a little party never killed nobody

[or did it?]

[photoshoot on the bus, because why not?]

but a little party did give me an annoying dominican sinus cold!
sidenote: prepare for the most amount of pictures you'll ever see from me in the DR in this post because i'm currently at a hotel in sosua with copious amounts of internet at my beck and call, thus i must upload. it's only fitting and i do not apologize.
another sidenote: i currently have a monster sized mosquito bite (like that puppy went to town) right below my left butt cheek, and it's making for a reeeeaall good time.
OKAY moving on...

last week, we had thursday and friday off because it was a holiday apparently. so me and some of the other teachers went to santo domingo to partay/eat at the food court at the huge mall there.

hahaha i'm totally kidding, we went for the history!...........

..........................................

but really, santo domingo is the DR's capitol. it's where christopher columbus landed and arguably was buried too (although spain thinks that they have his body remains as well). it also has pretty national parks and, like i mentioned before, a huge mall including a huge food court full of fatty american food and a movie theater. god bless the USA and their cultural imperialism :)

we got to the city late wednesday night after taking essentially a greyhound bus that was also essentially a freezer. dominicans only know extreme temperatures apparently. and after an elongated taxi ride (because he got lost), a stress case of a hostel check-in ("i'm sorry, but you were all supposed to have your passports so you can't stay here"), we finally crashed hard in our cutie pie bunkbeds.

thursday morning, we ventured out to zona colonial to check out some of the historical sites.

[coolest graffiti wall ever]

 [plaza espana, I think?]

 [cheesiest person alive, I think?]

 [the ceiling of a tomb building]

 [we were ushered into this huge overwhelming souvenir shop where the guy started off saying that everything was 40% off and offered us rum shots. such hospitality here, lemme tell ya.]

 [first hospital in the DR or santo domingo, not sure which. we didn't realize it had been a hospital until after our many photos taken inside and then we were a little creeped out.]

 [kaylee and i]

 [i never got senior pictures taken, so i take every chance i get to make up for it. expect these in the mail soon with subtle pleas for a ferrari.]

 [santo domingo had a little bit of a european feel, and I loved it! take me back to europe, s'il vous plait.]

 [these were the san francisco ruins. to be honest, I don't know what happened here because the info plaque was in spanish. and i speak english. so i just took pictures instead :)]

 [there's cute writing and painted buildings all over and the colors are so pretty! i couldn't resist documenting half the city.]

eventually we were sweating more than what felt normal that no amount of historical site seeing could quench. we all looked at each other and knew we only had one option at this point.

 [tacooooo BELL. i have no regrets. i have extra poundage now, but i have no regrets. i also may have forced their hand in super-sizing my meal. the american way!]

 [macie got real tired as we were shopping in the mall and had to take a little sit on the escalator.]

 [and jelina and i got real weird and had to take some turban time. it's a thing.]

 [but only SOMETIMES haha.]
we wandered around the mall for hours until we had walked off our lunch just to be able to eat dinner there too, go see a movie, and then go home for bed. and listen, if you ever start to want to judge me for this, remember that i eat rice and meat for literally every meal cooked authentically, so my body was due for some gluten filled oily poisonous american food, okay?? great!

friday morning....okay, sidenote: we had made friends with a venezuelan lady named sarah at our hostel. and on thursday morning, she made pancakes for us since the hostel offered unlimited pancake batter for breakfast. she asked who was making the pancakes friday morning and i offered to to be nice. friday morning, i'm awoken by sarah at 8 AM (i am not a morning person, btw) and she's dragging me out of bed and going off in spanish. i manage to hear "pancakes" and realize she's waking me up to make her pancakes! so i go downstairs half asleep and start making pancakes for everyone, not even knowing how to make them in the first place! it was so funny. she was super cute and funny, always insisting on us taking a picture with her or dancing with her at night.
anyways, after pancakes on friday morning, we ventured out to the chocolate museum of course.

