Finding Jessica

*warning, this blog will be long, semi-mostly-interesting, and picture-filled. sit back and enjoy with a glass of something or just really good focus.*


Well...Santo Domingo was interesting. It was nice being out of Santiago (again), but it would probably have been better if, say, we had spent more than one afternoon/night in the city. The entire 2nd day was spent at Playa Boca Chica (Little Mouth Beach...weird in english, I know, apparently it looks like a "woman's" mouth from above or some excuse) and was actually cut short because *some* of the people in our group couldn't (wouldn't) afford to eat more than fries at the beach and would still be hungry for more lunch...after of course we had eaten! Whatev, our lastest excursion, throw out some pesos for almost the last time.


The mansion of the prez, though interestingly the president never lives there, only works there, and has an apartment nearby. Sucks, our prez (Obama!) has the whole white house for livin' and eatin' and workin'.

A supposed "lighthouse" we visited in SD. NEver seen such a strange thing. Our folks look like ants, everyone being tourists.

ME and 2 (of the 4) (all same color) guys. That's all there was to choose from, lol. Meet Daniel and Zach. Zack = crazy as h*ll and hard to catch on camera unless you force him to sit. OH, LOOK! You can see a bit of the cross I bought en Calle del Sol in Santiago!!! Love it...

Me and Jewel showing off our matching (kinda) dresses. Hers had green numbers on the sleeve, case closed.

A monument inside the lighthouse-thing-museum-place. The only thing we were *allowed* to take pictures of. Was, quote, to commemorate NOT celebrate Christopher Columbus (Cristóbal Colon).

Ummm...we went to the amber museum (duh) and I bought my only *expensive* anything of the trip...an awesome silver and lárimar ring that I could not put down. $1,200RD = approx. $33 (muy expensive...very vale la pena)

Me and Em sitting at a very cool set of furnitures at the museum's little inside-outside terrace-y sorta place.

Terrible lighting, you can see the cord from my camera (Zach took it, its like he only knows how to use his SLR) but I look good in it and my legs look a millioin feel long...so must be included. Oh, I was in good-'ol Chris Columbus' wife's bedroom window. Bored.

View of the square (where the old stuff is) from the balcony at Columbus' house.

Sooo hot...icecream time. Get it girls! (I didn't buy any.)

A horse and buggy we passed on our walk to the town square.

The square full of sky-rats a.k.a. pigeons

Because she's beautiful. Hey Em, you go Em, get that tourist purse-thingy down your shirt Em.

Drum roll please.....da da da da da da da da... us at HARD ROCK CAFÉ, Santo Domingo! Unfortunately, I did not buy a glass nor shirt nor shot glass...if they had the shorted traditional shotglass I would have, but, alas, they only had the tall drunken bastards, so I did not purchase one for $6USD. BUt I ate all my food! Pobrecito, can you believe it? And I think we were all trying really hard to lay on Courtney's bosoms....way to go Court!

The HARD ROCK man. Sweet.

A cigar shop a couple stores down from Hard Rock. And Em said this picture was *provocative*.

Baskin Robins...me and em had floats made with pepsi... yum. It was funny, everything was in english but of course you had to order in Spanish...weird country.

Street sign, on the side of a building, th ereason its hard to get around here! Name of the street of our hotel and the main shopping area with shops and people set up outside.

Calle el Conde.


BOOKS!!! I had to take a foto of the books in this bookstore...why would you have a bookstore you couldn't walk through?! Had to ask for the book you had in mind, I'm sure, instead of just letting it "come to you" while you walk through...I miss Barnes and Noble. and Starbucks. Mmmm.
The chicas! Savannah, me, em.

The MACHETE weilding coconut guy. I bought a small edible one off him for $100RD, even though he told me $150RD for the edible one and $200RD for both the edible (brown) one and a drinkable (green) one. No way.

Man, that was a good, freshly massacred coconut.

View of Playa Boca Chica from our table. I was lazy that day, only took a handful of pictures.

HAD to take a picture of this boat! Why? What do you guess the major code is for Biochemistry at NCSU??? BCH, of course!!! So sweet.

Sooo...this country is particularly racist against those *malditos haitianos* that like to cross the border illegaly, similar to the stonger sentiments against mexicans in the US, only tons stonger thanks to good-'ol Trujillo, so this is a racist bumber-sticker that I saw so much I had to take a picture. Translation? Haitians: Non-negotiable!

What is that Sarah and I are eating??? Well...take a look at that little box there, Pobrecito....yes, its a CINNABON!!! Oh, it was soooo good! A nice slice of the US of A, know what I mean?

WELL, for those of you that have TRUDGED through this...FIN! Its over, the highlights in picture form of the trip. Whatever does not have a photo wasn't really something to be missed on this one, ya know? Hope you enjoyed!