La Romana and other news

So I've been a slacker blogger of late.  Here's a general update about a lot of things:

Last weekend we took a group trip to La Romana, a beautiful spot on the south east side of the island.  The drive took about 5 hours, literally cross-country, but I love looking at the country side here.  Half was spent going through the lush mountains, half traveling along the coast, getting to see the incredible Caribbean.

On Friday we visited the 'Caves of Wonder' which are these natural underground caves that contain drawings left from the Taina (the indigenous people who lived on the island before Columbus depopulated it).  Basically this means the drawings are well over 500 years old.  There was also tons of stalagmites and stalactites which, our guild explained, grew about 1 centimeter every century.

Next stop was a village that had been built only about 30 years ago, but was meant to look like an Italian town of old.  There was an amphitheater, a fountain, several gift shops and an amazing view.  The village is built on a bluff over looking a river that feeds into the sea.

The next morning is was off to the beach.  We took a boat to another, bigger boat and sailed about two hours to and island off the southern coast.  I cannot emphasis enough the spectacular beauty of the water, the palm trees and the sand.  Wow!  We swam, we ate, we lounged in the sun.  (The sun part, in retrospect, was a terrible idea as I and many others got horrible sun burns.  I need to just except I am not a person who has the ability to lay in the sun for hours on end.  A week later I still have red spots on my feet.)

This size pot makes six cups.

In other news, I love Dominican coffee!  My host mom makes me a cup every morning and this is quite a jump start to my day.  A cup is really more like a shot, it's less than half a normal mug, but whenever she adds the sugar for me I'm pretty sure she adds about a tablespoon.  Bitter-SWEET!

Today is a national holiday here, Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes.  Catholicism is the national religion of the Dominican Republic so many of the holidays are related to the Church.  Most people are off of work and there is no school, which is great, but doesn't actually affect the international students very much because we don't have class on Fridays anyway.  But as I was walking home from the university yesterday everyone one I passed looked really happy so that counts for something.