i am alive and well. it's been a busy week getting back to the DR. i came back this week with my brother and jenny and matt. who have since been renamed by hector: mike is ricky martin and jack (from titanic), jenny is j-lo, matt is chayanne (some singer...google him), and i am madonna. where these names came from we have no clue. i enjoyed the week and the others seemed to as well. milagros, hector, and i tried to show them all the best places that we could.

our journey became at six am last sunday morning driving twelve hours to new york. we did get a stop in at chocolate world along the way where mike managed to lead us on an adventure around the parking lot. we waited about five hours at the airport and then took a three hour flight arriving in santiago around 3:30 the next morning. we then made it to san pedro in an astounding two hours. we slept a little and then hector came over. he, milagros and i went to the store while the others slept. it felt good to be back. although, there's a lot to sort through in myhead with this going and coming stuff. that afternoon we went to our "second home" verizon to meet up with the verizon guy neftali. my friends got to meet him then we went to see malecon and then we ended up going to casa de campo and altos de chabon. very fancy places where people like j-lo have houses. we had some problems getting in and joked about telling the guards that i was shakira's daughter. somehow neftali got us in....something about us being american reps from verizon. the next day we went into santo domingo to look at the sites there. and then had neftali over for dinner. wednesday morning we went early to samana. we went to the beach where we got stuck under a cavish type thing where it rained for a while. it was cool for me to see hector joking and playing with mike and matt (boys his own age...well sorta). the next day we went to the waterfall.

yesterday was an adventure. we left in the morning to go to an island, but not far into our journey the axle on our rental car snapped going over a speed bump. luckily it was going over a speed bump, so we were going slowly. also, it was still in rincon where we have friends. we took the axle to some guys down the road for them to weld it back together.....so our broken axle ended up costing us a total of three dollars. we then decided it was best not to go to the island, so we ended up driving to santiago. we ended up finding a hotel attached to a casino which was entertaining. it was the diamond casino with a big revolving diamond on the sign. my friends left early this morning, and now i'm back in san pedro putting my things back in order, getting ready for spanish class, getting ready for some work, and my parents.

for anyone that is interested in knowing about wenscela the cancer patient she is doing much better, and says she doesn't know how to thank everyone enough.

that's the news in these parts. oh, that and we got a 10,000 grant!