Sorry it's been a long time no type, but somehow time has just slipped away from me. It's now Thursday morning, and I just had the usual breakfast of bread, eggs, and fruit. Don't get me wrong, it's delicious. I just really miss cereal and milk, and my green tea every morning.
Now I'm going to try hard to remember what has happened the passed 2 days. Tuesday morning we had quite the gua-gua ride. The driver was apparently not messing around, and decided to off-road it most of the way. I when I say off-road I'm not using that term lightly. The traffic was very bad, and pretty much at a dead stop for miles, so what better than to just pass everybody on the right side (better than trying to pass on the left, right). The ride wasn't much better that afternoon. I had to sit on Tenille's lap, and my head was bent to the right. It was quite uncomfortable. The kicker of it is, we still had to pay for 2 people, even though we were pretty much taking up space for one.
Tuesday we also had another exercise class at Hospicio. It was really fun. It was a little more organized this time. We did some bowling using cups and beach balls. I have pictures that I'll try to get up as soon as possible.
We also went to the Mirabel Sisters museum. The sisters are known for taking part in freeing the DR from the rule of a man that sounds a lot like Hitler. The sisters ended up getting murdered by the ruler's followers. The museum was the house they grew up in, and their graves were there. It was really interesting.
Tuesday night, me and some other girls met some PT's from here at the mall...that's right...the mall. It was really weird to be in a mall in the DR. I didn't buy anything because it seemed expensive, so I did a lot of window shopping. We ate in the food court, and one of the PT's sat down with a beer. A beer in the mall??? That's right, it's legal. She couldn't believe that this was not acceptable back in the US.
Wednesday was a busy day at Hospicio. Now that the word is out that there are Americans there, it seems like everybody in the country is coming to get treated, which is awesome but at the same time overwhelming. One patient brought us brownies. I ate one, and I'm still here so that's good. The patient with the amputation that I've been working with in the nursing home was so excited yesterday when we gave him a shoe for his other foot (he has diabetes, so this was very important) and walked with him again. I didn't understand what he was saying to me when I was done working with him, but the next thing I know he's calling one of the ambulatory residents over, hands him 30 pesos, and this resident (who lives there, he's not a worker) opens the security gates and goes to the corner to buy bananas. He gets himself locked out of Hospicio, so Tenille had to let him in. Turns out my patient wanted to buy us Bananas as a thank you. The other day this same patient said to us (again, Tenille had to translate), "I don't know why you're always thanking me, I should be the one to thank you."
Some interesting things seen from the gua-gua. Yesterday, we saw a man on very high stilts, like you see at the circus, selling things on the street. We also saw a man with about 20 cell phones strapped across his chest, which I thought was amunition at first. There are always people walking in between traffic selling things. It makes me so nervous for them, because traffic is crazy here.
Tomorrow (Friday) afternoon we are leaving for Santo Domingo until Sunday. This is suppose to be the place for good shopping, so I'm pretty excited. Again, no travel journal on those days.
Hope it stopped snowing back home. Should I tell everyone that it's still very hot here (who wait, I just did, sorry). But really, it is. I'm getting really confused because it feels like July or June, and I keep forgetting it doesn't feel like this back home.
Hope everyone is doing well.
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