when that DR life burns your leg

[dominican republic's next top models. look for us at the next fashion week for sure!]

so on this ol' teaching program, all of us teachers get a week long vacation to go and do whatever the heck we want. it's fantastic, people. a small group (me, macie, karsen, katie, kaylee, courtney, kendall, ryan, and jeff) of us decided to go out to samana (a really pretty beach town about four hours away) for a few days and then cabarete (known for the nightlife and for us, the food) for the weekend with just da gals.

 we woke up suuuper early monday morning to take a rickety bus (called a papagallo) to samana. i'm not exaggerating when i say rickety! i swear, the bus goes like 90 mph and drives like a bat outta hell. and just like true dominican fashion, it stops about every 30 min for a snack/potty break. we finally got to samana and from the bus station there, we had to take a gwah gwah (that's how it's pronounced in espanol...it's essentially a 15 27 passenger van taxi that was supposed to take us to where we were staying in las galeras) for another hour. 

[you can't really tell but she's flipping me off. lovely children!]

let me tell you, at this point we were so over traveling, so when the gwah gwah just drops us off after an already long ride and tells us it can't take us any further towards our hostel because the roads are too bad, it's an understatement to say that we were all peeeeeeeessed (read: pissed). we decided to eat lunch and take a break from all the driving to calm down, which was smart because kendall (a teacher from our group who was meeting us there) just randomly got dropped off outside our restaurant as we were eating. we all decided to take moto taxis up to our hostel, because that's what all the locals recommended and we had a lot of our luggage that we didn't want to lug around. 

[said in a british accent: a horse at a beach!]

[our hostel. haha totally kidding....but basically kinda like our hostel.]

let me pause right there and say that i am 100% against the moto taxi situation out here, as in taking one myself to get somewhere. you don't know their experience! what if the psycho is just borrowing his friend's motorcycle for the day to make some money and doesn't know how to drive at all? just because they're an actual moto taxi driver out here doesn't mean they actually know what they're doing and how to maneuver this crazy metal machine. anyways, so i'm essentially peer pressured into it because we don't really have any other choice since no regular taxis will drive us there. and i also don't want to be a paranoid-over-analyzing-worrying-about-any-and-all-possible-scenarios freak, so i lizzie mcguire movie it and get on the bike with the random man. there's the driver, who's holding a heavy carry-on rolly bag (should've been the tipping point....probably literally was though haha), then me, then kendall and our two backpacks. we start going and i'm like okay, this will be fine, i am a carefree woman! then we get to this giant steeeeep mountain and i'm like oh shizballs, we're gonna die. of course he's not going up it fast enough and i can already tell we're not going to make it. he yells back at us for us to jump off because we're rolling backwards and kendall's getting off and i'm trying to get off on the left, but the driver's already tilting the bike over so it doesn't roll down the mountain and my right leg smacks the exhaust. TWICE, people. let me tell you, it stung like a mofo. and it already started to blister, which is always just great haha. the driver felt awful and was saying all this stuff in spanish and i'm just ugly-smiling through my teeth and thinking all the cuss words (sorry mom). we walk up to the top and he drops us off by our hostel. the kicker is that later on we find out from the other moto taxi drivers that our driver had never even made it up that mountain before! oh, the putz. i could slap his freaking face off. i was pretty annoyed that it happened the first day of the vacation, but in true stubborn dastrup fashion, i was not going to let it change any part of the week for me! freak no, not after all that dumb traveling. bring it on baby! we spent the rest of the day walking around the beach and swimming in the ocean (because saltwater is good for burns, right?) and then getting the best burritos for dinner from a little place owned by a spunky british lady named dee dee. 

[how unreal are the beaches out here though??]

[day 1. and of course, i broke a nail too when we crashed. i knew i wasn't the best candidate for fake nails!]

needless to say, i for sure walked back to the hostel that night (and all the other nights) and graphically flashed my burned leg in protest to every annoying moto taxi trying to pick me up on the way. "el moto es muy mal! ay ay ayyyy!"-my perfect spanish, i know.

we're soarin, flyyyyyin!

 [let's just disregard the fact that i look like i'm cheesing so hard right here. and that it looks like i got a bob haircut out here which i DIDN'T.]

 [what we were doing during hurricane joaquin. oops? sorry south carolina?]

[take me back to working the system and having a random guy buy us milkshakes at the restaurant bar instead of alcohol. now dassss what i'm talkin abizzout!]

but seriously, my new plan is to go to all the bars and when them guys ask "hey girl, can i buy you a drink?" i'm just gonna say "um, you can buy me a taco and a milkshake, ha haaa?" and bat my eyes a bazillion times.

also, como se dice "i have a mosquito bite on the back of my knee that is auditioning to become another planet in the solar system" in espanol? but really though. i'm starting to look like i have the pox! get thee hence, you little blood suckers.

this morning at the butt crack of dawn, i went on a run to the beach (and when i say run, i mean basically getting chased by dogs and/or horses the entire time) with one of the other teachers named katie. and on the way back, we were talking about how weird it is to look back at the beginning of teaching and to remember how different all the other teachers seemed. for example, she had run into one of the head teachers at a gymnastics place days before we came and thought she hated her, and now they're best friends. and my friend kaylee was basically scared of me at the beginning since i hardly talked at all to her on the plane ride over here and slept (correction: tried to sleep, we all remember how this was the plane ride from hell) instead with my high maintenance ear plugs and face mask (i have sleeping problems, judge me not). it's just funny to me to think that about how these people that were complete strangers to me about two months ago are the ones that probably know me a little tooooo well now haha. it honestly feels like it's bachelor in paradise or the real world from mtv out here.

and in other news, i was asked FOUR times today if i was pregnant by a few of my little dominican devil children (i'm lookin at you jhosmary) sooooooo won't be wearing that dress again! in their defense, i am a menace to their society for not having five kids and three novios at my age. they've been asking every single day for the last week if me or the other teachers have babies. and i say "noooo, i'm only 24! i'm not even married!", and then i realize i'm an idiot because that means nothing and most of their moms had them at age 14 with what's his butt down the street. so sad and so bizarre! probably won't ever seem normal to me. next time they ask me if i'm pregnant, i'm just gonna yell "si, una bebe comida para siempre!", which is spanglish for "yes, a food baby forever".

because what else would you expect?

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?