Finally Up

Hey everybody! Sorry it's taken me a minute to get this set up, but thanks to Anne I'm figuring this out!
The Dominican Republic is grrreat!!! The weather is nice, the people are even nicer, and the food is the best! Last night after dinner we were supposed to come back to the Foundation, where we stay, and watch a movie in Spanish as part of our class but ended up all learning the meringue in the lobby of the hotel. Our professor right now, Nancy Lopez, is from Santo Domingo, so she was totally down with skipping the movie and dancing. Dancing is a big part of the Dominican culture; everyone dances and they are all really good at it!!
Today, we took the kayaks out on the water and some people tried windsurfing. We have access to most of the activities at the resort. In class today, a couple other people (Anton and Haley) and I were assigned to go out and interview three Dominican people around our complex and at the hotel. We had a really good time talking to the people. We interview two older men: Miguel, one of the security guards at the foundation and Delacruz another security guard at the gate to the hotel. Then, Jorge who is an employee at the hotel and is 21, which gave us a different perspective. The older men were kind of hard to understand because they spoke really fast and without full pronunciation. We learned that the Dominicans like to leave out letters, so it's kind of difficult to understand sometimes. For example, someone today said "algo" but left out the sound of the "l" so it sounded like "ago." So, it takes sometime to get used the their accents, but everyone is very willing to speak with you and are very patient when we talk for 5 minutes and only actually get out 3 sentences. We help them with their English too. It's a great opportunity for us to learn from each other. Nancy has basically told my group that we need to talk, talk, talk since we already know our grammar and verbs etc. Solomente espanol ahora! (Only Spanish now!)
I was planning on only writing once a week but I feel like there is sooo much to write. But now that I have this somewhat setup I'm going to try to write an update once every day or two and give you the highlights so I don't bore you with all the details!
I miss you all! Espero que TODOS esten aqui!! (I wish you were ALL here!!)

PICTURES: 1. Flying into DR over the mountains
2. the beach!
3. The group in front of the Fundacion Ecológica, where we have stay and have class
4. Luis, me, Jorge, y Anton
5. They have capture 2 baby sea turtles so far this year. Last your they rescued 32. They catch them when they're little to protect them from fish predation and then release them after they're big enough to survive.
6. group at hotel, after meringue-ing

Sorry it's kinda hard to see these pics, Im going to get another program to put more up!