A Week in the Life....

As "routine" sets in I feel more settled here. Here are a few highlights from our week:

Sunday - New Life Church in Sosua
This is an interdenominational church that, fittingly, has no walls. We started coming to this church 7 years ago and feel very welcome each time we attend. 



Monday - Our friends, Sandi & Gerry, joined us for a lovely dinner prepared by Sandro & Sandra. We all had a great evening and great conversation (a lot of it in Spanish!!) They volunteer at a free dental clinic every Saturday. Sandi and I went to Three Hills High School together back in the 70s and re-connected last fall at our class' 50th birthday party. They retired here about 7 years ago. Small world.


Tuesday - Taco Tuesday is one the "markers" in my week. I mean, how else am I going to remember what day it is? The little beach restaurant here at our condo has a 300 peso ($8.00) "all you can eat taco night" every Tuesday evening and it's a great connecting point for people who live here or others who just love the experience. Zach's record is 7 tacos.
A highlight for this Tuesday was meeting Professor Gustavo and his family. They came as guests of one of our friends who takes Spanish lessons from him. They are a delightful Dominican family and all of their children speak beautiful English. I will see them again on Friday to pass on a donation to their language school from Secrest Resources (the Vancouver based company I work for occasionally). http://www.secrest.ca/

Wednesday - Dinner at LAX on Cabarete Beach. This is one of my favourite places to go in the evening. All the restaurants set up tables right on the sand and there are lights, music and people from all over the world. We had a great evening connecting with our friends, Sandro & Sandra. We love to just hang out with these guys without them working in our kitchen. We make a point of cooking for them or taking them for dinner several times while we are here - just for fun and to enjoy our friendship.

Thursday - Oh, that's today!!! Well, I got all domestic and baked chocolate chip cookies and a thin layer of chocolate cake (from scratch) that I will use to make ice cream sandwiches. Randy is having Tuna Sashimi at the restaurant and I had too much to eat at lunch so am sitting in my air conditioned room....writing and enjoying some time to myself. Zach loves playing with the kids here at the condo. The kids who live here speak both Spanish and English and have very similar lives to ours so he totally fits in. It's great for him and for us. I made quite a few points today with the cookies :-)

Friday - I'm going to the Coral Language Institute http://www.schule-cabarete.net/ to do some training for the technology donated by Secrest Resources. I had been praying for a connection to a school here in Cabarete so that the technology could go to a place where it would be used to help disadvantaged children. I was thrilled to meet Gustavo and Miquenlina on Tuesday. I showed them the Leapfrog Schoolhouse system I brought and they were very excited. Perfect!!!

Saturday - Sandro & Sandra's kids return from a week visiting their extended family in Santo Domingo and we will have the whole family here for supper. Maybe I'll cook this time but don't hold me to that.

Well, I think it's popcorn and a movie with Zach tonight.

PS. I am having a lot of trouble posting pictures to this blog so I'll do a little album later and send you all the link.

Vistas and Visiting

The "vistas" here are breathtakingly beautiful. The colour of the ocean continues to amaze me. I am outside almost all the time (why not?) reading, eating and tanning. Zach hangs out with several friends here so he is happy. Randy is able to detach from work, etc. and is really enjoying just getting sucked into a book. He has been going for a run/walk every morning. I try to swim 20 lengths every noon and go for a beach walk with my friend, Doris, every afternoon at 4:00 pm. The little restaurant here has very good food for reasonable prices so I don't really cook at all. Sandra comes to cook for us 2 or 3 times a week and various members of their family join us for dinner. That's pretty much my life, however, I do hop on our scooter and go for little adventures every other day or so.

The "visiting" is what I love even more than the vistas. We get to know a lot of wonderful people here in our complex...from the staff to the expats to the wealthier Dominicans who own here.  But yesterday I went to Sandra and Sandro's house in "the village" just to hang out for a while. Here are a few pictures that hopefully are worth a thousand words...

Sandra & I

Sandro with his new baseball cleats (a gift from my girlfriend in Calgary)

Sandro's mom acting crazy with her ever present bottle of white rum :-)

Well, who knows what today will bring? Doris offered to give us a ride to church in her truck so off we go...