 [i got a brownie. you know, because when in rome.]

 [macie and i were trying to take a cute picture with our brownies and this cutie worker girl last minute jumped in with us! she makes the picture more colorful anyways haha.]

[then there was this leaning tower of pisa picture fail that still makes me laugh!]

we opted out of the american food for one meal and had hotel st. nicolaus for lunch, which was a really good decision because they gave us free bread and guacamole to eat with it. and they had these cute record placemats! i wanted to steal mine.

 [simple chicken caesar salad, but when put on a piece of bread that has guacamole, eeeeees not so simple anymore verdad? verdad.]

 [macie, kaylie, and jelina]

 [karsen, meeshieD, and kaylee. i made macie braid my hair because wearing it down was an absolute joke in the heat. like a "ha ha ha am i delusional?!?" joke.]

 [gang's all here!]

after eating for half the day, we finally made it out to tres ojos (spanish for three eyes), which are these three really cool and pretty caves. my camera also died basically minutes after we got there, and i left my charger back at our apartment. so it's basically pictures from macie's phone from here on out!

 [stairs down to it]

 [this was the first cave and was soooo cool and eerie.]

[one of the many attempts to get a good shot. obviously ended up still being a bit of a fail.]

 [because why wouldn't we selfie in a cave?]

 [dawwww, we're so cute together.]

[the third cave, which we had to take a little creepy boat to, but it was obviously all worth it! i wanted to take a little canoe out in the middle and pretend i was in that scene from the notebook where she's feeding the ducks with ryan gosling smiling at her. GOSH. okay, i'm fine.]

that night, jelina and i were playing music at the hostel downstairs and sarah came to us and said that she wanted to go to the disco with us down the street with these hot german guys that were staying at the hostel too [i know, is this passport to paris or what??]. of course we really wanted to, but didn't want to risk any late night DR sketchiness. so we ended up just having a dance party right there at the hostel with sarah, the germans, and some columbians. it was so fun! one for the books.

saturday morning, we woke up SUPER early to get ready and go to the santo domingo temple. this was basically the reason we all wanted to go to santo domingo (besides the history and the mall, of course). and luckily enough, we all had our recommends (with a little help from bishops back home) and got to do baptisms for the dead. it was my first time doing it in another country and it was really cool! they did them in spanish, but you still could tell what they were saying since they say the same thing at home in english. also, we were waiting in the chapel before we did confirmations and there was that picture of christ coming to the americas on the wall. i was looking at it and the background of it legitimately looks like the DR and i just started bawling. mostly because i was imagining all the craziness in our city with the taxi drivers everywhere and people shouting trying to sell roses and almonds to you at the stoplight and christ just coming down out of nowhere. i know that's not really what was happening in that specific picture obviously, but the scenary matched and made it feel very real and special. i also loved seeing the dominican teenagers inside the temple doing baptisms, knowing that they're having to rise above a lot of crap and yuckiness just to be able to come inside.

 [i love those palm trees that fan out! also, how bout them ferraris huh?]

[the blue man group.]

after that, we ate [at guess where, da mall] and then a few of us went home while the rest of us went to some lush botanical gardens. we took a tram through them and walked around a bit, but then it just turned into another photoshoot in the trees, of course. i love these chicas! 

and then taxi toni [our taxi guy that we made friends with who drove us around all weekend with air conditioning and on point jams to scream sing to] picked us up and took us home! and then i died from that dominican sinus cold i was talking about.

the end!

now who wants to publish this book for me and charge nothing less than $30 a pop?

don't hate la playa, hate the game.

(our boat ride out to a private island in samana where we proceeded to snorkel and swim all day long in paradise.)

(are we liking the fly on the watermelon? super authentic looking. but seriously though, this meal. my 20-year-old self is super proud of my for eating that fish and loving it.)

