Visit Con Los Padres

My parents just left after a wonderful week-long visit.  They came last Saturday night, we left for a resort nearby in the morning, came back on Tuesday so the boys (and Owen) could attend a few days of school and so we could show them our lives here, and then went to the mountains for two days before they left.  The kids were so excited to see Grandma and Grandpa, and we all just felt it was so, so good to be together.

Abigail was mostly excited to see Grandma and Grandpa--but she was almost as excited about getting the princess dress and Hello, Kitty! purse that she knew Grandma was bringing.

Here's the Davis/Frey crew in Sosua.  You can't see her in the picture, but Abigail is in an adorable fish inner tube that a boy at the beach lent to her.

Here are the Davis boys outside of the national park in Cabarete.  We took Grandpa there for a birthday gift; it was hot we were all tired, and having a power-outage inside the cave made it a different (and more harrowing) experience than when we went the time before.  But it was truly a glimpse of the country!

The beach at Riu Bachata was amazing.

I mean, seriously, is this beautiful, or what?

Beach time with Grandma.

You'd never guess, but this was about the 18th attempt.

The chefs at the restaurant carved local auyamas (pumkins) into cool shapes.

The fam.

Local restaurant--do you know how hot it is cooking here?  Very.

Cathedral in downtown Santiago's Parque Duarte.

Souvenier bracelets from grandma.  A really sweet older woman in a shop gave us these after we bought some Larimar jewelry (a pretty blue stone from the D.R.).

My mom took these pictures of the market at the end of my street where I buy a lot of produce.  I don't exactly blend there or feel uber-confident (where I could start snapping photos myself), so it was great to be able to ask people if my mom could take pictures to show her friends about her daughter's life.  People were more than willing to be photographed.

Coconut stand.  You can get him to hack the top off for you and pour it into a cup or you can be more sanitary and self-reliant and almost dismember yourself in your very own kitchen after buying it whole.

OK, so here you can see chayote (the light green crisp squash), yuca--or patatas (sweet potatoes), it's hard to tell--behind it, platanos (big, green banana-looking fruits that need to be cooked) on the ground, and me, in the distance, buying tomatoes for less than 50 cents a pound.  (Don't worry, it all evens out.  Anything processed or made of plastic costs two to three times as much as in the states.

In the mountains of Jarabacoa: the butterfly house.  Butterflies on the sides of houses are big here.  The smaller ones (not pictured) are made of coconut shells.  I'm guessing the big metal ones are a result of people wishing coconuts were bigger.

El presidente, the local beer.

Tim, the collie who "shepherded" my family the whole time we were in the mountains.  He'd lay beside our table for a meal, supervise our swimming (he almost fell in trying to protect Jesse at one point), and guard our cabin at night (we kind of wished at that point he'd find another family to protect).  We LOVED Tim!

The waterfall we hiked down to after our horseback ride.

The kids with Grandma.  Kids who helped us on the horses were leaping off those cliffs behind them while we took these pictures.

We feel so blessed to have had such a wonderful visit.  And having those we love from America come to see our new life made it more real somehow here, too.  See you at Christmas, Grandma and Grandpa!

Incident

Yesterday before school, Jesse and Micah were getting dressed for school and were slightly traumatized when their latest pet lizard jumped onto (and accidentally into) their fan.  I will leave the rest to your imagination.  It was so so sad (and bizarre), they were crying their eyes out.  People who have lived here for many years have never heard of that happening.  Youth is resilient, and so we're back in the hunt for another lizard/gecko, whatever we can get!  Still, not a good start to the school day.

Home Tour: Part Two, Unabridged

As promised, the rest of the home tour.  It's a little overly thorough, but since I can't have any of my friends from the states drop by very easily, you'll have to forgive me!  :)

The house

Our floor of the house

Boys' room

More boys' room, Jesse wanted to be in the picture.

The bunkbeds

Entering Abigail's room

Abigail's room, that's her foot, I took these while she was sleeping.

The toys, and a mango tree outside.

