY!

Yesterday was Coco's birthday so we went all out to celebrate. She has lived here for 5 years and we really wanted to make it extra special. This is the pinata that we made for her. We spent many hours making "Lumpy" and we are going to be sad to see him die... haha.

Yesterday we went on a road trip to see some of the cities in the interior of the DR. It's crazy because you kind of feel like you are in a different country. A lot of the cities in central DR are mountainous and green... while Monte Cristi is flat and pretty brown. We kind of realized that we really do live in a desert town. We toured some historical cites in the morning where Christopher Colombus fought battles and then continued on the Jarabacoa. I loved that place! It is a pretty good sized city situated up in the mountains. It's much bigger than Monte Cristi and looks completely different. We had a picnic lunch at a place where two rivers meet and I felt like I was back in the mountains in the States. There were actually leaves on the ground! The group picture above is all of us at the meeting place of the two rivers.

After we left the rivers, we drove through Jarabocoa a little more and back through some mountain "roads" or maybe just rock paths :) We ended up parking the bus in a little clearing in hopes of finding a waterfall that we knew was somewhere near by. It had started misting outside earlier that day and we actually were able to wear sweatshirts! In the DR! That in itself was a treat :) We started walking down a path into what I would call a rainforest. I had just been saying the day before that I really wanted to go to one, and there we were! It was beautiful! Everything was so green and wet and full of life. The trees engulfed us in this canopy that made me feel like I was in a different world. Even the sounds around us sounded just like what you would picture a rainforest to sound like... birds chirping, water flowing. It was beautiful and the pictures we got don't do it justice.

And then, we made it to the waterfall! It was gorgeous and right in the middle of this rainforest! I loved every minute of our time there and was simply in awe of our God who is all about the details. Who created this rainforest and waterfall simply because it's beautiful. I saw His beauty and His love for us all over that place. These are my roommates, Christine and Elizabeth, and I at the waterfall.

Yesterday was full of so many adventures and I felt so surrounded by the Dominican culture... seeing new places, eating random fruit and bread from stands on the side of the street, talking to kids in Spanish on there way out of school, walking the streets of Santiago and buying plastic-y Dominican hair clips, sitting down at a restaurant and shocking the waiters because we know Spanish, wearing sweatshirts in December when it's still probably in the low 80s just because we can, and on and on and on. I love this place so much.

It's been pretty busy, but I'll try and post a blog of more depth soon... just wanted to fill you in on what's been going on! I'm moving to Jaibon (the other orphanage) this Friday and spending a little over a week there. We are all moving over there to spend Christmas with them and get the place ready for people to start living there again. While I am so happy to see those boys again and get to be able to do something special with them for Christmas, I'm sad to not be spending Christmas here with my family in Monte Cristi. But hey, changes are abundant in this life and God seems to be stripping me of myself more and more each day. I pray that you are all doing well! I love each and every one of you!