(what you don't see in that water are millions of tiny supposedly harmless jellyfish that every time you put your head underwater, you can hear the crinkling electricity in your ears and mentally calm yourself down from an anxiety attack.)

so it's a pretty natural part of life for me now to not be able to fully speak unless it's in the baritone range since all i do is yell at tell little kids to sit down, stop flipping each other off, stop making inappropriate body gestures towards each other, and so on and so forth.

oh what, are these rebellious teenagers?

are these high school guys?

no, these are like six-year-old boys AND girls.

yes yes, their mothers love them well.

my sister franny (masters in musical theater) suggested i get a megaphone to save my voice haha. it definitely would take off the strain, buuut that echo in the lunchroom though (yes, i teach my students in the lunchroom. i think it's pretty fitting. maybe or maybe not am i friends with the lunch lady and anytime my students are insane, she comes over and goes ham on them in espanol. and i just sit and point and evil laugh!....i'm a good person. moving on.)

anyways, the other day we were doing a transition between classes (i'll get into that later, but karson takes my students to sarah for her to teach them and i take karson's kids from her to teach them) and these two kids jose gabriel and estaban were being horrible. like climbing all over the lunch tables and screaming. so i grab jose gabriel and, in perfect spanglish, yelled "mama aqui?! mama aqui?!" with my hand in a phone gesture to communicate "listen kid, imma call your mother and she's gonna come down here and kick your trash if you don't sit down and be quiet". anyways, he calmed down after that threat and a few minutes later we're all sitting down and i'm teaching my lesson and a lady comes into the lunchroom and jose gabriel sees her and yells "mama aqui! mama aqui!" and i am thinking "you've got to be shhh-ing me" hahaha like what are the odds that his mom just decides to randomly show up to the school? and jose gabriel's probably thinking "oh, she was just trying to tell me my mom was here and not trying to threaten my life and what a great teacher and i'm just going to be a good little angel boy forever".
LIES.

well i am a great teacher though.

it feels like hooooome to meeee

mango all day all dayyyy. tell me what's with hot dog eating competitions when there could be mango eating competitions?

hola amigos! yes, i'm a espanol fiend now.

i thought i'd show off our place in the DR since everybody i talk to from home asks if i'm living in a shack or if i have bed bugs. it definitely is much different than america in a lot of ways, but our place is surprisingly really nice. funny story: one time there was a huntsman spider in one of the apartments here (google it and you'll never sleep again. or watch the video on my facebook and pee your pants laughing) and all 23 of us were gathered around trying to catch it (when i say trying to catch it, i mean the only three boys were gathered around it trying to humanely catch it (stupidest thing, we need to be bazooka-ing that creaton!) while 20 girls were on chairs and watching because we couldn't look away), i was of course screaming and sarcastically joking about blowing up the house to be able to kill the spider and said "tell them we said thank you so much for the mansion but we had to burn it down" haha. spoiler alert: we finally did kill the spider and no it wasn't poisonous, but at the end of the day it's not something you ever want down your pants so KILL THE DANG THING YOU FREAKING TREE HUGGERS.

buckle up folks, here goes the tour:

front gate...don't you love those broken bottles on the fence to keep away any bad guys?

don't ask about those bags of corn flakes....i don't know why.

our backyard. some people try to climb the coconut trees like mulan. and those people are not michelle dastrup! i just climb those little baby ones so i can still say i touched the top of a coconut tree to my future husband. sucka will never know! shhhhhh

our mansion compared to our next door neighbor's house. it's almost rude and i kinda cringe waving at them when i'm up on the second floor and they're down on the ground. "ha ha hiiii, how's the ground today?" don't shoot me for that comment.

our kitchen. there's one in every apartment and there's four apartments total (three on the middle floor and one on the bottom).

everybody eats in our apartment because we have the best air flow. people will literally come take naps on the ground in the middle of the day haha.

