Helloo! Ok, so yesterday was the Carnaval for little kids. The Carnaval is a celebration in all of Febuary, where people dress up crazy, like devils or dragons or monsters, and go out into the streets whipping the ground and going in parades.. Yesterday I went to the one for kids that they had here in San Juan in one of the parks.. There were lots of kids with random costumes, masks, spider man suites, and everything.. It was funny. And of course there were lots of little boys playing with whips.. Which isnt really very safe.. Especially in crowded areas. And there´s lots of teenage boys running around with these hard balloon-like things on the ends of strings, hitting girls in their butts and backs..and yes they hit me about four times! And hard, too! And when they don´t stop, you have to run. This Friday, the 27th, is the normal Carnaval..which should be even bigger and better. But I´ll probably get hit more.. Haha. The Carnaval in La Vega, a city in the northern part of the D.R., is known to be the best in all the Carribbean, with huge parades and fairs and everything.

Sheila and me yesterday in the Carnaval for kids
Ramona, Carolina, and me..

The San Juan capital building..

El Carnaval! A typical costume.

Haha, when I try and take a picture of one person

everyone crowds in!

El Carnaval for kids, in Duarte Park

Kids playing with whips..fun!....

La Avenida - a big avenue on the north side of town

and it´s really long and has alot of these apartments

that all look the same on both sides

A rice factory!

In the campo! It´s extremely pretty there.

Normal houses in a village in the campo

It´s really pretty!

Antony, Andrina, Sahony, Jairo, Cristal

Riding in the truck on the way to the campo

From left to right Cheina, Sahony, Andrina, Jairo,

Ramona, and Cristal

Sheila, Orquidea, and me

Orquidea, Norman, and Me

Manuela and Julissa in the truck

My class! From left to right they are Norman, me, Jairo

Caroline, Ernesto, Erik, Daniel, Ramona, Cristal (in the middle)

Sahony, Emely, Cristofer, Jaciel, and Yomalsy

KC and our friends from Thailand in the AFS camp

Ramona and her house

KC and me in the camp

I got black highlights..

It´s easy to find random farm animals walking in the

streets of San Juan

the street outside Ramona´s house..to the right is

the fence to the stadium

Ah, so I was going to post pictures today but i accidentally brought the cord for my zune instead of the one for my camera. ugh. So I guess I´ll just write more.
In school, the juniors have two classes, 3ero A and 3ero B, I´m in 3ero A, and our classrooms are right next to eachother and they´re separated by walls that can be lifted up to make one big classroom. Our two grades have been arguing and we´ve kind´ve been enemies since the beginning of the year, because we wanted different class names and we wanted to do separate class activities. So today, for our last two classes, we opened the wall and had this big presentation thing, because today´s student day, and so that we could all make up the problems and be one big class again. And it started out with people reading stuff about students, what students are, and friendship, then people read poems, and then Julissa and Sheila sang a song together (they are really good singers! and they have guts to sing alone in front of about 70 people...), then more people presented and sang, two people sang the song that goes..turn around bright eyes, every single time i fall apart, (or something like that...not sure what it´s called) but in spanish..in spanish its different..mira mis ojos...yeah...and that was really good. There´s this girl Carolina in my class who´s hilarious, she was one of the ones singing it, and it was funny... Then this other girl from 3ero B sang and danced to the song Hey Now, this is what dreams are made of, in English from that Lizzie Mcguire movie hahaha and it was funny..everyone was singing along.. and every time someone finished everyone would scream and cheer as loud as they could, haha, so that was fun...
So what else can I talk about.. Oh! I learned how to drive a motorcycle. It was awesome! I´m not very good at it..but it was really fun. Kinda scary too.
Yesterday I went to Ramona´s house with Sheila and Scarley, and then we went to this restaurantish place close to there to eat...and woww, we ate soo much. It was funny..afterwards we could barely walk.
Here everyone watches soap operas (including me!..sometimes) There´s this one called Doña Barbara that I like to watch..It´s about this lady called Barbara and she owns this hacienda, and then this guy called Santos comes and moves into town, and they fall in love, but he doesnt know that Barbara´s a evil lady who kills people to get her way...and then I´m not sure what happens because i haven´t seen all of it..but this girl Maricela who lives on a hacienda, is Barbara´s daughter..because Barbara had gotten raped by the police chief, and she´s their daughter...and then somehow Santos falls in love with Maricela, and she falls in love with him (he´s like 40 and she´s 18)..and Barbara is all jealous...but Santos still stays with Barbara...but then he finds out about her lying and murdering and stuff...so he leaves her, then she´s even more mad...and Santos tries to get with Maricela, but she doesnt want to cuz before he was with her mom..and yeah it goes on from there like a soap opera..but i think its gonna end soon. Haha, my friend Ramona watches them about every night (they´re called telenovelas).
So there are lots of good Spanish rock bands...from the D.R., from Spain, from Colombia..and other parts of Latin America... I know that some people in Homer have heard of Enrique Iglesias, he sings the ping pong song...and there´s a version in Spanish too..
So i went to a basketball game the other day in the stadium. It was fun..like a normal basketball game.
Oh, so here in the D.R. the Spanish they use is alot different that in other Spanish speaking countries...for example, they take out the letter s from alot of words...like when they´re saying ´the doors´ they say la puerta instead of las puertas...and they like to add -isimo onto the ends of words..so when they´re saying ´that´s way cool!´they say ¨jevisimo!¨. and for the word thing they dont say cosa they say baina (i´m not sure how to spell it but that´s the way it sounds)
And i´m running out of time on the comp so i´ll post pics next time!

