Surviving Chantal/Weekend Adventure to Jarabacoa!

So, as the title of this blog says, we survived the tropical storm, Chantal! The storm was predicted to head straight toward The Dominican Republic, but because our God is gracious and all-powerful, it passed on by! We did get a lot of rain but nothing out of the ordinary. I just wanted to update everyone who was worried and also show my gratitude to all who prayed for our safety. GOD IS GOOD!

Anyway, I mentioned in my last blog about our journey to Jarabacoa and now I am going to elaborate! Jarabacoa is a city in the mountains in the middle of the DR(about 4 hours from our community) where Christine, our professor, is living with study abroad students right now. Christine enjoys putting a lot on her plate so this study abroad program is one of the many things she has going on this summer. She did her undergrad at Indiana University and now runs a study abroad program for Big 10 schools each summer in the DR. The program is research based and the students spend 3 weeks in the city life of Jarabacoa and then move to the rural life of our community for another 3 weeks. The students are coming into our community this Saturday, and we are all real excited! Okay, now on to explaining what we did in Jarabacoa! I first need to start with how we got there, though. Hold on one second, I need to provide a quick background story. So, the reason Christine is connected with this community is because she did her dissertation research for anthropology here and then ended up living here for another 10 years. While she was here, she "adopted" three kids who are now in there  late teens and 20's. Anyway, her adopted son, Richard, came to Jarabacoa with us to help us navigate! To get there, we had to take public transportation which involves many short trips to cities in 15-passenger vans. They don't really seem to follow the 15-passenger rule too well though. 

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Here is an example of 24 people crammed into one "guagua," which is the term they use here for any type of car!

So, we needed to take four different guaguas to get to Jarabacoa and on these guaguas, they just randomly shout out an amount of money that you then proceed to pass up to the driver! On the second leg, we decided to just hitch a ride with a random guy in a truck who was happening to go to the next city where we would need to hop on the next guagua. Yes, we fit 7 people in a small 4-door truck with all of our luggage for the weekend. Yes, the trip there was quite a squished adventure, but a great one! Christine is staying in an apartment in Jarabacoa so when we got there that is where we went. It was a great reunion because it had been awhile since we all had seen her! We were also very excited that in that apartment was a kitchen! As much as we have all enjoyed being waited on hand and foot, we wanted to do some cooking! We had thought of some meals that we missed and wanted to make! Before it was dinner time, the study abroad students came by so that we could meet them! I think I forgot to mention in my last post that this past week us 4 girls made the sweet potato dulce(sweet in Spanish) with Mama Purita! I also don't know if I have explained what that is yet either. So basically it is Thanksgiving in a bowl. It has sweet potatoes, coconut, milk, brown sugar, vanilla, and cinnamon that just eventually becomes a big ol' mash...SO GOOD! Anyway, my purpose of explaining that is that my mom sent me with a tupperware bowl of the dulce to enjoy while we were in Jarabacoa! So right before the study abroad students came by, we had started enjoying some! When the students came, we decided to give them a little taste of our community, they all loved it! It was great to meet all of them and we are ready for the six of them to come hang out with us here in La Esquina! After they left, we headed to the store to buy groceries for the meals we wanted to make! For dinner Friday night we had pancakes(with peanut butter and honey of course!) eggs, and sausage. We were planning on making homemade salsa right when we got there but then discovered that there would be a market that sold fresh vegetables in the morning so we decided to wait. But since we had really missed spicy foods, we decided to buy a little Tostino's while we were at the store anyway! Dinner was great and we just spent the rest of the evening hanging out with Christine! Speaking of Christine, she lives in a one bedroom apartment in Jarabacoa and we decided to all "sleep" on the rock-hard floor, which didn't really work at all. Oh well, it was okay! The next morning we headed to the market to buy all the veggies we needed to make salsa. We had brought a few mangoes with us to give the salsa a little "Dominican" twist! The sad part was they didn't have fresh jalapenos, so we had to use pickled but we were still able to choke it down. For lunch we went over to where Christine's godchildren live and spent time with them and their family! The girls are so precious, but a lot to handle! 

Here is the older daughter, Channel, who is quite the model!

This is Chanthal making Alicen into a beautiful princess!

We spent the remainder of the afternoon just hanging out with them until we headed back to Christine's to make quesadillas to enjoy with our homemade salsa! After dinner, we went dancing!

Here is us 4 before we headed out!
(Taylor, me, Susie, and Alicen)

We had to have a crazy picture of course! Love these girls!

We decided that after not sleeping too well at Christine's we should probably stay at the house with her compadres which actually had a bed. We did squish all four of us sideways in a full size bed, but we slept much better! Sunday morning we headed back to our community. We definitely had more squished adventures in guagua's and trucks along with rain on the way back! This time, we fit 8 people in a small 4-door truck. It was so great! 

So, when we were in Jarabacoa, Susie decided to buy some hair dye so the following pictures are us dying her hair! Apparently it's a thing she does to go red in late summer to fall. It was a fun experience!

Here is Susie before!

During: her hair could basically just stand up like that because of all of the dye!

Us waiting to rinse it out!

Rinsing it out!
We bleed maroon...WHOOP!

The finished product!

I mentioned in a previous blog about our Fourth of July Adventure in Cabrera with pizza and ice cream. Here is a picture of that night:

This is us four at the Pizzeria with Gabriel creepin' in the background!

I also mentioned in my last post about us starting to collect items for our keyhole garden. It has been going great so far. We have been passing out plastic bags to houses, explaining the garden, so that they can start saving things that we can use! It has been successful and the community is loving it. I am kind of having technical issues when posting these pictures so sorry if they seem to be in odd places!

The huge cardboard box that the owner of the Colmado(convenience store) gave to us!



Alicen and Trini with things we have collected!

Here is the bags we have been handing out:

 This is my little friend Bobby and I watching the boys play baseball, gotta love the big cardboard box proudly displayed in the back!

These next two pictures are part of the buildings that make up La Esquina(The Corner) and where the community got its name from!

Alicen and I in front of the Colmado.

These are other buildings that make up the corner. We are really excited about the building on the left because some of our friends just bought it to have a new place for their motorcycle shop and feed store. We love the new location!

This is my novio(boyfriend) Ericson. Yes, his grandparents actually refer to me as his girlfriend. He is Taylor's Dominican nephew and I absolutely love him! Once again, please notice the plastic bag for collecting items in the back!

I know this blog has been really random and hasn't flowed that well so sorry! There was a lot that I wanted to share and I didn't really know the best order to put it in! Alicen, Taylor, and I have been spending a lot of time translating curriculum for the garden and creating a blueprint for how the garden will be set up. We are hoping that the beginning of this next week we will actually be able to head up to the school and start preparing the area for the garden and then once we have enough collected items we will start planting! We cannot describe our excitement for all that God has in store these next few weeks. Thanks again for all the prayers!