our balcony. don't mind the bathing suits, we all about that dr beach lyfe out hurrr

funny story about the toilets, you can't flush toilet paper because the plumbing is bad here and the toilet will potentially randomly get clogged. it's actually not a funny story at all, it's an anxiety attack every time you go to the bathroom. so yeah, it's really awkward and it's just so much fun!!

my little moosey is back! everybody, this is one of my roommates macie and she sleeps above me and she is just the best. she also loves to braid my hair soooooo i'm in love with her. i like to whisper sweet nothings to her from the bottom bunk (i don't do that....).

the funny thing about our place is is that when amaryllis (our program director...and i have no idea if that's how you spell her name) picked us all up from the airport on our first day, she told us we were going to be living in a VERY poor place. and then we start driving and there's all these tin shacks and practically emaciated people sitting on the road and i'm thinking "holy crap, that's gonna be me soon!". and then we pull up to our place and it's literally a mansion compared to these other places! i was shocked at how nice it was and honestly feel a little bad because our neighbors literally live in cement block houses. so we're very lucky! i can't even imagine taking a bus full of the dominicans back to utah and driving them through the nice houses in alpine or highland. i say it all the time, but i'm sure a lot of them don't even know what they're missing! and i mean that as in they wouldn't even be able to imagine anything different than living in their cement houses, sitting on the street all day everyday, bathing their kids in a bucket on the porch, and taking crazy motor taxis everywhere. it's just interesting to think about how we're all just randomly placed in different situations/environments when we're born and that there are very real pros and cons to either being privileged with everything you could ever want or scrimping and barely getting by. 

and in other news, yesterday in sunday school at church, i had a laughing fit because we were reading in the bible in juan chapter something (i pay attention) and i realized it was the book of john. juan=john hahaha, still gets me!

stay in la escuela, kids!

stake conference on our first sunday out here. raise your hand if you literally understood nothing they said! one guy after was like "did you hear that part they said about church history?" and i just gave him a blank stare...

so apparently this is a hamburger in the dominican republic....i mean it was still good and i definitely still ate it, but lemme tell ya, that was not a hamburger. also, don't even get me started on the spaghetti down here.

the kids at lunchtime literally swarm us and yell "aqui! aqui!" and point at their table for us to sit there even though we're not allowed to.

my hair's real pretty, you don't have to tell me.

most of the other teachers in my group during one of our breaks! always in the shade.

i like to play this game with the kids where i take out my camera and say things like "say cheese! say i love ice cream! say michelle is the best! say michelle is so pretty!" and laugh so hard because they have no idea they're being brainwashed MUA HA HA.

we taught these girls those school girl clapping games and they braided my hair in return. a fair trade indeed.

so you know those times when you're like "oh yeah, i'm so good with kids! i've babysat and taught piano a ton! i'll probably be a great teacher! they'll love me and listen to everything i'm saying and not climb all over me! :):):):):):):)" and then you go to your first day of teaching english in a foreign country and the teaching gods point at you and pee laughing as the kids are stealing your tickets/playdough/blocks, trying to braid/pull your hair, and are sleeping on the ground. all while you're teaching (read: maintaining) (read: attempting to maintain). sooooooo yeah, i'm kind of a great teacher :) 

seriously though, my first day of teaching was actual insanity! we taught first graders (they wear red shirts...remember that) for the first two hours which went okay besides the fact that i had to physically drag a huge (i'm talkin grande, people) stubborn kid off the ground because he wouldn't get up. then we had lunch with all the kids at the school where i proceeded to be an awful person and smile at them while i imagined handing over the keys of the school to el diablo since that seems to be these kids' master anyways. the second two hours of teaching were with the kindergarteners, who managed to win the award for master deceivers because they were so docile when we got them from their classes since they had just woken up from a nap. psyyyych michelle, they're actually crazy cucharachas that literally climb all over you and throw your teaching objects everywhere and make you want to start digging to china (which would probably take this geographically-challenged girl a loooooong ace time). by the end of it all, i was so ready to yell "dueces, psychos!" and run, not walk to the beach (whiiich i basically did anyways after all was said and done). 