Hello!!! Wow, i can´t believe i´m already more than half way through! I´ve got alot to cover. So school started that Monday, and it´s been going pretty well. I´m understanding almost everything that goes on in my classes now. So some people were asking me about the school here... It starts at 8:00 but we all have to get there at 7:45 to line up and sing the Dominican Hymn Song as they raise the flag. Then we all go to class, we have three classes without a break, then at 10:30 we have 20 minutes to eat breakfast from the cafeteria, then we go back to class and have three more classes without breaks, then we get out at 1:15... Happy Valentines Day! ...let´s see...i´m not sure where to start. so this last weekend for valentines day almost my whole class piled in the back of a truck and drove about 20 minutes out to the campo (country side farm land) of one of the kids in my classs, in the morning at about 10. When we got there, we all put on swim suites and swam in this river. And of course everyone thought it was cold :) but it was nothing compared to swimming in Kachemak Bay. And it was super fun, and we hung out almost all day swimming and talking. For lunch, everyone brought one thing...rice and beans (moro), chicken, spaghetti, bread. pretty much what we eat every day :p And we went home and now i have a really big sunburn!
So the other weekend, i went to my friend Cristal´s 15th birthday party (she´s in my class, and she´s only 15!!!) and almost my whole class went. And i went with my friends Ramona, Julissa, and Sheila, and we got there early so we were walking around outside, and Julissa looked up at the moon and it looked cool so she told us to look at it, and right then a lunar eclipse started!!!! Which is like...amazingly good timing. The moon was only about a quarter full, but it was still really awesome to see. Then we went back to Cristal´s house...and the party was really fun. Everyone danced (including me!) regeton and merengue and techno..and they had a big cake and dinner and everything. The thing i really like about here is that people aren´t afraid to dance and talk to people who aren´t in their little group of friends, and people are open!! And what else.. oh, right, i went to another AFS camp in a little town called Bayaguana, about an hour out of Santo Domingo. It was two weeks ago..And I was going to leave on a Friday morning at 10, but at 9:45 when i went to leave my house, the gate was closed with the lock outside, so i was locked in. And my host parents were at work and didn´t answer their phones...so i ended up having to find a key to the garage and go out and get the key...
Oh and i got my packages!!!!!! finalllyyyyy!!! Thank you all so much for sending me them, they made me very happy :) ok, so i´ll have to finish this with pictures later when i have more time..
i have to go to this math practice thing for my school...there´s these math olympics in a few weeks that my math teacher invited me to haha..
Miss you all! Hope everything has been going well.

