Some negatives...

I heard one of the staff members advise the semester students to take note of what in this culture might become a nuisance to them, because being aware of your "buttons" before they are pushed helps you prepare to cope. I think I found what grates my nerves: dogs. Our American neighbors across the street have tons of dogs (Maggie said she once counted nine) and every morning without fail they yap and howl at...uh...each other, I guess. We call those neighbors the "dog pound;" they apparently pick up scrawy, ugly mutts off the street and try to get them adopted (they even have a website!), which is a joke in the D.R. Dogs are grossly overpopulated down here; neutering is a completely foreign concept (literally, the idea is completely bizarre to them).

So, for the promo DVD Alicia and I are making, we were thinking about interviewing a couple of staff and putting in 10-second sound bites or something, but there's a big problem. We don't have any fancy sound equipment to go with our video cameras, so you can't filter out any background noise. So, what time of day is there when you won't have motorcycles roaring in the background? Probably between 6-7 a.m (unless you do it in the middle of the night, but the lighting would't be good). But wait--that's the time in the morning when all the dogs on the island start yelling at each other! We'll see what we can do...

(This is Chloe, Slabachs' dog. She's an adorable, goofy boxer! You can't help but like her.)

I got sick this past Thursday. I thought I had an amoeba, but it turned out to just be some bacterial-thing. I'll spare you the details, but at least half of the night I was either puking over the toilet or had severe diahhrea. I can't remember the last time I was so sick! Once my stomach was completely emptied and mostly settled, I was able to finally sleep a few hours. I'm still on meds, but I feel basically normal now, just a few twinges in my stomach every once in a while.