The nicest people you'll ever meet (Alternate title: We didn't stop drinking!)

Last week was Semana Santa or in US terms Spring Break! Down here it's also more affectionately referred to as Rum and Underwear Week, the "Underwear" part stemming from the fact that everybody (no lie) goes to the beach and most Dominicans don't own bathing suits. Thus, underwear. And I don't think I need to explain the "Rum" part. ;)
It was a well needed break for everybody, especially because the month of March severely lacks any Catholic holidays.
The first half of the week I got to do lots of day trips to places I'd been wanting to see for some time. I went to a museum which was the reconverted Mirabal sister house, women extremely important in the underground movement against the cruel dictator Trujillo who ruled the DR from 1930-1961. They were code named the "Butterflies" so that was the theme of both the house and the city. The museum was hardly informative-most of the tour consisted of comments like "And these were the Mirabal sisters' cups...And this was the Mirabal sisters' mirror...". The tour was in Spanish and since not everyone in our group spoke much (or any!) Spanish, she talked really slowly. Like, r-e-a-l-l-y slowly. As in a 4 second pause between every word, presumably to give us time to rummage around in our bag of Spanish vocabulary until we were able to find and translate the word she said. It quickly got annoying for me, so I felt just plain awful for all the native speakers in our group.
But by far the BEST part of the trip was the ride back. We took this beat up old Volkswagen bus which was meant to comfortably seat 9, and we squeezed in 17 PEOPLE! Plus an end table (one passenger was apparently in the process of moving). You know it's bad when even the Dominicans start screaming at the driver to stop pulling over. Kids were being passed around and stuck in any remaining open crevices (what? they're small for a reason!) and the idea of actually closing the car door was long forgotten once people started having to hang out the side in order to fit. Truly a Dominican experience! ;)
We also went to a nearby beach town where we rode a cable car up the side of the mountain, which was a bit terrifying of a journey despite the 1mph speed, considering safety isn't high on anybody's priorities down here. The top of the mountain, which is literally in the clouds and super cold (by far the coldest I've been since coming here-maybe down to 50 degrees!), there is a statue of Jesus Christ with hands outstretched, similar to the one in Rio de Janiero in Brazil.

Our final adventure was to see some waterfalls in a nearby mountain town. Um, awesome. The grandeur and majesty of them gave me shivers. If asked to describe it I would say: purple rocks, hidden secret caves, the pounding roar of water, rickety suspension bridges, the chilly mist washing everyone below with waves of dew drops. and green green green!

Then I went to the beach to spend a couple days with one of my students' family, who had so kindly invited me down with them. I must say, I was impressed. I have never met people more accomodating, more welcoming, more friendly, more open, more sympathetic in my life. They opened their hearts to me and before the day was over I felt like an adopted gringa member of the family. They gave me more food and more drink than I think I've ever consumed in my life. And in this culture, where it's important to pay attention to the amount of beer in someone's cup and make sure it reaches the top of the glass, I kept getting topped off and told "But Teacher Lesa! You're not working! Come on! Salud!". Ay yi yi! But I can't fault them for their attentiveness to my "needs". I stagger to think of the dent that was made in the Dominican cerveza supply that week... But despite my nerviousness for the trip and the potential ability of it to turn into a verrrry awkward situation (I was going with one of my students' family after all!), the trip went superbly. And I am now a little bit more in love with the country and culture and people :)

And now it's back to the daily grind. Oh where did the (vacation) time go?!