The big catholic church in the middle of town


(down) Orquidea and me after the wedding

christmas eve dinner! lots of food!






the aguinaldo at about 7 in the morning in my school

one of the two cafeterias in my school, in a time when it´s not full...imagine about 30 people standing around it, about half yelling ´morena! dame un tostada!´ and about five banging on the walls or throwing rocks on the roof...hahahahah. that happens alot.

my guitar!

the other side of my school

a kid from my class riding a mini motorcycle. everywhere you go here there´s sure to be a motorcycle or motorscooter, it´s rare for people to have cars

a normal street..the green place on the right is a colmado, which is a little store where you can buy food, phone cards, and much more, and they are everywhere! ok, i´m trying to gather pictures from around my town, of the parks and everything, but i dont have very many pics yet.

My street (my house is just to the right)

My house

Happy New Year! Wow, my time here is going so fast! On the 22nd of January I´ll have been here for 5 months already! that´s halfway. wow. ok, so i´ll start off where i left off...
So the weekend before examens i visited my friend KC in Azua, a town a little bigger than San Juan that´s pretty close to here and on the southern coast. We pretty much hung out in her house the whole weekend, it was fun, one night we went to the discotech with her aunt (whose pretty cool and knows english really well). It was ok i guess..extremely loud music (mostly bachata, merengue, and reggeton) and people dancing. Me and KC were like the only ones who didnt dance haha.
Examens weren´t easy..I didnt have to take my french exam (i dont know why, i guess i had a good enough grade not to but there was only one other kid in my class who didnt have to take it) and there was a group of kids who had good grades in biology, so our teacher (my host mom) made another test for us so that we wouldnt have to take the normal exam...agh. haha. and the test to get out of the normal test was just as hard as the normal test. haha. but noone who took the test had to take the other one. so exams here arent as closely monitored as they are in homer high...theres lots of people cheating off other people and whispering and passing notes...some people even took a picture of my friend julissa´s math test with their phones (that they were supposedly using as calculators) then copying it.. but thats not what happened in some classes..some teachers are really strict. oh, and we only had two examens every day, sometimes one, so we would take the exam in the morning, then afterwards we could leave the school at like 10:30 or whenever we got finished. we ended up going to Ilda´s, the bakery-sweetery, and eating cake and sweets alot. one time we went to the parque duarte, where there were lots of kids from lots of different schools, all in their different uniforms. it´s fun because every school has their diff. uniform and you can tell where someone goes to school just by looking at them.. one school has a peach colored skirt and white shirt for girls...some have plaid skirts..and some just pants. in my school we used to have skirts but they got banned because girls started wearing them really short..and there are alot of immature boys in our school..anyways, the examens ended on a thursday and that night my class had a chocolate (a get together in the street where they make hot chocolate and have a fire and stuff) and i went with Ramona and Sheila and Scarlett and Julissa (not Julissa from my class but Ramona´s cousin) and it was boring at first because it was supposed to start at 7, we got there at 8 and there was barely anyone there (hehe typical dominican timing :p ) then at 9 ish there was alot of people, and alot of them werent from our class, but seniors and the other junior class, and then 10:30 ish they started making hot chocolate, and it finally ended at 11:30ish. oh, hot chocolate is made differently here...people put lots of spices and cinnamon in it so it tastes different. it´s pretty good, but i miss the type we make in homer.

Then, that Saturday morning i woke up at 3:30 and went to my school with my host parents for an aguinaldo, which is this get together for the highschool kids, and everyone meets at 3:30 in the morning to pile into the backs of trucks, then they go driving through the town yelling and singing and waking people up and having fun (and some people drinking like always), haha, and agh, we got there at 4:00 and everyone had already left the school! so my friend Ramona and i didnt get to go. which pretty much sucked..we woke up at 3:30 for nothing :p and then when the trucks started arriving at the school, at about 6:30 ish, they made hot chocolate and had a bonfire. And there were alot of people there hanging out and talking so it was o.k., not extremely boring. then we left the school at about 7:30, went home, and i went to sleep.