in the kids defense, it's their first time getting english lessons ever and they don't really know what's going on. and i feel like discipline in their school is not as big of a deal as it is in the united states. or china, i'm guessing. and the teaching went muuuch better the second day (mostly because i got second graders (blue shirts) that time). besides the kindergarteners though, because those kids are just straight from satan's mistress. everybody just pray that one of these days i'll be able to tame them! 

repping the dom so hard right now

holaaaa!
first off, disclaimer. i wanted to put like 30 pictures in this post but they're not uploading and it's 2 in the morning and there's a tropical storm going on aaaaand i gotta get that beauty rest. so you get a measly six. sorries!

i finally have had semi-strong enough wifi to upload my pictures (cough and download the software to my new camera) so i can finally blog! side note: i know i blogged in paris about every day, but so far the wifi has been super wacky here and sometime's the power's out soooooo yeah. the updates may be patchy. this may be more on the meesh du week (semaine, whatever) side than du jour but thassa whole lot betta than what it was before (meesh du year haha). so DEAL WIT IT. eventually we're supposed to have a converter here and have wifi all the time so everybody cross your fingers and fast that that happens. gracias!

okay, so i've been out here like a week? and it feels like i've been here a year. first things first, the red eye flight coming out here was the biggest struggle. imagine me in every position possible in two seats (there was an asian girl sitting by me but she moved? i'm unbearable to sit by? ask me if i care, i got another seat out of it!) and doped up on melatonin to help me try to fall asleep...yeah, didn't work. i had a layover in miami and me and this girl karson were joking around about napping on the floor for a little bit and then we just decided to eff it and do it. so yeah, i was that homeless girl sleeping on the floor of the miami airport. hopefully i don't have aids now!

the first night's sleep was basically like sleeping in a sauna. first off, it is sooooo hot and humid here. like you think you know what hot and humid is ("oh yeah, i lived by the beach"...."oh yeah, i've been out on the east coast"...NOPE) and then you get here and you get schooled. we sleep on bunk beds here and everybody basically just sleeps on a sheet. some people brought blankets (HA HA whats a blanket) and they are crazy. air flow is a hot commodity here and our apartment has the best of it, so we for sure lucked out! there's three apartments in our complex full of our teachers....i'll go into more detail about all of that eventually. 

the food so far has been super good! we are lucky enough to have a cook to cook our lunches and dinners and it usually consists of a meat (pork, um maybe steak, or chicken with the best seasoning), rice, mashed or fried plantains, steamed veggies, or beans. there's usually three of those things i just listed and they just put big bowls of it out and all 23 of us sit around and eat (they have plates here too, don't worry). and then sometimes we walk down the street and get some helado (ice cream) and i get to embarrass myself trying to order in espanol (somebody get this girl a phrase book!). luckily a few of the other teachers can speak spanish and i just yell for one of them to come over and help :]

the bug situation has actually not been too bad so far (knock on all the wood in the world)! still doesn't stop me from sleeping with a huge can of bug killer by my bed and waking up every few hours to feel around my bed for any cockroaches or centipedes (terrified of one of those nasties crawling in my mouth!!!@#!). i also haven't had too many mosquito bites but i wear bug spray like perfume so that probably kills the vibe a titch.

this whole week, we've just been training and getting ready to start teaching next week! should be interesting. these are new schools that we are starting out here so the kids don't really know english at all, which is rare because usually they know at least a little. so watch me as i'm the one snorting laughing from awkwardness when the kids aren't answering any of my questions. we've had some free time to go to the beach (only 15 min away! hollaaaa) and we went up the gondola yesterday which reminded me of the gondola going up the teton mountains in jackson. it was so beautiful on the top and we walked around in essentially a jungle and ate an early dinner of bacon cheeseburgers (don't even judge me fools). it was perfect!

