First project done!

My first project, a short Students International promotional video, is officially finished! Alicia burned it onto a dvd last night, and Troyers' will be heading to the States with it tomorrow (Wednesday).
I had the promo almost finished last Thursday and showed it to Alicia, who suggested we change the song and a few of the video clips. With her guidance, I ended up ripping it to shreds (figuratively speaking, of course) and starting over. But she was right, and the promo turned out much better than the first "draft." I've been trying to upload it to share here on my blog, but the website I used for the base videos has a video file size limit, so I have to look elsewhere. That's a royal pain. :-( (pretend that's an angry face)

So...an overview of the weekend:

Friday I worked on the promo at the base in the morning, then came home and did school the rest of the day.

Saturday I finished a school assignment in the morning and then kind of laid around and did nothing with Chastity until Katie came over and trimmed our hair in the afternoon.
Katie took me to town to exchange dollars for pesos at the little bank place. She parked while I walked in. The exchange place is right by a little gambling booth (called a "banca,"and a real bank is called a "banco" down here. Remember the difference!), and when I tried to walk into the exchange place, there was this guy standing right in front of the door who kept trying to shoo me over to the "banca!" I shook my head, but he kept insisting. I was like, what's this guy's problem?! I'm just trying to exchange some money! And Katie started calling to me from across the street that the banca is the wrong place. I'm thinking to myself, Duh! I know!!! This guy's trying to make me go there!
So, I'm trying not to flip out about the whole thing (a missionary being pushed to go to a gambling booth!), and Katie ran across the street to help me out (she speaks Spanish really well). We just kind of pushed past the guy into the exchange place. Then we found out what the problem was. Apparently, the exchange place closes early on Saturday, and if you want money exchanged you have to go to the gambling place. So...the guy at the door was just doing his job. What had confused me was that all the while, I could see the exchange place employee inside behind the desk like normal, so I thought the guy in the door was just a gambling bully or something.
Anyway, I did get my money exchanged. The exchange place employee told me to give it to the guy at the door and he went over to the banca himself and did it for me. Nice guy. (lol) Now I know to go early on Saturdays so I won't have to go to the banca!

Katie and I met up with Alicia, Chastity, and two Dominican friends (Melvin and Christian) at an ice cream place (I got pistachio frozen yogurt! YUM!). Afterward Katie had to go home, but the rest of us went to Alicia's house (at the base) where we made eggs with bacon and toast for supper and watched sports on TV for a while.

Jarabacoa (the town where I'm living) is celebrating its 150-year anniversary for a week or something, and every night in the park in town there's late-night concerts and stuff (which we can hear CLEARLY from our house on the edge of town!). Saturday night at 11:30 there were fireworks, so we ran out on the porch to watch. Beautiful!

Sunday morning I did some reading for my Spiritual Formation class. After church the usual bunch of us (Katie, Chastity, Alicia, and me) and a Dominican girl, Laura, went out for pastelitos at a little roadside stand. (Pastelitos are little deep-fried pockets of dough filled with chicken, cheese, or veggies. Very, very good!)

Monday I spent a hour on school first thing, then I went to the base and worked on the promo, finishing up a little before 4 p.m. My brain was fried, so when I got home I was in the mood to do something that didn't require a lot of thinking so Maggie said I could put together a salad to go with supper. She made chicken fajitas (wonderful!). It was just the two of us at home that evening for a while, and Maggie said she was in the mood to watch a suspenseful movie while we ate, so we watched the Bourne Identity. She loves suspense movies! Nate came home in time to watch most of it too.

And today: I did school almost all day, except for one quick run to the base to download the finished promo onto my flash drive so I can bring it home and upload it to my blog (hopefully). I'll be working on that tonight as well as studying my History book. (Yuck).

Arlene invited me to go horseback riding with the semester students in Los Higos tomorrow! I haven't been to Los Higos since the last time I was here in April 2007, so I'm looking forward to this.