Then came the vacation! Wow! i spent the first few days in my house sitting around and doing nothing, because there was nothing to do but watch tv or sleep. Then on christmas eve, family started arriving, and by about 6 there were about 40 people in my house, and everyone was either watching kids, helping prepare the dinner, watching tv, or trying to escape the house. and the adult guys were outside playing dominoes for a while. then, the dinner was finally ready at about 8:30, and we all went up to the roof, then lined up and ate, there was chicken, turkey, steak, pastelitoes, soda, lots of different types of pastas and salads, and lots more. and it was all really good, and it reminded me of thanksgiving at home, where all the family gets together and eats alot. haha, it was fun, and there were some cousins my age that i got to hang out with. After eating we did a gift exchange. Then almost everyone left at like 12 and went to Elias Piña, a small town closer to the Haitian border.

Christmas day I didnt do anything more than sit around and watch tv, because all the family had gone. Then, that weekend i went to Orquidea´s house to hang out and i ended up staying there until yesterday! It was fun, and Orquidea´s family is extremely nice and i´m really thankful that they invited me to their house for so long. It´s cool because her dad is from Italy, and we always talk about Alaska and Italy and stuff. Then on New Years Eve, I went to the park with Orquidea to see her friend Baldemar who is from here but lives in New York and knows English, and hung out there for a while but it was kinda boring so we went back to her house to get ready to go to her church. We went at about 10:30 and stayed until 12:30, and i felt a little awkward because i´m not religious, but it was a cool experience. During the countdown to midnight everyone was on their knees praying, then the preacher looked at his watch and said ït´s 2009! and everyone gets up and starts hugging eachother and saying ¨felicidades! feliz año nuevo!¨Afterwards we all went to Orquidea´s grandpa´s house and hung out there for a bit talking, oh, and the first thing i ate in 2009 was a piece of fried chicken, just so you all know :) . Then, at about 3 in the morning we all headed to Orquidea´s house, where we ate our dinner (because we didnt eat before), which was pizza and cookies and banana bread(which i had made with a recipe from home) and more cookies that Orquidea and her mom made, and fruit, and cider, and i´m not really sure but i think it was fruit cake..haha...it´s called panettone in Spanish..and it was good. And we ate alot! Then we went to bed. Haha, almost the whole time i was in Orquidea´s house we went to bed at about 3 in the morning then woke up at 11:30 or 12. We went to the park in the night alot, because in the Christmas time here there´s always alot of people hanging out in the park listening to loud music (there are lots of cars here that have huge microphones in the way back, like you see on t.v., haha, that drive by with the way back door open and music extremely loud) Then this last Sunday there was a wedding reception in Orquidea´s restaurant outside around the pool, and i helped serving sodas and food and stuff, and helped prepare these little shishkabobs (is that how you spell that?) with fruit, then we stuck them into whole pineapples for decoration, haha. And the wedding lasted until about 1:30, and we got lots of good wedding cake :)

Then, today was the day that school was supposed to start, but, just like all my friends told me, nobody from my grade went except for me and Orquidea. Ha. So i ended up just being in school for about a half hour, then walking home. And I´m guessing it´s going to be the same tomorrow and the next day, because everyone´s planning on going to school on Monday.

Well, that about covers it! I hope everyone had a good holiday season, and Happy 2009!
Please comment! I miss everyone!

nice view of mountains

a hummingbird!

haha, people kissing juan pablo duarte

at the peakkkk

the valley

the almost fairy tale valley!

a view of the valley that we stayed in

cacti!

walking to the valley

sunrise!

nice view of the mountains

us at the peak! me, a guy from italy, maizie another girl from the us, and up top a girl from germany, till, and a girl from iceland

helloo again! ok, so some people have asked me how many pesos in a dollar..here it´s about 34.5, but it rises and falls every day..somedays 35..some days 34.. and i dont know if they ended up finding the person who took the 2 mil. pesos..and on the trip there werent very many animals other than birds and insects and the pigs that we ate..we saw wild humming birds, which was really cool. the humming sound that they make with their wings sounds cool and some people heard it and thought it was a wild pig, so they would freak out..and then it would just be the bird.