Kid bathroom

Master bedroom

Other view

Jesse was just dying to get in one of these.

Master bath

Second view

There's a little nook off of the master bedroom

More of the nook

Dining room, I spent hours rubbing oil into that sideboard, I bought it used and found it to be in pretty bad shape, but it's fine now.

The table purchased from previous renters.

Kitchen view

Kitchen counter/window view

Sink and counter view

Kitchen leads into laundry room/swank guest suite.

This view makes it obvious this is a laundry room . . .

Ahh, but what about this view?

Guest suite bathroom

Front balcony view

Balcony stairs to courtyard

Side balcony

Clotheslines on stepped roof

Some local wildlife in our house

This frog entered our house through the screen I removed to try to get him to leave the window ledge so I could close the slats on the window without trapping him again.

Best T-Shirt Ever!

I saw this hilarious T-shirt on someone's back at the grocery store, made all the funnier by how random it was seeing it on someone here in the D.R.  I followed the man, who was talking to his friend in Spanish, until I had it memorized.  It said:

Heaven is where the police are British, the cooks are French, the mechanics are German, the lovers are Italian and it is all organised by the Swiss. 

Hell is where the police are German, the cooks are English, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss, and it is all organised by the Italians.

What are the odds?

Home Tour: Part One

The home tour has been delayed by bare walls.  It turns out it's no small feat putting screws into concrete (and involves something called a hammer drill, of all things).  But I cannot condone presenting rooms as finished with bare walls.  I mean, hello, we are faithful Design Star watchers and that sort of nonsense gets you voted off week one.  So here are living room, foyer, mini-office, and Abigail's room.  We'll get the other two thirds covered later.  We are awaiting anchors to hang some more frames.  These pictures would be better in daylight, but then the kids are awake and nothing looks nearly as good.  :)

Living Room, featuring the IKEA couch the purchase of which in Santo Domingo almost made me ready to move back to the states.

The kids' nook I promised the boys in this little corner of the living room.

Our rocker from the states with the used bookshelf I bought here.

Powder room near foyer.

The foyer looking into the dining room.

The foyer facing the hallway to the bedrooms.

Abigail's room, view one.

Abigail's room, two.

Abigail's room, three.

More to come!

Surprises

We've had a few interesting surprises this week:

1.  Tonight's arepa experiment was a total success.  I had little going for me in the fridge.  But I had picked up Donarepa brand yellow corn flour in the grocery store the other day, and used milk instead of water (one of the options on the bag) and made very tasty moist arepas.  Layered beef, leftover sauted eggplant slices, sprouts from the arugula I'm trying to grow in pots on the porch, sauted onion, a slice of real cheese (I find that cheese is a concept a bit foreign in the DR--cheese must be imported to have the right taste or consistency, I'm selling out in the locavore department on this one), sliced avocado . . . arepa sandwiches.

2.  A tarantula was discovered (and killed by the downstair's neighbor, thankfully, before I walked past it on the way to the car) right outside our house this week.  The picture is a few hours post-killing:

3.  Neighbor kids were playing ladderball with us and one of the balls split.  One of them pulled superglue out of his pocket to fix it, he was about eight years-old.  Uncanny.

4.  The neighbor started keeping the bigger, louder dog outside overnight.  :(  Bad surprise.  He thinks it's necessary for safety overnight.  It has woken me up almost every night this week--and family members covered the off-nights.

5.  When I ordered the tilapia at the grocery store counter (a much better grocery store, with whole oats for granola and better prices and food arranged in logical ways) after clarifying that I could have the skin and heads and tails removed and everything . . . it turns out that, nope, surprise!, whatever the guy at the counter says, you pretty much get a whole fish.  I did convince him to take the severed heads out of the wrapped package.  But, also a surprise, I had no idea tilapia could taste so good.  The kids were sad that we didn't have any more of it.  Also unexpected were those pinto beans, in the shells when I bought them, that I had thought were purple green beans and had to figure out come supper time.

6.  Someone handed out starfruit at church today and they were both beautiful and pretty tasty.