i'm so excited to start teaching and have no idea what i've gotten myself in for. me and macie just say "what are we even doing here?" all day long because it feels like the most random thing that we live here now for four months. a group of us watched the secret life of walter mitty last night which is seriously one of my most favorite movies and i was getting all giddy inside watching it because no joke, it is the movie that inspired and kicked my butt into gear to finally come teach english to little kids since i've been wanting to for so long. i'm so grateful to finally be here and to be doing this! i'm the biggest fan of new starts and throwing myself into unknown places and having to figure it all out and myself out in it as well. 

fingers crossed a good meesh comes out in the end!

blast that vitamin c friends forever song

***cheesy post so don't read if you on a diiiet***

i'm grateful for solid sound friends. friends you always know you have and never have to question where you stand with! friends that, no matter how different your lives have become from what they were when you were first friends, can still manage to completely hone in on your current situation and simply relate to you. friends that will shoot you straight and tell you when you need to change, and do it from a place of genuine love. friends that just radiate support and openness with you, no matter what you're in the thick of (for the millionth time) or how long it's been since you had a heart to heart. friends that you can laugh at yourself with because you know they don't truly hold anything against you. friends that create an open space and meet you more than halfway emotionally when you're making yourself vulnerable to them. friends that don't butter you up but are giving and thoughtful. these are the people that, no matter if we're either laughing about the stupidest things or practically on the verge of straight up losing it at two in the morning, these are the ones that walk right through it with you somehow. and i'm just really grateful for that.

it's gonna-gonna-gonna-gonna-gonna, it's gonna be meeeeee(sh)

you know what i've really come to hate?

i hate when people ask me "so what are you even doing with your life, michelle?"

and no serious offense to the people that are guilty of this.

i get it. we haven't talked in awhile.

i'm out of college and have been for a year.

in that time, i've randomly moved from utah to arizona to california and then back to utah, and lots of people don't know why.

and i'm not dating anyone seriously (as per proof from no recent pictures with the opposite sex on social media, of COURSE).

you're also probably psychologically confused as to why i'm not married at this point if you've known me for at least a little while and can tell i'm a good and normal girl.

so you're just trying to figure it all out.

i GET IT.

still though, it pisses me off every time.

because usually it is from someone that is married and about my age.

and i just want to laugh and say back to them, "um, how about what are YOU doing with YOUR life? you've been married a few years now and no baby yet? where are you guys wanting to settle down? when are you going to get a house? what's your husband even doing in college? how is he going to eventually fully provide with that major? do you even like the career you're getting yourself into? because you look tired and sound a little miserable."

what people don't know is that even though i'm not completely "found", i'm also not completely lost.

no i'm not married yet, or even dating right now.

but that's because i'm not going to marry or even date a selfish controlling jerk and that seems to be all i'm finding in the last couple years.

i've found that all my efforts especially lately are in vain, so i'm taking a break.

and i've randomly moved around because shortly after i graduated, i decided i wanted to spend some time with my little sister in san diego when she needed me. 

plus, i just dang wanted to. 

as for life plans, i happen to have a lot more than most people my age.

i want to do so many different things that i hardly know where to start with just one and whether to let myself start tackling another one just yet.

mostly right now, i'm in savings mode for a few of those things. 

(teaching abroad and moving to the east coast)

and slowly working my way up to the position i want to be at my favorite company in the mean time.

it's funny, because i was going to write this post to give a mini update about my life since i have a billion people seemingly ask "what little old me could possibly be doing with my life since i don't have a husband so therefore i'm all over the place".

and i'm sick of getting asked that and having to give the long response over and over again, so i wanted to just reply with a link to this page.

and that's probably what i'll still do haha.

so sorry in advance if i offend you right back.

i may seem a little crazy and untraditional, but just believe that i'm going to be happy.

at this point, i'm making sure of it.