so this last weekend i went to santo domingo with ramona, which was cool because usually afs doesnt let people travel without family, but i got permission to go with ramona and stay for one night in her sister´s house, and her mom is visiting from Santomas and we went shopping with her and her cousin. it was fun because in santo domingo they have big malls and lots of stores:) except it´s not cheaper here..i was looking for converse, and in one of the only stores that had a good variety they were like 60 dollars! agh. but in other stores they sell them cheaper..not cheap, but cheaper than 60 dollars. what else..the guitar class that i´m in is fun, and i´m learning guitar in spanish! which is a little different than learning in english, because here instead of notes like A, B, C, D, E, F, G, they use do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, and si.

me at the peak

the sunrise

a pretty bridge

about half of the trails were like this..not even trails but just water drainage spots :)

ok, so i left off in pico duarte..so i guess i can describe things more detailedly. ha. on the first day we got up early and started walking, and every student got a bag of sweets and juice to carry and eat while walking, and we walked for a while through forest and it was really cool, lots of different trees and random vines and fruit trees, like oranges and lemons, and they smelt really good, and we went up and down alot..then sometimes we would stop and get water out of rivers or something, or stop to take pics, and we weren´t all in one big group, we could go at our own pace as long as we had a partner, and everyone got whistles in case someone got lost. the first night we got to the camp at about 3, after going down this really steep mountain slope for about two hours, (which we knew we would have to go back up the next day..agh) and we ate soup to warm us up until dinner, because yes it was colder than normal carribbean weather. then we hung out until dinner then went to bed. the next day we went to the peak! and it was pretty cool because i was in the first group to get there, so there were only a few of us up there so it wasnt too crowded, and the highest point is on a big pile of rocks with a statue of the head of juan pablo duarte and a dominican flag and a cross, so it was pretty awesome, and there was an incredible view of all the mountains all around, and the clouds in the mountains, and it was nice and sunny out, a perfect time to be there! then we started back down, running most of the way on the one big downhill that came down from the peak, then up the crazy steep mountain side, then we crossed a bunch of other mountains and valleys to get to this one valley where we would stay for threee nights, and we got there at about 3 again, and went to the river and ate and hung out, and that was pretty relaxing after walking alot...oh, the first day we walked 18 kilometers..second day 19..last day about 15..so a total of about 52 kilometers..which is like 31 or something miles. the first night in the valley was crazy (or so i heard) haha because i was sleeping because i was exhausted! but a bunch of people brought rum and beer..and the next morning the director lady was really pissed (she had reason to be) and woke everyone up at like 9 and called a group meeting and told everyone that if they dont want to pack up and go home that anyone who has any more alcohol has to bring it out, and then she dumped it out on the ground, haha, so that was pretty intense. the rest of the day was good though, we hung out and went to the river and jumped off rocks and stuff. the next day we went into a valley to play frisbee with these pro teams that were there, and it was sweet this valley was seriously like a fairy tale..lush green with horses and mountains and yeah. thennn someone apparently had stolen 2 million pesos from one of the volunteers, so they had to search all our bags and give us this big long talk about how dissappointing of a group we were..first the alcohol then this. ahh. then the next day they had the roasting pigs, and theeennn that night, there was a group of girls running around and one of them ran into something or something like that, and the got this big gash on her eyebrow, so they were all frazzled and everyone had to sleep in the clothes they were gonna wear the next day to be able to get her the hospital before 7 tge next day. ok, so moving on cuz im gonna run out of time!

i´ve joined a softball team and they´re pretty cool and nice, and i´m in a guitar class with ramona and julissa every monday and tuesday, so thats pretty fun.

the peak!

the halloween party

school trip in santo domingo ' the ocean!!!

on the bus

the bus

ramona and a friend with his dog

my host fam´s dog!

Wow! It´s been so long since my last post! I left off in the week that i switched to my new host family. So lots of stuff has happened...in summary: Felix went home to Germany (ah, i was about to write Allemania..Germany in Spanish) I went to a crazy school movie, I went on a crazy school trip to Santo Domingo, I went to the campo (the country), i went to a crazy Halloween party, I went to the highest peak in the Carribbean, I joined a softball team, I went to Santo Domingo (the capital) with Ramona, and I´m learning alot of Spanish, and school has been good.

Ok, so I´m not sure exactly why Felix went home.. I was in Caribe Tours one day waiting for my friends (haha, waiting as always..no just kidding) and Felix and Till were there, Felix with all of his stuff packed up, and he was waiting to get on the bus to Santo Domingo because AFS had called him and told him to go, so he thought he was going to change cities or families or something, and he was happy and everything..but when he got to Santo Domingo they told him he would go home the next tuesday. Agh. So that sucks.

The school movie was reallllly different from movies here...The seniors in my school were hosting it, and it was in this old cinema..and it was a horror movie, i dont remember what it was called, something about mirrors being able to kill people..and every time something even remotely scary happened, EVeryone in the theatre would start to scream and yell and whistle and stuff like that...for a long time..and it was extremely loud! But fun none the less...i just had to get used to it. But then the projector broke, and everyone went outside and was listening to music and dancing, and another part of the culture here is that theres no drinking age..so of course there were people drinking. Whenever theres a party or movie or something that goes late here on the weekends, my host parents let me stay the night at Ramona´s house because its alot closer, which is cool...my house is really far from where most of my friends live.

Ok, so on the school trip to Santo Domingo, we had to get up at three in the morning to be at the school at four to get on the bus, and the bus ride was intense...people were loud and crazy and yelling out the windows at random stuff and having fun..much different than a bus ride at four in the morning in homer..haha.. in santo domingo we went to a college for computers and we got a tour..then we went to a computer-informatica fair that was huge but kinda boring because it was all stuff about computers and technology and in spanish..the bus ride on the way back was just as crazy and we got back to san juan at about 8.30.

One sunday i went to the country with Nini, the girl who lives in my house, to visit her boyfriend´s family. we rode a motoconcho out and visited and ate and went to a river for a few minutes, and everything was really pretty, then we went out to the real country and drank fresh coconut milk right out of a coconut that one of the people with us had climbed a tree and picked..i dont like coconut but i do like coconut milk! haha. then we went back to san juan in this taxi bus thing. so that was pretty fun.

haha, so people here dont usually celebrate halloween, but they did have a school party..not many people dressed up, but they decorated the place all right...it was in this basement of this rented house place...so it got really hot..but it was fun. yes i danced. agh people dance crazy here. haha.

ok, so the pico duarte trip for afs was amazing! ahhh. i left on a wednesday morning in the bus at 6 in the morning, got to santo domingo and rode a taxi to the house where everyone was meeting, and unfortunately left my cell phone in the taxi, the we went in three buses to the mountains and got to this little town where we ate and slept for the night, then woke up at four thirty in the morning to start walking! and we walked and walked and walked (well some people rode mules and they got to leave earlier) and walked until three in the afternoon where we stayed in this cam,ping spot for the rest of the day, and we ate soup and food and had a campfire, but had to go to bed at 8 because we got up at 4:30 again, to walk more, and on that day we went to the peak, and it was so beautiful! we were also really lucky because usually it rains alot allll the time in pico duarte, but for us it only rained once in the afternoon after we had finished hiking...and i have sooo many awesome pics of the peak. but unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries when we got to the valley where we stayed for three nights and swam in a river and jumped off high rocks into the river and played frisbee and hung out..and on the second to last day they were cooking pigs, but not in an oven...you know in movies when people get captured by native tribes and the tribes tie them to a stick and cook them over a fire? it was like that..we woke up in the morning and there were four raw pigs skewered on sticks roasting over the fires..and they were there alll day, it was really strange for me and other people but thats the common way to do it. ah, so i´m about to run out of time on the computer so i´ll have to finish another day.